Published: November 16, 2007 09:07 am         

The message according to Luke is exercise

By Libby Cluett
lcluett@mineralwellsindex.com

Dedicating his life and studies to heart health, exercise physiologist Luke Fanning tells his patients, “Exercise is pretty much the best drug you can get. No other drug can lower cholesterol, help you lose weight, fight depression and lower your blood pressure.”

Fanning works with Palo Pinto County residents of all ages and physical conditions. He routinely works with patients who are “hypertensive, obese, diabetic, are stroke or heart attack victims or people wanting to achieve better health.”

He helps members of Palo Pinto General Hospital’s Rehabilitation and Wellness Center start exercise programs and meet their exercise goals on machines and with weights. A packed fitness center Thursday morning is evidence of his work.

In his weekly routine, Fanning provides PPGH Wellness Center members and hospital employees fitness assessments and evaluation. He also structures individualized fitness programs for each.

One exercise member called him “very helpful” and said that Fanning is skilled at assessing where people are physically and that he helps pace people based on their individual needs and abilities.

Fanning also assists PPGH’s physical and occupational therapists in outpatient and inpatient therapy. Once their doctors release patients from therapy, he guides them on a continued exercise program if they become fitness center members.

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Fanning said he was always active as a child and played baseball, tennis and some football growing up. At Tarleton State University, Fanning discovered a wide variety of intramural sports and played some type of sport “four nights a week,” whether it was racquetball, softball or bowling.

Fanning has continued to bowl on Tuesday nights in Stephenville for eight years trying to challenge himself to improve.

“It’s just you and the lanes. You challenge yourself to try to get better,” he said.

When he began working at the hospital, Fanning put together the PPGH-Mineral Wells softball team.

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Another of his hats is performing industrial medicine screenings for businesses like Perry Equipment, the City of Mineral Wells and PPGH. Fanning pulled out a booklet provided by WorkSTEPS, which he uses as a guide for jobs like paramedic or equipment operator for the city’s street department.

He conducts screenings on people who are considered pre-employment/post-offer. Before an employee officially begins working, Fanning administers a physical fitness test based on things they will be required to do as part of their work.

“We will simulate the stress of what they would be doing every day in their jobs, such as lifting weight with proper body mechanics,” he said.

“They have to lift whatever the job requires,” he said, adding that he takes measurements on the body, like range of motion, flexibility and muscle strength to have a baseline in case of future injury.

Fanning’s industrial medicine evaluation is also intended to be educational.

“The client is also instructed in safe lifting mechanics in order to reduce injury on the job,” he said.

“If they are injured, an employee for a company using WorkSTEPS, has to come back and be reassessed before returning to work. They have to be able to do the entire WorkSTEPS testing process again and be close to the same measurements,” he said.

Fanning said that this protocol protects the company from reinjuring the worker.

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While he devoted his studies and professional experience to exercise, the TSU graduate with a Bachelor of Science degree in exercise and sports studies/fitness management is interested in studying the human heart.

One of his PPGH hats includes assisting with stress tests at the PPGH Heart Center. On an ongoing basis, he supervises cardiac rehabilitation patients and helps them phase into the fitness facility.

“Both of my grandparents had heart attacks. That’s what got me into stress testing and fitness for cardiac rehabilitation,” said Fanning.

At 27, Fanning has reached a point where he wants to further his career by studying the body deeper through ultrasound technology and echocardiography. For these studies, he will move to Alvin, Texas, next semester where he will study for certification in these technologies at Alvin Community College.

“I’ll be leaving this field of the moving body to learn about diagnostics,” explained Fanning.

“There are only three [accredited programs] in Texas that offered what I wanted,” he said, adding that he chose ACC for several reasons, mainly because “the program director worked with me the best.”

He added that bonuses include the program, called Diagnostic Cardiovascular Sonography, starts earliest, the program has a new building and the school, near Houston, sends students to 30 clinical sites around the city.

In the first of two branches of the program, Fanning will learn about the vascular system – veins and arteries – through sonography, or ultrasound. He will be one of five students starting the program in Vascular Technology next semester.

He said he observed Kathy Brown, Registered Vascular Technologist, performing the procedure at PPGH, which is how he discovered he wanted to go into this field.

“She was extremely helpful in my deciding whether I wanted to do this field of study or not.”

In the second branch of the program, Fanning said he will learn echocardiography, which allows medical professionals to visualize many of the structures of the heart as it beats through a Doppler ultrasound of the heart.

The echocardiography machine converts these impulses into moving pictures of the heart.

Fanning said that, with guidance, he practiced with an echocardiogram on his girlfriend Eileen Stock, a doctoral student in statistics at Baylor University in Waco.

“You can see all the valves, ventricles, all the structures of the heart as it beats. You can visualize how the blood is flowing through the heart,” he explained.

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Fanning expects to have a leg up on others in his new field of study because he has helped patients build their hearts into stronger muscles.

He said that exercise physiology gives him a strong fundamental knowledge of the way the body works and he said it offers a strong backbone for further education.

“I think that because I have already had patient interaction, along with understanding the way the body works through exercise, this will help tie things together,” he said.

“A lot of tests require someone to be a people-person because of the close proximity of the tester to the patient. I’ve already experienced that here at PPGH through assisting with therapy and helping fitness members,” said Fanning, adding that this will help him communicate with future patients being tested.