The first thing that comes to mind for most people around the Thanksgiving holiday is probably a table piled high with good food, a house full of family and friends, and lots of football. Thanksgiving is a wonderful day to consider all of the blessing in our lives. While being thankful for family, prosperity, and a roof over our heads tend to be at the top of the list for most people, there are a whole host of other things that we should not forget about-namely just being thankful that we are alive. 

As physical therapists, we recommend making a concerted effort to wake-up and be thankful for the health that you do have and the physical challenges and adventures that await you. If the opportunity arrives itself to IMPROVE your health, by all means IMPROVE it. Regardless of how much money you have in the bank, it will not matter one bit if you are too sick to enjoy it. 

We loudly scream "THANK YOU BODY" for what you do every day!  

If you want to do something to truly thank your body, consider a daily walk, an exercise class, a massage, or just taking a day to rest. 

1. Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Elmira, New York with my parents, Doug and Linda, and my brother, who is two years older than me. The rest of my extended family is spread out from Michigan to Denmark. I started college at Syracuse University as an Exercise Science major. In 2006, I transferred to Daemen College of Buffalo, New York for its Physical Therapy Program. Once I visited Colorado, I fell in love with it immediately and the decision to move here was easy.

2.What are your hobbies?  

Playing/watching sports, specifically football, basketball, baseball, and golf. I enjoy biking, hiking, and skiing especially since moving to Colorado. I enjoy movies, good eating, and select TV shows. Ultimately you can get me excited about just about anything fun, active, or creative. 

3. What did you want to be when you grew up? 

When I was 3 I wanted to be superman. Once I realized I couldn't fly, I wanted to be a doctor because I knew I wanted to work with, and help, people. Around the age of 16 I knew I wanted to be a physical therapist. As cliché as it sounds, it was when I was a patient that I decided this would be the perfect career for me. I was rehabbing from a nasty high-ankle sprain with a small fracture I experienced during a basketball game.

4. What are you thankful for this season?

I'm thankful for my family and their health, and my great friends. Also the family and friends that have/will travel halfway across the country to visit us, eliminating any chance of being homesick. Also I'm thankful for my new Colorado home and all the great people I've met here thus far. Last, but certainly not least, I'm thankful for the opportunity to learn, grow, and practice physical therapy alongside a great group of people at PTIS.

5.What is your top advice for taking care of one's health?

Learn more about Jordan Couchon

Being thankful and counting your blessings this Thanksgiving may help you mentally and physically -- recent research shows it's healthy to be grateful.

Depending on your view of history, the holiday of Thanksgiving is either a commemoration of an event that changed North America for the better or for the worst; but the idea of Thanksgiving itself -- of reaching across the table, of being thankful for the good things that have happened throughout the year, particularly around the harvest time -- actually has a very important scientific basis in making us all feel better, both mentally and physically. 

Jeffrey Froh, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Hofstra University talks about research into the scientific biological basis of Thanksgiving itself. 

Froh's research focuses on being grateful as a continuing behavior, and the benefits that accrue by doing that: "The one particular study that we did was we had students count blessings, which is essentially focusing on the things they were thankful or grateful for, and we had them journal that daily for two weeks." 

"We followed them up three weeks later to see the benefits, and we found that students who counted blessings reported feeling more optimistic, more satisfied with their lives, more school satisfaction -- and actually, the trend for being more satisfied with school not only occurred immediately after the experiment, but actually lasted up to three weeks later." 

There's a broad literature emerging in science and psychology that is attempting to measure the benefits of certain consistent behavior, like praying and being thankful, and there are some surprising findings. 

Froh: "It's beyond feeling good, and beyond happiness ... we found that grateful kids tend to report less physical complaints; bit also in the adult literature ... they found that grateful people who counted blessings were more likely to exercise, more likely to report better sleep; less likely to report these physical complaints. There's even some research done, we're looking at, when you have a sense of appreciation your heart rhythms are more coherent and smooth, which of course is healthy."

STAYING ACTIVE TIP - 3 BLOAT BUSTERS