Category Archives: Intro

Chiropractic is safe for elderly

A 2014 study in the prestigious journal Spine found that seniors (66 and over)  that received chiropractic care had a 76% lower rate of injury within seven days of treatment when compared to the subjects that went to their GP, for a neuromusculoskeletal complaint. That’s a big difference!

Chiropractic is safe for all ages

Chiropractic is safe for all ages

Did you know? The risks of adverse reaction to painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs increases in the elderly. Advise you parents and grandparents that chiropractic is safe for them and doesn’t have the risks of serious side effects like drugs do.

Chiropractic – Safe, Gentle, Effective for All Ages

 

iPad Tips: Avoiding Neck, Back and Hand Pain

Mind the lap

Mind the Lap

Having the tablet on your lap means you really have to drop your head forward. This massively increases the load of all the structures in the neck. If you normally have a good posture you will notice discomfort and then pain within minutes of adopting this position. If you can do this for extended periods there is a good chance that you have been doing this type of activity for a while and that your body has already started to adapt. “Yay!” I hear you say. Unfortunately, this is not good, as these adaptations are actually the start of deformations in the neck muscles, discs and bones. This will progress to wear and tear arthritis.

Lift the tablet off your lap, if at all possible, and onto a table. This will immediately decrease the load on your neck and upper back.

Shift and move, wriggle and shuffle

In each of your joints are little position and movement sensors called mechanoreceptors. They tell the brain where each joint is in space and how it is moving. The highest density of these little sensors are in the spine (and within the spine the neck has the most out of any area in the body!). When you adopt a posture or sitting position, after a while you’ll get sensations telling you to move. Listen to these “voices”: shuffle, shift, fidget and move.

It’s when we are engrossed in a task and ignore these healthy signals that we start doing damage. This “soft trauma” is a major cause of visits to my chiropractic clinic.

If you aren’t that “body aware” then a general rule is to shift your position every 15 minutes.

Use a stand

Many tablet cases or covers have built in stands. Ideally these should have a few settings to allow for multiple angles so you can adjust for table height and seat set up. Propping the tablet up decreases the “looking down” posture and can also help with glare.

Use a keyboard

Tablets were designed for multi-media interaction not for word processing. If you’ve ever tried to do lots of typing on an iPad you will know what I’m talking about. The keypad is small and wrists and fingers are put in awkward positions when tapping the screen. The device also has to be quite flat, again, making you look down. I quickly realised that using my iPad for even short letters or reports was not going to work. I bought a Bluetooth keyboard (for about £40) which allowed me to: 1) prop the iPad up to improve my neck angle and 2) type without my fingers and wrists getting sore and tired. Some tablets have an add-on Keyboard-Stand that makes the device feel more like a small laptop and sorts out the 2 above problems, in one.

Laptop Typewriter

I hope these tips help you decrease your aches and pains. They will certainly help your overall spinal health.

If you have any questions or comments please use the boxes bellow.

Thanks

Tim Wood    (Doctor of Chiropractic & Wellness Physiologist)

“Flip Flops” – Fun in the Sun but not for your Feet

By Emma Manaton

The summer is well upon us which means good weather (hopefully), BBQ’s, holidays and a chance to release our toes from the imprisonment of footwear of the winter months!

But are flip flops best thing for our feet?

Flip Flops Feel Fun Fail your Feet

Flip Flops Feel Fun but Fail your Feet

Although lovely to feel our feet are free, this can also lead to a few problems. Flips flops are generally made from thin flat plastic with no additional heel or arch support. Often requiring you to grip with your toes to keep the flip flop on your foot. This is a drastic change from the footwear you have been wearing all winter. This can cause added stress and excessive motion to your foot, when it’s used to being much more supported. This can give you problems like calf tightness, heel or Achilles pain, plantar fasciitis (sole of foot) and shin pain.

Now I’m not saying NEVER wear your flip flops and keep your toes locked up forever. By all means set your toes free but if your going for a walk or know you will be walking a lot that day. Think about wearing more supportive footwear (think trainers or more comfy sandals with a strap at the back) and save yourself an injury!

If you are suffering from any of these, maybe it’s time to address your footwear and if it still persists give us a call and get checked out?

Mainstream medical approach to Low Back Pain = Placebo

A study just published in the prestigious Lancet journal: Efficacy of paracetamol for acute low-back pain: a double-blind, randomised controlled trial shows that the standard medical approach for Low Back pain is no better than a sugar pill.

Surprised?

Not really.

The vast majority of back pain is mechanical in nature. That is, faulty vertebral alignment and joint movement cause injury to structures in and around the vertebra (muscles, discs, capsule, cartilage, ligament, tendon and nerve).

So, how in the name of all things logical will a there be a chemical solution to a mechanical problem?

Yes, drugs may interfere with the perception and transmission of pain signals and this may diminish pain for a while or make it bearable. But it will NEVER speed up or aid the healing process. At the very best the body does all it can to heal up around the faulty system, this still leaves the original problem and you are still vulnerable to the same injury. More likely, you continue to have repeated minor injuries, stay in low grade back pain until something completely fails and you become a surgical candidate.

This is not new information. Medical doctors have chosen to ignore this and continued to prescribe a nonsensical approach. That is: taking away the pain temporarily fixes the problem. Would taking the batteries out of a fire alarm take away the fire? Of course not, that’s ridiculous! But this is exactly what pain killers like paracetamol do, dull your alarm system.

It may be easy to swallow but the evidence isn't

It may be easy to swallow but the evidence isn’t

Why not choose an approach that addresses the mechanical problem and allows the body to heal up around an aligned, well functioning joint? Chiropractors have been serving millions of people worldwide with this kind of approach – for over 100 years – without drugs and surgery! It’s your health and your choice.

(If you know someone who regularly takes painkillers like paracetamol, please send them this article, there are other options)