Chart Clinic Back Care Tips - Newsletter December 2013

Seasons Greetings From All Of Us At Chart Clinic

We Wish You All A Very Merry Christmas And A Happy And Healthy New Year!

Please enjoy our Christmas Newsletter with some healthy ‘backs and bone’ tips amongst other useful lifestyle advice…

Best wishes, The Chart Clinic Team

Although this is quite a funny picture, most of the above observations can actually be applied to the complaints that we see in our day to day practice. So what are the implications of the above mentioned annotations for good old Saint Nick?

Read on to see what is wrong with the way he goes about his business...

Does a whole years work in one night…

How does he do it? Santa on his sleigh with Rudolph and Co, delivering presents and gifts to all the children around the world in one night?! A stressful job if you ask me!

How many of you work long hours, face stressful jobs or have to meet tough deadlines? You may find that this causes you some stress. Sometimes this stress can manifest in physical symptoms that affect your muscles and joints. This may be headaches, back, neck or shoulder pain and tension.

Christmas can be a stressful time on top of a hectic lifestyle. How do you manage your stress and deal with it? There are lots of techniques and self help resources online to help combat stress and aid relaxation, for example Mood juice has some really useful sections on stress http://www.moodjuice.scot.nhs.uk/stress.asp.

We highly recommend our patients to our trusted colleague, emotional health consultant Wendy Fry at Be Positive. Wendy offers a range of really helpful approaches including Life Coaching, NLP, Hypnotherapy and EFT. Wendy is excellent at helping people with stress and all other emotional health challenges. Wendy provides highly professional and very relaxing sessions that will help you to work toward solutions and form an action plan for the future. This can help you to overcome any obstacles that you may face in day to day life and ease your stresses away – you can find her website link on our Partners page http://chartclinic.co.uk/partners.htm

What can we do? – We regularly help our patients manage some of these physical symptoms with Osteopathic or Sports Massage treatment, to help unwind tight, knotted muscles or, gently release stiff joints in the neck that can cause headaches.

Carries a heavy sack and lots of boxes…

Lifting heavy loads with poor posture puts you at risk of injury, most commonly in the back. If you are rushing or not taking care to lift properly, this increases your risk.

With any lifting, plan what you are going to do, do you need an extra pair of hands? Is your route to carry the load clear and free of obstacles? Lift properly; Position yourself directly above the load with you legs staggered either side either in a squat or lunge position, keeping your back upright and straight, bend your hips and knees to get lower. Bring the load close to your body and lift up from your legs.  Avoid twisting or bending your back and if you need to change your position move your feet  and not just your spine.

Is constantly bending and straining…

The highest incidence of back injuries we see come from bending and straining, for example patients often report– “I was twisting into the car with my back bent lifting out my child/shopping and I felt  my back go” or “I was bending down to pick up a sack of damp leaves in the garden and as I twisted to put them in the wheel barrow I felt something painful and a click in my back” or “I was sitting in my chair in the office, bent down and twisted to pick up my hand bag and my low back went”.

All of the above are illustrations of what we refer to as, mechanisms of injury, involving lifting a load with temporary maintenance of a poor posture – a high risk activity, especially for your lower back. Bending and straining especially when seated, places a huge amount of pressure on your spine and particularly the intervertebral discs, which if stressed too much, may bulge or prolapse giving you a ‘slipped disc’.

Bending is often the most convenient way to get down to the floor to pick up something, but it is not the most economical for your back. Look at a young infant or toddler; they will always squat down, bending through their hips and knees to pick something up. They also sit with their back totally straight – where did we lose this ability over the years? It is simply just a bad habit we have developed. Use the postural information in the last section to ensure you are lifting properly, bending your hips and knees to get down and not just your back – even if you are just picking up something as light as a dropped pen!

Is definitely overweight…

Why is Father Christmas always pictured having a big belly? Well as a child I always left a couple of mince pies, a beer and not forgetting a carrot for Rudolph, multiply that by a few billion children doing the same thing… well thinking about it, Santa isn’t doing too badly with his figure considering!

In all seriousness, we all know gaining a few extra pounds over the Christmas period is often an inevitable consequence of the seasonal indulgences. We are not dieticians at Chart Clinic, but what we do know is there is a positive correlation between being overweight and an increased incidence of back pain, and injury to other weight bearing joints i.e. the knees, hips, ankles and feet.

So, with any type of aches and pains, if you are leading a sedentary lifestyle, kick start your metabolism with some exercise. This will not only help you shed a few pounds but also improve your general musculoskeletal health.

Has to squeeze down narrow chimneys…

There is a good reason why in Victorian ages children were sent up the chimneys to give them a sweep. Now things have advanced and aside from Santa using a little magic I am sure that squeezing down chimneys does not apply to the general population. However if you are a plumber or electrician, or are doing some home DIY, you probably have to squeeze in some tight and awkward spaces yourself. Sometimes things are stored away in a corner that is awkward to get into. Unless you are a circus contortionist you are probably going to struggle with this type of activity, so take care and don’t push yourself too hard. Get some help if needed to lift or pull anything heavy and think about your posture, if it feels awkward in all likelihood it’s not great for your back so proceed with caution.

Eats an unbalanced diet…

We all know we should eat 5-a-day of fruit and veg and drink 2 litres of water a everyday, but for many the reality is we are eating too much convenience food and drinking too many teas and coffees, this is the tough act that we have to follow in order to achieve a balanced diet. Santa is clearly eating too many of the wrong things and rushing them down on the go, another consequence of hectic modern day living that many of us are presented with.

It is very important to eat the right things as well as getting some support from nutritional supplements, such as a good quality multi-vitamin, as they can make a massive difference.

At Chart Clinic we love to support local businesses and we are very lucky to have a fantastic, independent nutrition store in Reigate. They stock a vast range of nutritional supplements, organic food products and more, where you can go to get good, sound, nutritional advice that can really help make a difference.

“Food is the most important source of nutrients.” says Kate Segal of Inside Out Health, Reigate. “However much of the food we eat these days has travelled long distances, sat on shop shelves for days under harsh lights which can lead to nutrient levels being depleted. Months may elapse between harvesting and eating. Food may also be picked before it has reached its full nutrient potential and the soil may also be depleted of nutrient levels due to intensive farming. A multi vitamin and mineral can cover the bases as a support to a healthy diet.”

For more information and to read some really great, informative newsletters visit the Inside Out Health Stores Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/chartclinic#!/IOHUK

Santa’s sleigh, does it have a lumbar support?

Well I have never seen a sleigh with one! If you are not familiar with the term lumbar support, it simply refers to a bolster or pad to support your Lumbar spine - the 5 vertebrae between the bottom or your ribs and top of your sacrum and coccyx that forms your lower back.

An adjustable lumbar support is available in some cars and office chairs and is useful to help maintain the natural curvature of your lower back, boosting support and aiding your spines correct shape for optimum shock absorbency. Maintaining this natural curve in your lower back improves your sitting posture and prevents excessive wear and tear to the discs in between the bones of your spine.

You can create a lumbar support very easily by rolling up a bath towel into a cylindrical roll and placing this in the small of your lower back between you and the back rest. You may have to adjust this to get comfortable and re-roll the towel to keep its support through the day. More importantly if you are seated for a long period of time, be it at a desk or in a car driving, take a regular hourly break, get up out of your seat and move about to get the heart pumping and stretch any areas of your body that feel tight.

 

Here’s to a pain free Christmas and a healthy new year!