I have just finished my latest video showing 2 simple tips to help reduce the strain on the neck and shoulders when using a computer. They are very simple, but can a make a world of difference. See how your workstation compares.
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The static back position, also referred to as the 90/90 position is something that I show almost everyone that comes into see me in practice. It is a great postural reset and works for all areas of the back. In this post I will show you how to do it with a few progressions and regressions. Continue reading to see how to do it.
Back pain is a very common problem that a majority of people will face at some point in their lives. The big question is, if I have back pain, what can I do to help fix it? The American College of Physicians recently issued updated their treatment guidelines for acute, sub-acute and chronic lower back pain, side-stepping medication as a first-line treatment and recommending non-drug therapies instead. It is suggested that painkillers should be the last resort. So what are these non-drug therapies they suggest? Continue reading to see what the guidelines suggest.
A majority of people will have an episode of acute back pain at some point in their lives. I see people in this condition regularly in practice. An episode of bad back pain will generally force you to do something about it, hence they go and see a chiropractor, physio or their GP etc. It is very important to get the problem assessed as pain is your body telling you that something is not right. Simply hiding the pain through medication may make it feel better but won’t necessarily fix the problem. In this post I wanted give a few tips on how you can help ease the discomfort at home after it happens and whilst you are going through your treatment program.
Just about every day I see someone in practice who says they bent over or bent down to pick something up and tweaked their back. Correct lifting technique is no just bending your knees and using your legs. Using your legs is vitally important when picking something up off of the ground, but what about those times when getting something out of the boot of the car or off of a chair or out of from an awkward position? Sometimes you are not able to use your legs like you normally would. What do you do in these situations in order to protect your back? Well in this post I will discuss a few ways of lifting safely if you are not able to bend your knees properly. Continue reading to find out.
The simple answer is yes. Research published in the spine journal in 2013 suggests that the health professional you see as a first point of contact can play a role in determining the outcome. The study showed that approximately 43% of workers who saw a surgeon as their first point of contact had surgery within 3 years. In contrast, of those who saw a chiropractor first, only 1.5% ended up in surgery. This is an amazing difference. Continue reading to see the full results and what to make of the study.
According to a new literature review in the January issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, it is becoming more common for children and adolescents to seek medical care for back pain. In fact, it has been said that nearly one in three adolescents report back pain. I have also seen an increase in the number of children presenting with back pain and discomfort in practice over the last few years. There can be a number of causes for back pain in children and sometimes, all of the expensive tests and scans may not be able to find the exact cause of the problem. So what are the common causes for back pain in children and how can we help? Continue reading to find out.
Back pain is a very common problem. Most people will experience some back pain at some point in their lives. A new study out of Sydney has looked at common causes or triggers of acute lower back pain. They looked at 999 people who had had recent episodes of acute lower back pain and asked them to report exposure to 12 physical or psychosocial factors in the 4 days before the onset of back pain. They then created an odds ratio (OR) on the chance of injuring yourself. I am sure you will agree that prevention is better than cure, so knowing what things may trigger an episode makes it easier to try and avoid them. Continue reading to see what they found and what time of the day injuries are more likely to happen.
Recently I did a 2 part blog series on Upper Cross Syndrome. In this series I showed how our poor posture often leads to this head forward, rounded shoulder syndrome which can cause, upper back and neck pain, shoulder injuries, headaches etc. Most people I see in practice have this syndrome to some degree. It is the slouching that we do that causes our shoulders to roll forward leading to forward head carriage and then the symptoms of Upper Cross Syndrome. The second part of the series discussed several ways to help this syndrome. If you want to read the original posts, and try the simple test to see if you have it, you can read them here and here. In this post I wanted to show you a very simple standing or sitting position that can dramatically improve your posture and take the strain off of your upper back and shoulders. Continue reading to find out how to do it.
Hopefully you have read my previous post on two simple tests you can do to see if your poor posture has caused upper crossed syndrome (UCS). If you read it, I bet you were interested in trying the test to see how well you fared. If you did the test and there were signs of UCS, I bet you are wondering what you can do to help it. Well, here is the answer, my 4 steps to help Upper Cross Syndrome. If you haven't read the previous post, click here to do so and try the simple test. Continue reading to find out what you can do to help.
We are always told exercise is good and we need to do it regularly, and I agree with this. However, an important consideration is that the exercises need to be done with the correct technique in order to avoid injury and get the best results. CNN published an article where they interviewed several top physical therapists in America and got them to talk about what exercises are most likely to cause injury. They then discussed the top 10 (you can read the original article here). I have summarized the results and added a few things. It is important to note that some of these exercises can actually be very beneficial if they are done properly. It is also important to realise that just about any exercise done poorly could cause injury. Technique is key. Continue reading to find out what exercises may hurt you.
In the previous post we discussed what an intervertebral disc is and how injuries occur. We also discussed what symptoms you can get if you do have a disc injury. In part 2 of this series, I will look at the diagnosis and treatment options for a disc injury and will also give some ways to help at home. So how is a disc injury diagnosed? Continue reading to find out.
A disc injury is often called lots of things; a slipped disc, a herniated disc, a disc prolapse, a disc protrusion, a disc bulge, degenerative disc etc. Whatever you call it, a disc injury is very common these days. In fact, a large portion of the population actually have disc bulges, but they go unnoticed, as not all disc injuries cause pain. My aim with this 2 part blog series is to firstly describe what a disc injury is and how it occurs. The second post will be how disc injuries can be treated and what you can do at home to help. I have found that the more you know about a problem, the more informed your decision making process can be. This is extremely important with disc injuries as there are a few different treatment options with some of them being quite invasive. Whether you have an injury or not, I hope it makes things a lot clearer for you and gives you some ways to improve your function and hopefully prevent an injury in the future. So what is a disc injury and why do they occur? Continue reading to find out.
I was doing my CPD (Continuing Professional Development) training this week and came across an interesting quote, “your body gets good at what it needs to get good at”. The program I was studying was a mobility program and this quote was based on mobility, but I think it can apply to other areas as well. What does it mean you may ask? From a mobility perspective, your body will adapt to what it needs to. The arrival of the New Year inevitably brings about thoughts of New Year’s Resolutions. One of the main resolutions that you always hear about is starting an exercise program or hitting the gym to get into good shape or lose those holiday kilos that somehow managed to find their way onto your body. A lot of the time, these resolutions are short lived as the program you started is not sustainable, you suffer an injury or you lose interest. Here are my tips for helping get the best results and hopefully avoiding injuries.
I love technology. Anyone that knows me is aware of my love for gadgets and all things new and shiny. Technology can make life easier, I often think what it was like before I had a smart phone and how I couldn’t live without it now. However there is a downside to this technology and our continual use of it. Our bodies are not designed to continually look down at computer screen or mobile phones. I see the effects of this every day in practice. Neck and upper back pain, headaches, lower back problems, all stemming from poor posture. You may have seen an article floating around Facebook and the internet the last week, where the weight of your head changes depending on the angle you are looking at. What Dr Kenneth Hansrai found was very interesting and something we all should be aware of.
I have been practicing chiropractic care for a while now and know the benefits of a chiropractic adjustment. Being a small and relatively young profession, chiropractic care has in the past, lacked the research to back up what we do and the effect it can have on the body. This is definitely changing with numerous research projects helping explain what how chiropractic care works. In fact one of the foremost researchers in chiropractic care, Heidi Haavik, studied at the New Zealand College of Chiropractic (where I studied) and is the head of research at the college. She has some amazing projects on the go and was featured on Seven sharp a few weeks ago talking about the effect of chiropractic care and how it can improve your sex life! Watch it here. I recently came across a research paper looking at the effect of manual therapy in Resting-State Functional Connectivity and how this manual therapy can modulate or affect pain. The results of the research were quite interesting. Continue reading to find out what they found and what it means.
Optimal function of the body generally narrows down to one key point – Balance. If your body is not in balance, you are at risk of injury. One common problem that causes an imbalance, especially in men, is carrying and sitting on your wallet in the back pocket. More often than not these days, wallets tend to be quite bulky with all of the cards we need to carry. So why is sitting on a wallet in your back pocket a bad thing? Continue reading to find out.
The mind is a powerful thing, but can the mind affect your health and recovery from injury? According to several studies, it appears that positive thinking can in fact, affect your health. The Placebo effect is the healing power of positive thinking. The Nocebo effect, on the other hand, is the opposite of this, the power of pessimism or negative thoughts. The way you think can definitely affect your health, how you heal and the outcome of care. If you approach a health care provider for a certain problem with the expectation that it won’t work, then chances are, it won’t work. Continue reading to find out how this happens and how to help.
Neck pain is a very common complaint that I see in practice. The causes of this discomfort can vary dramatically. Some new research suggests that poor breathing patterns may affect how the neck functions and therefore could be a contributing factor for neck pain.
Continue reading to find out what the research revealed and why your breathing technique can affect your neck function. If you are unfortunate enough to develop acute back pain, what do you do first to help ease the discomfort? Do you grab some pain relief? Do you ice it? Do you do some stretches? Or do you go to your chiropractor for an assessment? There are lots of options!
If you are a person who regularly takes paracetamol for back pain, you may not be getting the results you want according to some new research that was published recently in The Lancet. This research was the first large randomised trial to compare the effectiveness of paracetamol with placebo for low back pain, they found that paracetamol is no better than placebo at speeding recovery from acute episodes of lower back pain or improving pain levels, function, sleep or quality of life. The findings question the universal endorsement of paracetamol as the first choice painkiller for low-back pain, say the authors. Continue reading to find out more about the research and a different, natural approach to back pain. It is often said that muscle and strength decline as a function of aging alone. Put simply, this means that as you get older you are naturally going to lose strength and muscle mass and there is not much you can do about it.
A new study by Dr Vonda Wright and her colleagues that can be found at the The Physician and Sports medicine, may counteract this belief. They took detailed measurements of 40 masters athletes between the ages of 40 and 81, and found a surprising lack of age related muscle loss. They suggested that these declines that are usually seen, may signal the effect of chronic disuse rather than muscle aging. Continue reading to see a sample image of their results. It is very interesting. A big emphasis of my work is stability, especially in people with lower back pain or a history of recurring lower back pain. The first step when someone comes to my chiropractic practice, is to assess the area, restore optimal
function and reduce the initial complaint through chiropractic care. Once things are functioning better, the emphasis moves onto why the problem was there in the first place and how we can stop it from coming back. This invariably will include some sort of stability exercises and stretches. There are hundreds of different exercises and workouts out there and what is best for an individual will depend on numerous factors. A good question to ask is, what is the difference between an exercise done seated and standing? I came across some interesting research that I thought I should share. People often think that any pain in the leg, whether it is in the front, back or side, is called 'sciatica'. However, this is not the case. Sciatica is defined as pain or discomfort associated with the sciatic nerve which runs from the lower back, down the back of the legs to the feet. It is estimated that up to 40% of the New Zealand population will experience sciatica at some point in their lives.
To fully understand Sciatica, you first need to know what the sciatic nerve is. The sciatic nerve is the longest nerve in the body and is actually composed of two nerves, the common fibular (or peroneal) nerve and the Tibial nerve. These nerves are originally formed from 5 different nerve roots in the lower lumbar spine and pelvis. These nerves join together then run down the back of the thigh to knee level where they split and one travels down the front of the lower leg and one travels down the back of the lower leg. Lets look a bit deeper and see how sciatica occurs, how you diagnose it and most importantly, how to fix it. Repeated cycles of lumbar hinging (flexing of the lower back) has been shown to be the quickest way to herniate a disc in the lower back. The research shows that the injury to the disc occurs from the inside out. So how does this occur? In order to understand this you first need to know how the intervertebral discs are structured.
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Dr Craig BuscombBringing you news, research and advice on health, wellness, exercise and chiropractic care to help take your health to the next level
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