Moving Is Medicine: Three Things Every Body Needs to Know
Moving Is Medicine: Three Things Every Body Needs to Know
At the Burke Rehabilitation outpatient Sports and Musculoskeletal Medicine Program, Dr. Muhammad Sheheryar Rizwan, DO, sees professional baseball players, people who run or hike occasionally, and those who just want to walk to the mailbox without pain. To him, they are all athletes. “Anybody who moves, anybody who walks around and does something with their body in the course of living their life,” he says, “they are an athlete at some level.”
Your knees connect to your hips, your hips to your spine; dysfunction in one area tends to surface in others. The same biomechanics that apply to a marathon runner apply to someone who walks the dog every morning. Biomechanics, as Dr. Rizwan explains it, is the physics of the body: the angles at which joints move, the forces transmitted from foot to spine, the energy required to move a leg forward and back. Those mechanics are shared by everyone. What differs is how each person’s body executes those mechanics, based on body type, nutrition, and medical history, and that’s where individualized assessment comes in.
The Sports and Musculoskeletal Medicine Program operates on a non-operative philosophy whenever possible. Surgery has its place, and the program has a referral relationship with White Plains Hospital for cases that need it. But the starting point is always what the body can do for itself. Dr. Rizwan and his colleagues at the Outpatient Physician Practice work directly with Burke physical therapists, identifying specific biomechanical issues and focusing treatment there. When more targeted intervention is needed, the program utilizes techniques such as joint injections, nerve blocks, and diagnostic ultrasound, which Dr. Rizwan uses both to identify problems in real time and to guide procedures with greater precision.
One of the program’s advanced offerings is extracorporeal shockwave therapy, a technique used for chronic conditions of the muscles, tendons or ligaments, such as Achilles tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, tennis elbow and rotator cuff dysfunction. The therapy can provide significant relief for patients with chronic conditions that haven’t responded to other conservative treatments, without the need for surgical intervention.
No matter your goals or level of activity, Dr. Rizwan has three essential insights to keep your body—performing at your best.
When something hurts, stopping your movement is not always the right answer. Bed rest for back pain, Dr. Rizwan says, is one of the most counterproductive responses possible. Movement increases blood flow, stimulates nerve feedback to muscles and bones, and keeps tissue from stiffening. To keep the body moving fluidly, he recommends dynamic stretching before activity: arm circles, light jumps, movements that warm up joints through motion. After activity, static stretching—holding a toe touch, pulling an arm across the chest, bending a leg to open the hip—helps muscles recover.
- Understand what your pain is telling you.
There’s some truth to the old adage, No pain, no gain. Exercise and physical therapy, when done to maximum effect, can result in productive pain. The point, Dr. Rizwan says, is to transform that pain into an adaptation. In order to build muscle, you have to break it down first. When the body successfully adapts, the pain signal quiets, because the body no longer registers the area as damaged.
How can you tell the good pain from the bad? “If it’s pain that you’re pushing through to get your function back, that is good pain,” explains Dr. Rizwan. “Pain that limits function, that is bad pain.” The body, he adds, will stop you before you genuinely damage yourself. The inability to continue the movement is itself the signal.
- Remember: your body is a unit.
Physical activity doesn’t happen in isolation. If blood pressure is poorly controlled, blood sugar is unmanaged, or nutrition is inadequate, the body’s resources are being pulled away from recovery and muscle development. “You can’t just be healthy in one aspect of your life,” Rizwan says. “You have to be healthy in all aspects of your life.”
Dr. Rizwan first came to Burke for a Sports Medicine Fellowship after developing a passion for musculoskeletal medicine during his residency at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn. What he loves about the field is that it’s built around the body’s own capacity to heal, adapt, and keep going. Whether you’re a competitive athlete or someone who just wants to move through the day without pain, his job is to understand how your body works and help it continue doing what it is designed to do.
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