Laura Lopez Hernandez | MEND-CO
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Laura completed her Masters in Physiotherapy at Queen’ s University after pursuing an Honours Bachelors of Science at the University of Toronto.
Her passion and enthusiasm for Physiotherapy come from her background playing baseball, participating in distance running, kickboxing and yoga. She has worked with elite athletes from the Toronto Argos football team to medalists of the 2020 Pan Am fencing championship as well as competitive hockey, rowing, tennis and soccer players. She has provided medical coverage in gymnastics and volleyball games. She has worked in rehabilitating general neck/low back pain, overuse non-athletic injuries, post-fractures and surgical conditions through her work in Orthopedics at Sunnybrook Health Sciences.
In her current practice, she sees clients mainly for orthopedic conditions (shoulder, ankle, knee, low back pain) in addition to TMJ (jaw) and vestibular rehab. She also practiced as a Physiotherapist at the Goodhope EDS clinic at Toronto General for 4 years where she built the current EDS program from scratch and helped hundreds of patients with Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome in a clinical and research capacity. She has published in top journals “Physical Therapy”, “Frontiers in Rehabilitation Sciences”, “Orphanet Journal Rare Diseases”.
We believe treatment should focus on correcting dysfunctional movement patterns and addressing the root causes responsible for the symptoms. We use the most current evidence through a combination of neuro-functional movement screening, electroacupuncture, manual therapy and customized exercise prescription.
1- Help you restore functional/normal joint mechanics by addressing joint restrictions and local muscle tone. Stiff joints or muscle tension/guarding can interfere with optimal muscle firing and the activation of neighboring muscles as well
2- Help improve sensory (afferent) input to inhibited/weak areas to optimize movement (motor) output eg. activation, strength, range of motion, timing/coordination. This can be achieved through electroacupuncture for example.
3- Observe your movement patterns and prescribe customized exercises to help muscles firing together to wire together. In other words, through repetition of high quality functional exercises, we will reinforce these brain connections.
4- Provide you with a comprehensive treatment. Treatment should not be limited to the areas where you feel your symptoms if you are looking for optimal recovery.