Episode 8: Physical Therapy

Meg:

For our February 2021 episode, we sat down with Dr. Hetal Sojitra to discuss physical therapy! This episode was so insightful, and taught me a lot about the field of physical therapy! It was so interesting to hear how Dr. Sojitra was able to utilize online platforms to develop treatment plans and see patients during the pandemic. Her ability to continually connect with patients while helping them was so interesting to hear about! One of my favorite topics we discussed was the importance of stretching among teenagers before and after exercise! It was really interesting to hear that ballistic stretching often moves muscles beyond their normal range of motion. On the other hand, static and dynamic stretching is preferred among doctors (static meaning gentle stretches held for some time, and dynamic meaning constant movement). Dynamic stretching is often performed before exercise to warm-up the body, and static after to loosen the muscles. Furthermore, the idea that lactic acid levels reduce when stretching is something that I never knew about!

Eshaan:

When planning this episode, Meg and I wanted to focus on stretching and its importance and decided to ask Dr. Hetal Sojitra to join us! When talking to Dr. Sojitra, I learnt a lot about the different types of stretching. Personally, I didn't even know that there were different types of stretching, so learning about this was extremely interesting! It was interesting to also hear about how doctors tend to prefer static and dynamic stretching as it is gentle on the body but also keeps the body in constant movement. When meeting with Dr. Sojitra, I was very curious to know how she adapted her business to an online platform. I was curious about this because Physical Therapy involves touching the patient, which is something we now cannot do due to the pandemic. When talking to her, I was able to understand how she did this. Although virtual Physical Therapy is not ideal, Dr. Sojitra made it work and she is able to help her patients during the pandemic, both virtually and in person. Overall, I found this episode to be extremely interesting as Meg and I both learned about this different types of stretching, and it was also fascinating to see how Dr. Sojitra converted her physical therapy practice onto a virtual platform and still was able to help patients.