Rehabilitation

Chronic Rehabilitation & Weight Loss

Obesity remains a growing concern in South Africa, despite the fact that more people claim to be exercising. How you exercise can have a major impact on whether or not you successfully lose weight.

As for overweight children, teens and young adults, it’s very important to realize that carrying excess weight early in life increases the number of years they’re exposed to all the health risks associated with obesity. Obese adults tend to have higher rates of high blood pressure, cancer and diabetes.

One of the most important things we as a society can do for the next generation is to be a role model for a healthy lifestyle and help them achieve optimal health as early in life as possible. This includes eating a healthy diet tailor-made to each individual; full of fresh, preferably local, organic foods, and exercising to increase physical fitness.

Your body is designed to operate best when it’s at an ideal weight, which will vary slightly from person to person. However, carrying around extra pounds will inevitably increase your risk of developing just about every chronic degenerative disease there is. But obesity is not the underlying cause of all health problems, it’s only a symptom.

This is why diet and exercise are such a powerful combination for achieving optimal health. Therefore start becoming more metabolically fit. It’s the cornerstone of optimum health. Even older people who do endurance exercise training end up with metabolically younger hearts.

Cardiac Rehabilitation

Cardiac rehabilitation aims to reverse limitations experienced by patients who have suffered the adverse pathophysiologic and psychological consequences of cardiac events.

Cardiac rehabilitation programs have been consistently shown to improve objective measures of exercise tolerance and psychosocial well being without increasing the risk of significant complications. Cardiac rehabilitation is a medically supervised program to help heart patients recover quickly and improve their overall physical, mental and social functioning.

The goal is to stabilize, slow or even reverse the progression of cardiovascular disease, thereby reducing the risk of heart disease. The identification of the patients at risk for a cardiac event’s recurrence (ie, risk stratification) is central to formulating an appropriate rehabilitative program to prevent such a recurrence.

Combining all aspects of cardiovascular rehabilitation in appropriate patients improves functional capacity and quality of life, reduces risk factors and may create a sense of well-being and optimism about the future.

Orthopaedic Rehabilitation

Orthopaedic rehabilitation covers a large variety of conditions that affect the skeletal system and the muscular system. Biokineticists are trained to treat the entire body, and the length of rehabilitation needed depends greatly on the severity of the patient’s injuries. 

Orthopaedic rehabilitation is a specialty that combines biomechanics and biology in a unique manner with an approach that focuses on improving the functional outcome for individuals with musculoskeletal disability through non-operative management, with focus on the musculoskeletal system as a whole as well as on the linkages and couplings between bones, joints, muscles, and the nervous system. 

Injuries such as neck and back pain, shoulder dislocations, carpal tunnel syndrome, knee and ankle sprains and hip pains are common injuries we deal with. Orthopaedic rehabilitation is often needed post surgery as part of the final phase of rehabilitation to aid in the healing process for patients who have had a spinal fusion, total hip or knee replacement, and ankle reconstructions. 

During evaluation, we will determine your range of motion, posture, and how much you can function when moving. After the evaluation, we will develop a personal treatment plan based on your specific needs.  Sessions will include stretching, manual therapy and exercises, as well as educating you on your specific condition. You will also be taught techniques to use at home to self-manage your symptoms through the therapy process.

Andries Lodder Biokineticist practice details