A local athletic therapist is a healthcare professional who is trained in the prevention, assessment, and rehabilitation of musculoskeletal injuries through exercise. A local athletic therapist may use a variety of techniques, including exercise, manual therapies, trigger point release, stretching and myofascial release. A local athletic therapist can help you maintain healthy blood glucose levels, understand insulin resistance, improve cholesterol and lose weight. Your local athletic therapist may work with your local endocrinologist to create the best diabetes management or injury rehabilitation plan for you.  

Your Local Athletic Therapist may work closely with your local endocrinologist. Seeing a Local Athletic Therapist in conjunction with a physiotherapist is often a good idea to treat diabetes conditions requiring a Local Athletic Therapist

Why is exercise important? I think probably two reasons. One was, when I wasn't doing exercising, you know, before age 55, I started to notice that things didn't work as well and I was not as strong and in as good a shape as I would like to be.

After I started to exercise, I started to feel stronger. I had more energy. I felt like I could do more. I felt like it was not as much of a challenge to enjoy times and life. So, it really worked out very positively to me. I do quite a few different exercises. I jog, I do weightlifting. I try to do a little bit of stretching and that sort of thing but I am not very good at it. I play tennis quite a bit and I enjoy tennis. I play with individuals who are older than I am and quite a few that are quite a bit younger than I am. I find that cardio has really helped me with younger players because I can still keep up with them.

They are often better players than I am but it is not because I am running out of breath, you know. What I have noticed with more exercise now that I am getting older is that I do find that I do have more energy. That's probably the biggest thing. I feel more comforter goal two and a little bit more secure.

Like for a while, I stopped skiing because I was worried about my legs because they just weren't strong enough. But I went back to skiing and I felt fine. It was just great after I had been training. I am very confident and you know the literature says you know that the exercise helps the mind and it helps the energy level and it helps the heart and it helps everything.

So, I am a strong believer in it and I guess it's a personal experience too, I feel a lot better because of it. Certainly, with the individuals I play tennis with and things like that, most of them are in pretty good shape. But I've got a lot of friends too who are not so much and they have difficulty you know sometimes when you have to walk quite a ways and that sort of thing or climbing stairs or going up a hill if we're on a bit of a walk outdoors.

So, you really do see the difference. I think the opportunities for it being a physician I do understand some of the literature and I do understand what's being read. I am reading a lot more about what the literature says with respect to exercise and I have certainly been a strong convert to the ordinance of exercise.

I started at 55. Is that too late? It's not too late to start. I wish I had started at 25 on a regular basis but I didn't. And I started at 55 and it's still making a difference to me. Presenter: Dr. David Matheson, Pediatrician, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: Pediatrician