FF 13: ‘Movement makes the brain’ with Anna Campbell

Flourishing Families

Dorte Bladt discusses movement and disabilities with exercise physiologist, Anna Campbell.
Intro: Flourishing Families with Dorte Bladt, the Switched-On Kids chiropractor and her passionate friends sharing the secret of inspiring wellness to help your families thrive.
Dorte Bladt: I’d like to welcome Anna Campbell from HealtheCo to our podcast this morning. Anna, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Anna Campbell: Hi Dorte and thank you for having me and thank you, everyone, for listening. I’m an exercise physiologist (EP) and I run a business called HealtheCo who specialises in pediatric disability. Also, we do see clients who have musculoskeletal conditions and other chronic conditions but 99.8% of our portfolio are kids with disabilities.
Dorte Bladt: Excellent. So tell me about – what is an exercise physiologist compared to a personal trainer?
Anna Campbell: We get asked that a lot, actually. Often the question is “what’s the difference between an exercise physiologist as compared to a physio or a personal trainer?” So, there are some similarities but there’s also a vast difference in what we do. Exercise physiologists prescribe specific movements for medicine. So we don’t generally diagnose injuries. We leave that usually up to the physiotherapists and doctors.
You do sometimes find an exercise physiologist out training people in gyms and in football teams and things like that, but most of the time, we spend our time in the middle, working with people with chronic conditions, so for me, I specialise in the disability area but there are lots of exercise physiologists who may specialise in oncology, diabetes, arthritis.
Dorte Bladt: So when you mention those, do you mean exercise physiologists may work for example with someone following surgery for breast cancer who may have trouble moving their arm. Is that what you mean?
Anna Campbell: Absolutely. Yes. So, exercise – the more they study it, the more they realise if it could be put into a pill, every single person on the planet would be taking it and every single doctor would be prescribing it and, basically, the government would be fully subsidising it.
Dorte Bladt: However, there’s no money in it so…
Anna Campbell: Exactly. So exercise is, fortunately for us, finding its way into so many treatment modalities such as a female who may be suffering from breast cancer. The exercise can not only help with the outcomes of the chemotherapy but it can also help that person feel better throughout the chemotherapy whilst also treating side effects of the chemotherapy such as oedema or swelling, lack of movement through the body, pain in the body, all those types of things.
Dorte Bladt: So that’s obviously not your chosen field?
Anna Campbell: No. It’s not my specialty. I certainly have an interest in it and follow, I guess, all of the research that’s coming out in those areas but, fortunately, I found myself in a very specific area which keeps me really busy in the paediatrics space.
Dorte Bladt: How did you end up there?
Anna Campbell: Interesting story. So we’re going back to 2002 when I graduated university. I was probably not one of the first exercise physiologists but I was one of the few that came out of the first round of the university degree. I’m showing my age now. Nobody really knew what exercise physiologists wer...