Gardening needn’t be a pain in the neck … or the back!

  As well as being a keen gardener myself since childhood, I have been treating gardening injuries for over twenty years… and I have never yet told anyone to stop gardening. But you can make life a lot easier for yourself, particularly at this time of the year when the emphasis lies on tidying up and getting things ready for the winter. So here are our team’s top tips for pain free Autumn gardening:



 

First up LOOK AT WHAT YOU'RE USING

·   Buy light aluminium tools
·   A fist and arm support can be added to handles to help lifting
·   Ensure the handles of rakes and brooms are long enough for you not to have to bend at the     waist and to keep your back straight when working
·   Use a long handled dustpan and brush to avoid bending
·   Keep the cutting edge of tools SHARP – and that includes spades, hoes and bulb planters


 

Secondly, THINK before you start side-on activities such as RAKING or SWEEPING

·    Use a light aluminium rake or broom
·    Do some gentle warm up stretches
·    Work in short bursts
·    Keep hips and shoulders moving towards the work
·    Do not twist your back
·    Avoid bending at the waist by stepping forward with one foot and bending slightly at the knee, allowing your upper body to stay upright in a partial lunge 

 AND

·    Ask yourself whether you have to rake at all? 










Whereas leaf mould is a fantastic resource for any gardener, leaves also make great compost, particularly when mixed with grass clipping so why not collect leaves in the grass box of your lawn mower?

 If you haven’t got a compost heap, simply leave the grass box off your mower and allow the mower to chop up the leaves. Worms will soon pull them underground and the leaves will add nutrients to your lawn … but remember mowers can be bad for your back too – so stand directly behind your mower handle with a straight back and hands resting evenly on the handles. 

WHEELBARROWS can be a gardeners best friend IF THEY’RE USED CORRECTLY

·    To avoid hand, back and arm strain do not overload wheelbarrows
·    Stack evenly with the heaviest load over the wheel
·    Keep your back straight while lifting and pushing
·    Rather than lift heavy objects in and out of a wheelbarrow, use a sack barrow instead.

 

FINALLY, if things do go wrong, remember help is only a phone call away at our friendly expert treatment centres. 

 

The South-West is a Great Place to Live … Particularly if you’re a Chiropractor

I remember the first time a came to Somerset I was impressed by the rolling landscape (at the time I lived in Norfolk!) and just how green everything was (three times more rainfall that Norfolk!!).

I moved here twenty years ago and it has been a truly wonderful place to raise a family … but until the British Chiropractic Association published new research into the state of the Nation’s backs, I

had no idea as to the extent to which the South-West topped league tables for suffering in this regard – and what a good place it was to work in restoring backs to normal function.

More people suffer from back pain in the South-West than in any other part of Great Britain – amost half (47%) of the people surveyed reported that they were currently suffering from back pain, compared with just 40% in the South-East.

And the life style in the region appears to be largely responsible for the epidemic: whereas the top trigger – lifting or carrying heavy objects – afflicts fewer than half of London sufferers, it causes pain for 60% of those in the South-West, more than any other part of the UK.

And it’s a similar picture for the second most common cause, prolonged sitting with just over a third of Londoners adversely affected compared with over half of South-Westerners (52%) – once again topping the Nation’s league tables.

So our local population is more likely to need a chiropractor than anywhere else in the country … good news for us at least and would explain why, in the last 20 years, we have expanded from a single clinic with one chiropractor to a chain of clinics with up to half a dozen chiropractors treating over 500 patients every week.

But don’t despair – there’s plenty you can do to help yourself – first of all let’s deal with those top two triggers for back pain:

• Lifting and carrying: Remember to bend from the knees and not the waist when lifting heavy items – you should look like a downhill skier and not a ski jumper. Face in the direction of movement, and take your time. Hold the object as close to your body as possible, and where you can avoid carrying objects which are too heavy to manage alone, ask for help or use the necessary
equipment.
      

• Take a break: When sitting for long periods of time, ensure you stand up and move around every 30 minutes. When at work, also make sure your desk is set up to support a comfortable position. This is different for everyone so if you don’t feel comfortable in your current set up, try altering the height of your chair or screen.

And, if you want to get proactive, the British Chiropractic Association has created a programme of 3-minute exercises, Straighten Up UK, which can be easily slotted in to your daily schedule to help prevent back pain by promoting movement, balance, strength and flexibility in the spine.

If, however, you have pain for more than a few days you should seek professional help. 

All our chiropractors are university educated to Masters level and belong to the Royal College of Chiropractors, who set standards of excellence for management of low back pain. 

So, if you want professional help you to get moving again without pain, help is just a phone call away on 01935 423138 or you can find all our clinics’ contact details at http://www.yeovilchiropractic.co.uk

So how many bones ARE there in a human foot?

Those of you who participated in our Facebook teaser may wonder why totting up the number of bones in the picture didn't automatically equate to a correct answer (26).

If you open a basic anatomy textbook (or Google the question 'how many bones are there in the human foot' then this is, indeed, the answer you are likely to get:

• Seven tarsal bones (Medial, intermediate and lateral cuneiforms; cuboid, talus, navicular, and calcaneus).
• Five metatarsals
• Fourteen palanges – the big toe only has two, the other toes have three (actually to an embryologist, they all have three: the medial cuneiform starts life as a metatarsal; the navicular, which forms the keystone of the longitudinal arch, as a cuneiform and the metatarsal in actually an elongated proximal phalanx).

Total 26.


However …

This ignores the fact that othopaedists will also include the fibula and tibia which are functionally part of the foot, being connected to it by the medial and lateral collateral ligaments – the ones you sprain when you twist your angle.

So that's 28.



Or the fact that the majority of adults have two additional sesamoid bones underneath their big toe, like miniature kneecaps.

So that's 30.




However …

These bones can commonly be bipartate, that is formed in two parts – so that makes 31 … or 32 – and other bones can also be formed in two parts.




However …

There are also dozens of of other, less common, anatomical variants including up to twenty other sesamoid bones, of which the most common is the os trigonum followed by other sesamoidal toe bones.

However …

You can also have extra bones – particularly toes (Anne Boleyn famously has six toes and fingers – and a supernumerary nipple – which helped fuel the assertion she was a witch). Extra toes can form in several ways, with a variety of extra bones forming.




And finally …


You are actually born with just 22 bones in your foot. Several of the tarsal bones are still just cartilage  at birth that gradually develop into bone as you grow over the first decade or so of life. So children have fewer bones initially; however, some bones have more that one ossification centre, which makes it appear that, at some points in time, they have more than 26 bones … or 30 bones … or (my favourite answer), "lots".

Thanks to all who took part.

Which garden tool can stop back pain in the veg garden and the flower bed?

Have you got a blooming bad back?

Summer is finally on the horizon: the soil is warming, the cold frame is filling, the plants are hardening off – the question is how are you going to get them in the ground without it hurting?

The tradition method of squatting or bending down and scraping a planting hole with a trowel falls, for many people, into the category of ‘no pain, no gain’. An afternoon of trowel use hurts your wrist and elbows; squatting kills your knees and bending does your back in … but there is a way to fill your borders with flowers and your beds with vegetables without it costing you several visits to a chiropractor.

If you have resisted the temptation to fill every square inch of soil with seedlings the moment Easter has passed, then not only are you going to avoid frosts but your plants are much less likely to get checked by an inclement May – instead of planting out young, tender plants into the soil, pot them on into three-inch pots and harden them off for a couple of weeks.

Not only will you have healthier plants that flower earlier, but this will also enable you to employ a cunning, pain-free method of planting. A three-inch pot pretty much perfectly fills the plug-hole from a bulb planter, and if you invest in a long-handled planter with a foot bar, then it takes very little effort and no bending or digging to make a series of holes into which you can simply drop your mature plants, which then only need to be heeled in.

Another tip is to make sure you keep an edge on the bulb planter – it’s a cutting tool and will go into soil with far less effort if it’s sharp and consider dividing up your planting into twenty-minute sessions: there are plenty of other jobs to be getting on with in between planting out and frequent changes of activity help to avoid physical stress and strain.

It won’t work for absolutely every single plant, but it can be used for everything from runner beans and sweet corn to flowering annuals and box cuttings – and afterwards, you’ll be smiling rather than grimacing!

What does a chiropractor do … on a Wednesday

Normally Wednesday is the one working day when I spend the whole day in the same clinic … which means I actually get a lunch hour – or more accurately 56 minutes in which to meet with my practice manager, make phone calls, write emails and do the 1001 other things associated with running four clinics and 4 minutes to wolf down a sandwich.

On some Wednesdays I run a specialist headache clinic with two colleagues – an orthodontist (Mark Brickley) and a psychotherapist (Judith O’Hagan) – in which we get to grips with the complicated sort of problems that cause seemingly intractable head and face pain, but which will often respond to a combined approach in cases where no one individual could hope to be effective (http://www.theheadacheclinic.co.uk/index.html). 

Many headaches and migraines come from musculo-skeletal structures (joints, nerves, muscles and ligaments) but if someone is tense, stressed, depressed, clenching their teeth, has an unbalanced occlusion or forward head posture, then they can often undo all a chiropractor is trying to correct within hours … or sometimes even minutes. That’s when identifying the component parts of the problem then treating the mind, balancing the occlusion and preventing the clenching allows the adjustments and exercises prescribed by the chiropractor to start working. Headache clinic days are always great days because you get to work with fascinating people on challenging and interesting patients – I also get to sit down to eat lunch before we start, although this brief period of relaxation is somewhat countered by having to fit three clinics into one day.

This week however, I was not in clinic at all on Wednesday.

Like all regulated healthcare professionals, chiropractors have to complete a minimum amount (30 hours) of continuing professional development every year in order to maintain their professional registration. Even if we didn’t, I would still go to the AGM of the Royal College of Chiropractors … in fact I have been to every AGM since the very first in 1997 (bar last year’s when it was oversubscribed and I couldn’t get a place … so popular and important have they become).

The Royal College of Chiropractors (http://rcc-uk.org) is – and will probably remain – the most important thing that has happened to chiropractic this century.  Much like the passing of the Chiropractors’ Act in 1994, which paved the way to statutory regulation, the setting of minimum educational standards, a Code of Practice and protection of title (when I graduated, anyone could style themselves a chiropractor), the granting of a Royal Charter to the College of Chiropractors in 2012 was a pivotal moment … I don’t think may people yet recognise how pivotal.

For the first time, the chiropractic profession has recognised specialists developing their post-graduate skills though Faculties (of Pregnancy & Paediatrics, Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation, Sports & Exercise, Animal Chiropractic and my own area of specialism, Pain).  The AGM always kicks off with the Faculty AGM’s … this year’s Pain Faculty was taken up for the most part with development, as befits the College’s youngest faculty.  

The discussions were wide-ranging: the new NICE Guidelines for Low Back Pain & Sciatica (https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/NG59) again include spinal manipulative therapy and exercise and amongst the few therapies that actually work (good news for chiropractors and osteopaths); however, acupuncture is no longer included – although it will, I hasten to add, continue to be offered as part of our treatment packages despite this. 

I pointed out to the meeting that the entire basis for the decision was fundamentally flawed: acupuncture has many different schools with very different approaches (we use medical acupuncture – also known as ‘dry-needling’ – to treat myofascial pain syndromes) and low back pain and sciatica are not diseases but symptoms which have many different causes, some of which will respond and some of which may not. (http://docmartin99.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/sciatica-is-not-only-condition-thats.html)

What can be said with certainty is that myofascial pain syndromes are an invariable part of almost all low back pain, whatever its cause, and there is abundant evidence that dry-needling is highly effective in treating the trigger points responsible for the pain. The Guidelines therefore demonstrate a failure of joined up thinking … so I got volunteered to write an article for the College’s journal explaining this in scientific terms.

The Faculty also needed a Secretary – and as I was going to clearly be doing some writing anyway … I got volunteered for that too.

And I though I’d got better at saying ‘no’!

The afternoon’s programme comprised the President’s Lecture, delivered by Dr Sarah Goldingay  (http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/drama/staff/goldingay/) – always good to hear from the great and the good outside of the profession – and then presentations from researchers being funded by the College … it’s nice when you listen to old friends speaking and think of them as ‘my ex-squash partner', ‘my MPhil supervisor’ or ‘someone I used to teach’, rather than Professor this or Dr that.

It also made me realise how cutting edge much of what chiropractic is now doing can be – and how it contrasts with some elements of the profession (mostly imports from countries which ought to know better but apparently don’t) who regard the General Chiropractic Council as a nuisance and want to go on delivering care based on benefit to their bank balance using protocols based on 19th century metaphysics.  

I recall an old dentist telling me many years ago when I was still at College that it took dentistry 50 years to move from being an unregulated profession to being fully respectable … we’ve only had 16 years but at least  (unlike the dentists) we have our own Royal College setting standards to which increasing numbers of chiropractors aspire. 

I for one have reached the stage where my most cherished post-nominals (those long list of letters that professional people put after their name to show how professional they actually are) are the four letters ‘FRCC’ (actually I can put these twice because I am both an ordinary Fellow and a Fellow of the Faculty of Pain, but that would be showing off). 

This is for the simple reason that all my other degrees and qualifications are what has allowed me to become a Fellow of the College – and the College stands for the quality, rigour and clinical governance that is, I hope, inherent in our clinics’ daily treatment of patients.

Christmas Shopping Needn’t Be A Pain In The Neck … Or Any Other Part Of Your Body!

Every New Year, our clinics see dozens of new and existing patients whose Christmases have been ruined by musculoskeletal pain, most of which could have been prevented – it isn't just a pain in the neck, we see backs, shoulders, knees, hips and a host of other problems at this time of the year.

There are a number of factors that lead to the upsurge in cases during December – starting with the dreaded Christmas shopping – a phrase that we all know can sometimes mean different things to different genders. 

Everybody is familiar with the stereotypes: women make multiple forays into town to accumulate gifts for children, uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews breaking only for regular cappuccinos; blokes stick their head in the sand whilst getting privately stressed and grumpy, then rely on a mad dash sometime late on Christmas Eve.

There is, of course, a compromise to be struck: loath though I am to lift a finger towards Christmas until Advent is upon us, if I see a gift that fits the bill perfectly, I don’t let the fact that it’s still only November prevent me from buying it … and that’s our first tip to avoid injury: buying in smaller quantities prevents overloading muscles, joints and ligaments.

If, however, you are going in for a major shop then it’s a good time to forget about those 10,000 steps a day and park as close as you can to the shops and make regular trips back to the car to drop off bags before they become too heavy or awkward.

A couple of breaks for a sit-down and a warming, re-hydrating cuppa can also help take the strain off shopping-weary backs –as far as your spine and pelvis are concerned, there is a huge difference between walking at a constant regular cadence, and shuffling through the start-stop of shops: so start with a plan rather than wandering aimlessly, it will mean less time on your feet and less strain on your joints … tempting though it is to search out the best bargains, looking at the same item in half a dozen different stores adds mileage and any savings need to be offset again extra parking time… and a visit to a chiropractor if you’ve overdone it!  Five minutes preparation before you leave the house can also be worth a ton of cure:

•   Wear comfortable, well fitting, shoes.

      – ‘Air soles’ help take strain off backs as well as feet whilst you’re pounding the pavements.

•   Don’t bring any unnecessary things with you before you start shopping

      – You’ll have plenty to carry, so start light.

•   Think about how you’re going to transport stuff.

      – Can you use a backpack? http://tiny.cc/2ybcpy

      – A bag on wheels can be a good idea… but push it, don’t pull.

      – Carry shopping bags equally on both sides so you’re balanced.

      – If it’s heavy, can you get it delivered?

•   Mind your posture!

  – Don’t let your shoulders slump: walk tall with your shoulders back.

• If something does go wrong… 

   – We have six chiropractors ready to spring into action

   – We are always happy to see someone before anything major goes 

        wrong, so why not get a winter check-up – an ounce of

        prevention can be worth a ton of cure!
        http://www.yeovilchiropractic.co.uk