New leader hopes to give River Forest physical therapy center a broader reach
Shirley Ryan AbilityLab-Day Rehab and Spine & Sports Rehabilitation Center
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Dec 2, 2013 12:00 AM
Oak Leaves 12/28/2013
New leader hopes to give River Forest physical therapy center a broader reach
By: Meredith Morris | Contributor
The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago’s Spine & Sports Rehabilitation Center in River Forest has a new leader, Annie O’Connor, Corporate Director of Musculoskeletal Practice.
O’Connor, a physical therapist and management professional with a 29-year tenure at RIC, hopes to make the center more visible to a wider swath of the local population, she says — namely, its “very active senior community.”
“To be able to step back into a management role after 10 years at other sites, I have a fresh perspective,” she said. “I think we can be serving the community better.”
RIC therapists use what’s called the McKenzie Method of physical therapy and exercise, which involves using spinal alignment to relieve pain and return people to their normal activities.
“You’re looking at the whole individual and the life they want to lead,” O’Connor said, instead of concentrating only on the aching areas.
“We don’t ask anyone to stop a sport at a certain age but look at their mechanical needs and align their mechanics to keep on,” she said. “The research is very clear. Take them out of their activities and you will lose.”
One of O’Connor’s patients, Geri Bensen of Oak Park, illustrates this approach. Bensen, 47, is a marathon runner who had pain for so many years that she’d figured she’d simply have to bear it.
“Since 2001 I’ve been to so many people,” she said, yet hadn’t found relief until she visited RIC and engaged in an eight-week treatment program.
“I’d been having pain in my hip, hamstring pain and I’d get tingling in my foot,” she said.
This could be especially problematic when driving, which she often does for work. When she hurt, she would try to stretch out the pain which, unknowingly, made it worse.
RIC therapists recommend compression, not stretching, to ease pain. Compressing muscles can look like stretching but its effect is to crunch together, or compress, the muscles on the inside of movement.
When working with patients, RIC therapists first locate the symptoms and understand their frequency and how or if the symptoms work together. Then, they “dissect people’s lives,” O’Connor said, to know their patients’ daily activities.
“It’s like a doctor writing a prescription,” she said. “You need to understand the whole circumstance.”
Therapists then prescribe and teach exercises for people to ease their pain.
“You were meant to move. We’re going to look at the movements and then prescribe movements that will positively affect a person’s symptoms just like a pill,” O’Connor said.
Another of O’Connor’s patients, Robert Soto, 50, of Oak Park, visited in June, complaining of back and other pains.
“I was having two episodes of back pain per year,” he said. “The last one was the type that puts you on the floor and you can’t get up. I thought I would have to entertain surgery and I really didn’t want to go there. It was searing, searing pain.”
Soto is from a soccer family: he plays, coaches and referees. He is also a busy executive who flies extensively.
“Being passive was not an option. I’ve been doing what I do for ten years now,” he said.
With treatment, “I realized that all the pains I’d had were connected,” he said. “I went from having braces on both knees to none. All of my alignment changed.”
Often, O’Connor said, people over-train in their area of activity and reinforce their physically harmful patterns.
“What we’re trying to get the consumer to understand is that you don’t have to work as hard to remain active in your specialty area. You’re more likely to overdo. What we’re seeing in the over-40 population is over-training on the sports and under-training in the individuals’ health needs. We need to push not so much on the sports and instead on the health,” she said.
In other words, she added, it’s not so different from maintaining a car.
“You need a good human body mechanic just like you need a good auto mechanic, to clean out the gunk.”
New leader hopes to give River Forest physical therapy center a broader reach
By: Meredith Morris | Contributor
The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago’s Spine & Sports Rehabilitation Center in River Forest has a new leader, Annie O’Connor, Corporate Director of Musculoskeletal Practice.
O’Connor, a physical therapist and management professional with a 29-year tenure at RIC, hopes to make the center more visible to a wider swath of the local population, she says — namely, its “very active senior community.”
“To be able to step back into a management role after 10 years at other sites, I have a fresh perspective,” she said. “I think we can be serving the community better.”
RIC therapists use what’s called the McKenzie Method of physical therapy and exercise, which involves using spinal alignment to relieve pain and return people to their normal activities.
“You’re looking at the whole individual and the life they want to lead,” O’Connor said, instead of concentrating only on the aching areas.
“We don’t ask anyone to stop a sport at a certain age but look at their mechanical needs and align their mechanics to keep on,” she said. “The research is very clear. Take them out of their activities and you will lose.”
One of O’Connor’s patients, Geri Bensen of Oak Park, illustrates this approach. Bensen, 47, is a marathon runner who had pain for so many years that she’d figured she’d simply have to bear it.
“Since 2001 I’ve been to so many people,” she said, yet hadn’t found relief until she visited RIC and engaged in an eight-week treatment program.
“I’d been having pain in my hip, hamstring pain and I’d get tingling in my foot,” she said.
This could be especially problematic when driving, which she often does for work. When she hurt, she would try to stretch out the pain which, unknowingly, made it worse.
RIC therapists recommend compression, not stretching, to ease pain. Compressing muscles can look like stretching but its effect is to crunch together, or compress, the muscles on the inside of movement.
When working with patients, RIC therapists first locate the symptoms and understand their frequency and how or if the symptoms work together. Then, they “dissect people’s lives,” O’Connor said, to know their patients’ daily activities.
“It’s like a doctor writing a prescription,” she said. “You need to understand the whole circumstance.”
Therapists then prescribe and teach exercises for people to ease their pain.
“You were meant to move. We’re going to look at the movements and then prescribe movements that will positively affect a person’s symptoms just like a pill,” O’Connor said.
Another of O’Connor’s patients, Robert Soto, 50, of Oak Park, visited in June, complaining of back and other pains.
“I was having two episodes of back pain per year,” he said. “The last one was the type that puts you on the floor and you can’t get up. I thought I would have to entertain surgery and I really didn’t want to go there. It was searing, searing pain.”
Soto is from a soccer family: he plays, coaches and referees. He is also a busy executive who flies extensively.
“Being passive was not an option. I’ve been doing what I do for ten years now,” he said.
With treatment, “I realized that all the pains I’d had were connected,” he said. “I went from having braces on both knees to none. All of my alignment changed.”
Often, O’Connor said, people over-train in their area of activity and reinforce their physically harmful patterns.
“What we’re trying to get the consumer to understand is that you don’t have to work as hard to remain active in your specialty area. You’re more likely to overdo. What we’re seeing in the over-40 population is over-training on the sports and under-training in the individuals’ health needs. We need to push not so much on the sports and instead on the health,” she said.
In other words, she added, it’s not so different from maintaining a car.
“You need a good human body mechanic just like you need a good auto mechanic, to clean out the gunk.”