What should you give your body for Christmas?

You’ve ordered the turkey, hung the stockings and wrapped the presents. Chances are you’re either feeling footsore or your neck is stiff; your back may be giving out alarming twinges as you decorate the tree or your shoulders can’t reach to hang the mistletoe; your knees might be making alarming sounds as you squat down to put warm ham in the oven or the sciatica could be protesting at sitting through the Christmas Downton Abbey special.

At any one time, a third of us are suffering from musculoskeletal pain – so what could you consider putting under the tree to help alleviate that aches and pains that are waiting for you in 2016?  Here are our top tips for healing and pampering those painful problems.

•   Do you need a new mattress?

The average lifespan of a mattress is about seven years, even with regular turning, though a top of the range model might last twice as long … and you won’t get one of these for under £1,000. You might baulk at spending that much on a mattress but ask yourself this: How much did you spend on your three-piece suite? – and how long do you spend sitting on it compared with the amount of time you spend in your bed?

• And how about a pillow to go with it?

One of the questions we’re asked most often is ‘which pillow should I use?’.  The problem is there’s no easy answer to this … trial and error tends to lead to the best solution.  There are hundreds of ‘orthopaedic’ pillows on the market and the best way to tell if it suits you is to use it.  This can be expensive, which is why we keep a stock of pillows for (non-smoking) patients to try (smokers’ breath makes the pillow unusable after a fortnight’s trial).  The rule is that a pillow should keep your neck in line with the rest of your spine – which will also depend on how hard your mattress is – and remember goose down may well be better than the most modern hi-tech materials.

• And when you’re awake?

The right office workstation can make all the difference. Your office chair should have adjustable height, tilt and a sprung back; it should have arms that are level with the top of your desk.  Typically such a chair will set you back around £120 – and it costs even less to make sure your screen is at the right height and that you’re using the right hardware: a trackball can put so much less strain on your arms and shoulders than a mouse for half the price of a chiropractic treatment.

 

• Prevention is better than cure

We spend a lot of time discussing with patients how to prevent problems.  We have masseuses in all our clinics to prevent the build-up of muscle tension and an Alexander Technique practitioner to remedy postural problems and we prescribe exercises to move fibrosis and improve stability.

• Put it right

If it hurts, it’s because something’s wrong.  If it keeps on hurting, it’s because there’s too much wrong for your body to heal – which is when you need a helping chiropractic hand.

What does a Chiropractor do … on a Sunday?

What does a chiropractor do?

That’s a question I often get asked – even people who’ve been through a course of treatment only get a snapshot of a typical clinical day as it relates to their presenting condition … and life as a chiropractor can involve so much more than just turning up and treating patients.

I decided to keep a journal of different days of the week for three months – and then pick one entry for each day of the week at random.

Here’s what I got up to.

A day of rest it isn’t.

As anyone with an eight-year-old will know, Sunday usually begins several hours before dawn as they wake up a good two hours earlier than on weekdays and sneak in to make sure you’re enjoying your lie in.

There is then the after breakfast (bacon, sausage and black pudding butties  – #5stepping is about moderation in all things including moderation) dash to some remote corner of Somerset to collect whichever teenager needs extracting from sleeping over after a play/match/concert/party in time for coffee at Granny and Grandad’s.

Another question I often get asked is what it’s like to work alongside your mother.  The answer is I don’t know – we’re now only in the same clinic at the same time once a week, and she spends her time in her treatment room from 9 till 7, whilst I’m in mine for the same period: if we need a meeting, we have to schedule it … or we get a chance to chat over coffee in between grandchildren and crosswords on a Sunday morning.

Sunday afternoon is dilemma time: family first as it’s our only day together – but there’s also gardening (once a whole family activity but no more) and those little bits of work that you didn’t get done during the week and which you feel guilty for doing and guilty for not having done.

Today though there’s a major – and highly complex – medicolegal report that’s needed by tomorrow and at the 6,200 words I managed to write between 142 patients last week, I’m only halfway finished. These days I have every speed device known to mankind [try TextExpander if you need to type long, technical phrases on a regular basis] and can manage 1,000 words an hour unless I’m on a particularly difficult area … which means I can finish the report and still find time for Harry Potter, help with homework, diary planning for the coming week, five emails from patients and the last ten minutes of Downton Abbey.

At least on Monday, you can guarantee that the eight-year-old will need waking up after the alarm goes off at 6!

Early to Bed…

So far, #5stepping shouldn’t have proved to onerous – drink more water, walk a little more; drink less caffeine and alcohol, sit a little less … but then that’s the whole point of #5stepping: it isn’t meant to be hard, it’s all about those little incremental changes that stack up to make a big difference.

The third step you can take to make your life healthier is even easier … it involves doing absolutely nothing, and doing it for at least seven-and-a-half hours a day!

That’s the minimum amount of sleep the average person needs to stay healthy yet more than half of us aren’t getting more than around six hours per night – and not enough zeds doesn’t just make you feel a bit slower, it could kill you!