Episode 65 |Elizabeth Dean: A Physical Therapists Role in Lifestyle Medicine

Surgery and drugs are always the go-to for doctors, but with the changing times there is now a need for the conventional ways to be reconsidered. Dr. Elizabeth Dean of the University of British Columbia in Canada believes that it is time to reconfigure a physical therapist’s role on healing a patient and help them live longer and healthier lives. It is also important to learn how lifestyle medicine can help in the assessment of nutrition and exercise. Dr. Elizabeth explains why the clinical community needs to be on the same page on nutrition and illness care.

I'm so excited you're here where we can talk about natural ways to heal from chronic pain as well as chronic disease. Before we get started with the episode, just a couple of show notes. I want to thank the Hudson Valley District of the New York Physical Therapy Association for hosting me at the Burke Rehabilitation Hospital on September 28th. I gave everyone a wonderful lecture. There are about 30 people who attended for our lecture on how nutrition can influence musculoskeletal pain as well as inflammation.

If you follow me, my work and my podcast, you know that I am passionate about nutrition and how nutrition can impact the lives of yourself, your family, your friends and your patients. I'm super excited this week to have with me Dr. Elizabeth Dean, who is a professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada. She is a physiotherapist. Her scale of work focuses on bridging the ultimate knowledge translation gap between what is known about the cause and factors contributing to lifestyle-related non-communicable disease and physical therapy practice. She has a particular interest in epidemiology and information to maximize outcomes using health education and interventions such as physical activity. She conducts research in the Middle East and Asia as well as multicultural Canada and works with international teams with respect to health-focused physical therapy practice.

Currently, she is focusing on effective knowledge translation of existing and new knowledge by physical therapist to meet the priority healthcare needs of people globally in the 21st century specifically toward non-communicable diseases. She is a leader in health-based physical therapy. She has been invited to speak at over 30 countries where she has presented keynote addresses, guest lectures, workshops, symposia, consultation. Together with her colleagues, she has presented over three physical therapy global health summits and World Confederation for Physical Therapy conferences.

What I love about Dr. Dean is I actually love her research. When I first got into nutrition, I did a great paper for my doctoral dissertation and I used a lot of her research to really support the stance that I had in my personal scope of why nutrition was important for physical therapists.

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