Ms Sarah Berry, a reporter who had a phone interview with Dr Norman Doidge, a American psychiatrist and researcher, has written an article: ‘How your body changes your brain’ exploring how brain interact and improve coordination of body function through practices.
After crawling through this article, its contents can be summarized into the fact of what we have already known – exercise / repetitive practice improve body movements, coordination and functions via concept of neuroplasticity. It’s a method that we adopt in physiotherapy to help people with sorts of neurological conditions, e.g. Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and stroke ..etc, to better improve their daily function. This method also has wider application on sports injury prevention and musculo-skeletal rehabilitation. It works on the principle that once body is familiarized with certain movements through means of controlled and progressive training, the brain can execute instructions to better coordinate the parts, generating movements that are efficient and less clumsy, hence lower injury risk.
Subject to the level of activities that our patients intend to engage, treatments provided will need to meet their specific needs. In a case of ankle sprain, second progression of proprioceptive retraining should be sufficient for people who live in relative sedentary lifestyle, while staged retraining involving acceleration, deceleration, and sudden change of direction would likely be required for a soccer player.
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