Cardiovascular disease, which includes strokes, is the number one cause of death in the United States.  Therefore, to raise awareness of and fight against these diseases, the American Heart Association has declared February the American Heart Month. Since the choices that you and your family make now will affect your child for the rest of his/her life, it is imperative to begin making healthy heart decisions part of your daily routine. Here are some tips on how to promote a healthy heart environment in your household.

Be a good role model: Children are constantly watching what you do and following how you act.  Set a good example by choosing healthy food options and engaging in physical activity.

Get everybody in your family involved: Although a family's schedule can be hectic, it is important to make time for everybody to exercise together.  Try going for a family bike ride or taking the dog for a walk.

Be realistic: It is important to make small steps and to set goals that your family will be able to achieve.  Then once you achieve your goals, make new ones to work towards.

Eat dinner as a family: When you plan family dinners to eat together, you have control over what foods your child will eat. But you can also enlist your child's participation by encouraging him/her to help create the dinner menu.

Limit the amount of TV and video game time:  Allowing children to spend too much time in front of the television promotes a sedentary lifestyle.  It is recommended that your child's TV time is limited to 1-2 hours a day.  To accomplish this, it may help to plan ahead of time with your children to see which shows they will watch.

For more information please visit the American Heart Association website.

 

This month, the Starfish PT's traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana for the American Physical Therapy Association's national conference.  We attended several lectures on pediatric and private practice topics.  It was beneficial for us to get up to date on current research and see what other pediatric therapists are up to around the country. Here are just a couple of things we brought home with us.

Selective Motor Control in Cerebral Palsy: Selective motor control is the ability to isolate the activation of muscles in a selected pattern in response to demands of a voluntary posture or movement. Selective Voluntary Motor Control (SVMC) refers to the ability to produce these movements upon request. During this lecture, we were able to freshen up our knowledge on selective motor control and it's role Cerebral Palsy in which the the voluntary motor pathways are often damaged.  We also learned how to administer the Selective Control Assessment of the Lower Extremity (SCALE), which is a quick way to measure SVMC in children with neuromuscular impairments. SCALE can be a useful tool to idenitfy synergies, document progress and determine prognosis for benefit from interventions such as dorsal rhizotomy or other surgical procedures to reduce spasticity.

Sitting and Reaching Intervention in Infants and Young Children with Disabilities: The emphasis of this lecture was on research showing that typical and impaired infants who received skilled interventions for sitting and reaching skills at as early as 2 months of age experienced an earlier onset of other milestones such as object transfer, crawling, cruising, etc, as well as more advanced development of problem solving, social interaction, and cognitive skills than those who did not receive this intervention. This supports the knowledge that movement truly drives development in the first months of life.  It's what allows the baby to interact with their environment. It also offers some great research to support the benefit of early intervention services, which is so important now that early intervention programs in the state of California are facing large budget cuts. 

If you would like more information about either of these topics, please talk with your therapist.