It’s not uncommon to start paying attention to vitamins and supplements when we’re in pain, injured, or sick, but proactive care can support better outcomes before you reach that point! While low vitamin D levels does not equal poor muscle health, maintaining healthy levels can be an important part of the formula for not only sports nutrition, but also healthy aging!

When it comes to bone health and sports injury, we hear a lot about calcium, but the real star might be vitamin D, which also contributes to muscle strength, injury recovery, and immunity. From athletes rehabbing an injury or overtraining, to aging adults striving for a healthy lifestyle – Vitamin D could be a missing link in your rehab and performance journey.

💪 Vitamin D and Muscle Function

Your muscles perform their best when they’re properly supported at the cellular level. While low Vitamin D doesn’t mean poor muscle health, it can quietly set the stage for reduced muscle efficiency. Vitamin D supports your muscles by: 

• Supporting muscle contraction by aiding calcium transport and increasing calcium-binding sites in muscle tissue. 
• Preserving muscle mass with aging to help reduce the risk of falls. 
• Boosting muscle performance such as grip strength, speed, and power. 
• Improving VO₂ max, a marker of cardiovascular and muscular endurance.

🦴 Injury Recovery: More Than Rest and Rehab

Vitamin D works alongside calcium to support bone remodeling and repair, which is vital in healing stress fractures and breaks. When vitamin D levels are in the optimal range, people often experience:

• Faster healing from injuries like muscle tears, stress fractures, and tendon strain.
• Less inflammation, which promotes a smoother recovery process. 
• Better pain management, thanks to vitamin D’s anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties.

🛡️ Immunity, Overtraining, and Inflammation

Physical stress—whether from injury, surgery, or intense training—can take a toll on your immune system. Low vitamin D levels have been linked to:

• Higher inflammation
• Weakened Immunity 
• Greater fatigue and delayed recovery

Vitamin D helps regulate your immune response and reduces the inflammatory state that often accompanies overtraining or injury. It won’t replace sleep, hydration, or good nutrition—but it plays a vital supporting role. 

⚠️ Don’t Just Pop a Pill: Get Tested First

After reading through this information, you may be tempted to just add in a vitamin D supplement, but too much can be harmful! Talk to your doctor and get your levels tested to understand whether supplementing with Vitamin D is right for you. 

Common symptoms of Vitamin D deficiency:

• Fatigue
• Muscle and bone pain
• Muscle weakness or cramps
• Mood changes 

Common causes of Vitamin D deficiency:

• Not getting enough vitamin D in your diet
• Not getting enough sunlight
• Your body isn’t absorbing vitamin D properly
• High physical stress or chronic pain

Where Can You Get Vitamin D?

• Sunlight (requirements different for everyone depending on skins tone and location)
• Foods (salmon, egg yolks, fortified dairy products)
• Supplement recommended by your healthcare provider

✅ Final Thoughts

Vitamin D isn’t a magic fix, but it is an important part of the puzzle! Whether your goal is strength, healing or resilience, it’s worth checking your vitamin D levels as an important part of your overall recovery and wellness.

Being ‘healthy’ is more than just avoiding illness or eating fruits and veggies every day. It’s about maintaining balance in your physical, mental and social well-being. While you may begin physical therapy with the goal of reducing pain or healing an injury, PT can also provide significant benefits for your mental health.

It’s not uncommon with chronic pain or physical limitations to experience mental health struggles such as depression, anxiety or sleep disorders. Being restricted by pain or feeling frustrated because you’re unable to participate in the activities you love, limits your stress outlets and takes a toll on your emotional state. When your therapist creates your treatment plan, they consider both the physical and mental aspects of your health.

We know exercise enhances mood, concentration and alertness. However, when you are restricted or injured and can’t do activities you normally do, much less things you enjoy, it’s easy to question what to do safely. The exercises your therapist designs for you are specifically tailored to your body to strengthen your muscles, increase mobility and reduce your pain. Learning how to move your body in a way that promotes healing and builds confidence in performing activities safely, goes a long way for your emotional well-being! Having a supportive team of people dedicated to enhancing your health increases adherence with a plan of care, gives you resources to turn to with questions and cheers you on in the road to recovery. A byproduct of reducing your pain – you’ll experience lower stress levels and emotional relief, leaving you feeling calm and capable.

While the overall goal of PT is to improve your physical function, we are ultimately working to improve your quality of life!  Strengthening your body will strengthen your mind, helping you build confidence, independence, and resilience. Dealing with chronic pain or an injury can be mentally exhausting, but it doesn’t have to control your life.

Move your mind. Mind your movement.

We recently celebrated 15 years of business. What a milestone! Your team at IP is proud and honored to be apart of the health community in Northern Colorado for over a decade…and we couldn’t have done it without YOU!  To show our appreciation, we opened our doors and put our party pants on. There was tacos, yard games, a popcorn machine, IP challenges, prizes and Dr. Ian’s goats!

We are grateful for our community and the ability to help so many on the path to recovery and healing. Thank you for your trusting us with your care, your journey and allowing us to be a part of your stories. Your successes are our greatest rewards.

We look forward to the future with optimism, will continue to embrace innovation, expand our reach and continually uphold a standard of excellence. Cheers to 15 years of healing and cheers to the future of IP!

So, you’ve decided to trade in your slippers for sneakers, but now you find yourself wondering where to start? How to prevent injuries? How to make it enjoyable? Truth is, all you need is a pair of shoes and a little encouragement to get you out the door.

As many of you know, one of our therapists, Case, is an ultra-marathon runner. What is an ultra-marathon runner you may ask? It’s someone crazy enough to run distances longer than a marathon, races that are 50k, 50 miles and even 100 miles long! For Case, running is habitual now, but he had to start somewhere too. His biggest piece of advice for new runners? Try the run/walk interval method.

Start off with a one-minute walk and follow it with a one-minute run. Repeat this off and on for 20-30 minutes, or for 1 mile. Once you’ve got the hang of that, for your next run, increase your run time by a minute, but keep the walking intervals at 1 minute. Continue this pattern while keeping your run time the same. This style of training will improve your endurance and help your body adjust to the new stressors running puts on your body.

Case says the hardest part when you start running is finding a pace that you can sustain for an extended period. You want this pace to be moderate, not a full out sprint. You don’t want to be huffing and puffing, but instead, should be able to hold a conversation. The best way to find this pace is this run/walk method.

The key to improving in running is consistency. Keep showing up, and you’ll be crushing a 5k in no time!

If you are interested in training for a race or just starting to run, talk to Case at your next appointment about techniques, injury prevention and a beginner’s training plan!

Looking to add some color to your meals?  Try tasting the rainbow.  Not skittles, silly! Colorful fruits and vegetables provide rich nutrients that help improve mood, cognition, sleep, and protect you against illness.
You should aim to get 4 servings of vegetables and 5 servings of fruit per day. You can create variety with soups, smoothies, muffins, roasted veggies, etc. The more color on your plate, the better! But what is a serving?

For Fruits:

• 1 medium fruit
• ½ cup of fresh, frozen, or canned fruit
• ¼ cup dried fruit
• ¼ cup fruit juice

For Vegetables:

• 1 cup of raw leafy vegetables
• ½ cup of fresh, frozen, or canned vegetables
• ½ cup of vegetable juice

It’s important to eat the recommended number of servings, but it’s also important to get a variety of fruits and vegetables! Each color of the fruit and veggies provides different important nutrients, like antioxidants. What are antioxidants? They are natural substances that help prevent or delay some types of cell damage.

Green: Rich in cancer-blocking chemicals; help balance hormones and mood
Red: High in an antioxidant that protects against prostate cancer, heart disease, and lung disease
Yellow orange: Contains antioxidants  such as beta-carotene that improve your cardiovascular system
Blue Purple: Contain antioxidants such as anthocyanins that help your heart by reducing the formation of blood clots
White: Contain antioxidants such as quercetin that aid in lung health; onions also provide anti-bacterial/anti-viral properties

Check out our suggestions on how to eat a rainbow with every meal!

Everyone loves snacks. They’re quick, easy to access, and can be downright satisfying. The team at IP always loves a good snack… but not all snacks are created equal. When the weather is cold and midnight seems to come at 5 in the evening, it can be easy to reach for the snacks we have lying around while we wait to see the sun again.

Did you know movement can come in snack sizes too?? Movement snacks can be a great way to break up long periods of sitting; long days at the computer, passing the time while you wait watch your favorite team play, or while you wait for the credits of your favorite show to end before the next episode starts.

We know movement is good for us. It nourishes our joints, it gets our hearts pumping, and it helps us to generally just feel better. Movement snacks don’t need to complicated. In fact, the simpler the better! Accessibility is all part of the equation. We know it’s hard to get moving sometimes, especially if you’re feeling stiff and achey, or just tired.

Things like:

• Air squats
• Planks
• Tandem walking
• Standing on one leg as long as you can
• Jumping jacks
• OR if you’ve been keeping up with our New Years Challenge- a water skier squat!

You can keep it simple, or you can go a little more complex with things like:
• Rotating lateral lunge for some rotational movement
• Dead bugs to get some core engagement
• Or bear crawls for strength and stability.

So the next time you need something to break up some monotony in your day, try a movement snack! And while you’re at it, snap a picture and tag us in it on Instagram. We’ll be rooting for you the whole way!