The osteoporosis program at Northern Beaches Bone Health Centre
The initial assessment is performed In a Standard 30 minute Physiotherapy consultation at Northern beaches Physiotherapy and Sports Injury Centre 4117/834 Pittwater Rd Dee why.
Catherine Stephens (Physiotherapist/ director Northern Beaches Bone Health Centre) will assess your core stability, spinal mobility, balance, along with shoulder and hip mobility to ensure you are safe to begin the program.
You will be prescribed individualised exercises to make improvements where necessary to attain correct movement skills for the program. It is necessary to be practicing some movements regularly, at home prior to commencement of the program.
The next consultation is an hour long 1:1 session where we establish your ability to lift weight at a level both you and the therapist are comfortable with in safety. That session also ensures correct activation of core muscles of the abdominals and gluteals for prevention of injury. It may be that you are prescribed more specific corrective exercises in addition to the standard program.
Following this you will join a small class where you will be closely supervised in all aspects of the program.
The program requires TWICE WEEKLY ATTENDANCE with at least a day between for rest and recovery.
The costs are claimable on private health according to your level of cover under group exercise classes run by Physiotherapists.
As Osteoporosis is a chronic condition you can ask your GP for a EPC (Extended Primary Care plan) whereby Medicare offers a rebate for 5 sessions to Allied health professionals which would be used for the first and second consultations to ease the financial load and can then be used for 3 further classes. The GP will need to tick the Physiotherapy box on the plan.
The diagnosis of Osteoporosis or even Osteopenia does not need to invoke fear of a life limited or restricted. We can build your bone strength, improve core strength and balance for the reduction of falls risk.
We offer an alternative to the medications that can be scary. These medications do build bone density by increasing the calcium content in bones but they don’t improve the elastin component to bone which give bone resilience to impact.
Our program has you start at the beginning… that is where you are now!
We supervise the development of you core musculature for injury Prevention, your balance for Falls prevention, and have you lifting weights to load your skeleton to improve bone density by stimulating natural osteogeneisis which has bone grow strong with increased resilience .
“ YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE GREAT TO BEGIN
BUT
YOU DO HAVE TO BEGIN TO BE GREAT”
Our muscles and bones respond to loads placed upon them.
Our aim is to do this loading within your limits of CONFIDENT movement and to ensure safe technique.
We have an absolute commitment to avoid you incurring any injury!
Taking prescription medication does not preclude you joining our program. In fact, our program enhances the effect of the medication. We do hope to see Bone density improve to the point you can consider ceasing the use of medication with consultation with your Endocrinologist.
Improving core Strength and Stability helps prevent falls and help prevent fractures if you do fall.
WE call it “ BOUNCABILITY”!
Our weights start with plywood weighing about 500grams , so there is no need to believe it is beyond you. All the exercises are gentle to begin and we build the level of difficulty as you improve. We introduce greater challenges to meet your individual needs for continued improvement.
The twice weekly classes can be scheduled to suit your life from week to week, to fit around grandchildren, family, and other commitments.
The additional equipment
During the classes the physiotherapists may use some interesting pieces of equipment to enhance spinal mobility, help with necessary muscle stretching/ lengthening, soft tissue massage and balance.
Catherines Journey in Physio.
Catherines interest in the human body and how it works began when she was just a little girl. Her grandmother had been qualified as a Massage Therapist treating amputees returning from the WW1 in 1917. That profession developed into what is now Physiotherapy. Interestingly Catherine did not know this until she graduated from Physiotherapy herself in 1986 at which time her Nana gave her the roll of documents showing her qualifications. This same Nana had taught Catherine about muscles and bones and stretching and massage and wound care. Catherine was encouraged to have good posture and it was explained how important that was to good body function.
Catherine has a brother who suffered a severe spinal injury at the age of 18 when she was only 13. Philip has been a quadriplegic for 44 years and has had an amazing life considering his disability. Catherine was ever present for his 6 months of rehab at Royal North Shore Hospital and witnessed the wonders of Physio in that setting and that may have paved the way for her passion in Physio. She has encouraged him to maintain his health, strength and flexibility as much as possible and he is still remarkably healthy and enjoys life and travelling all over the world.
Catherine went on to be the Physio for the Australian Wheelchair Sports Team for a couple of years before she started her own Physio practice in 1991. After many years of sports coverage including Cricket, Netball, Soccer and 25 years with Warringah rugby club, Catherine recognised the importance of preventative Musculoskeletal care and 20 years ago began running Clinical Exercise classes base on the principles of Pilates employing Core stability and spinal flexibility.
More recently as she and her friends aged she realised that Osteoporosis is not prevented or reversed by most common exercise like tennis, swimming, walking or gym classes etc. The evidence for then program came in the form of the “Liftmore Trial” published by Griffith University which proved that weightlifting and heavy load reversed Osteoporosis without drugs.
Catherine has been running the program at Dee Why for nealy 8 years and has seen her clients bone density improve if they comply to the twice weekly supervised program. Using her knowledge of movement , injury prevention and treatment she has developed a program where Balance for falls prevention and core strength for injury prevention are combined with a very gradual increase in loading to see strength and subsequent bone density improve. Saftey and confidence are her main aims for the participants .