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Top 3 Tips for Avoiding Back Pain

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LISTEN TO WHAT YOUR BODY IS TELLING YOU!

  • When you feel Pain it’s a message from your body that you need to modify your daily activities or habits! You may need to slow down or ease off the actions you are performing on a regular basis. If sitting at the computer for hours gives you shoulder pain, upper back, neck pain or headache you may need to take a break every hour to get up have a quick stretch or walk. It also makes sense to seek professional help if your back keeps aching  and giving you pain.

PERFORM REGULAR STRETCHING EXERCISE

  • Is key… and for most people the best exercise to prevent back pain is to stretch. This is something that even most exercise junkies do not do enough of.  Stretching will help counteract the effect of prolonged sitting and sedentary existence. We need to stretch regularly for mobility and flexibility and most importantly stretching exercise performed carefully will help correct misalignment and imbalances in the muscles and joints. Stretching helps to balance the effect of any repetitive or unbalanced activities that we do on a daily basis even including gym work or sporting activities that may also cause  asymmetrical stresses on the back.

OBSERVE YOUR POSTURE IN ALL ACTIVITIES
Good posture is not about visualising a static military style position where you have an imaginary steel rod in your spine! Developing  good posture is about becoming more conscious of the position your body is in… on any moment to the next moment . This will definitely help you avoid back pain that comes from long term bad habits and imbalanced activities that ultimately put undue stress on your back.
Are you are experiencing back pain or want more advice on the right stretching exercises for you or wish to learn the essential keys for good posture?  Please call my clinic and schedule an appointment. We aim to educate our patients on how to avoid developing problems as well as helping to correct them once they have developed.
Stephen Thwaites
Chiropractor and Osteopath

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New Trends : High – Tech Lifestyle Syndrome Part 1

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Poor Telephone Posture Causes Problems-Chiropractic can Fix! 

Your position when holding the telephone receiver can cause problems in the neck area which lead to headaches, neck tension, pain and stiffness. An estimated four million Americans suffer from chronic headaches, most of which are caused by neck problems. One major contributor to displaced vertebrae in the neck is the telephone.

Most people do not realize that awkward positioning, such as cradling the phone on the shoulder and bending the neck to fit the ear to the receiver, can throw the upper region of the spine (neck) out of balance. Pain can result as vertebrae become misaligned or locked, leading to abnormal muscle contraction and irritation of the nerves of the spine.

Headaches, another symptom of such a misalignment, are another way the body signals that something is wrong. Headache sufferers spend almost $2 billion a year on over-the-counter pain remedies that do not correct the problem. Painkillers only cover up symptoms that may become more serious. The cause of the headaches remains.

One proper posture, to avoid pain from vertebral misalignment when using a telephone, is to sit up straight, keep your head level and switch hands from time to time to equalize tension. Another is always hold the telephone with one of your hands and never cradle it between the neck and shoulder.
Chiropractic care can dramatically reduce headache pain because it corrects nerve system dysfunction that causes headaches. If your work requires repetitive actions that strain the neck and back, seek regular chiropractic adjustments to restore proper nerve system function. Feeling great can become an everyday occurrence with regular chiropractic care.  

Reference: drmaj

New Trends : High – Tech Lifestyle Syndrome Part 2

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iPads Could Encourage Bad Posture!

Apple’s new iPad device is so sleek and seemingly simple to use that one could easily imagine using it for hours on end, but doing so might not be so great for your body, experts say.
Apple’s latest wonder gadget, with Wi-Fi and 3G versions set to ship in March and April, respectively, joins a growing rank of portable, wired devices that includes laptops, netbooks, smartbooks, e-book readers and smart phones.

These lightweight, mobile computers give users unfettered access to the Internet anytime and from anywhere, but many of them suffer from an inherent design flaw, namely the “co-location” of the keyboard and monitor, said Anthony Andre, founder of Interface Analysis Associates (IAA) and a professor of Human Factors at San Jose State University.
“You are taking two things that belong in different locations and merging them together,” Andre told TechNewsDaily.

The airport posture

The posture many of us assume when working on a laptop or other mobile device can put a strain on our bodies. Andre calls this position – which typically involves sitting hunched over, with rounded shoulders, laptop on lap, and arms held close to the body – the “airport posture.”
“The thinner and more mobile the device, the worse it is, because you end up in more situations where you normally wouldn’t even use a laptop,”Andre said. “The negative side to mobility and the thin tablet approach is you end up in more places with it and you take it out more often than you maybe would a laptop.”

The iPad includes a bigger version of the virtual keyboard used in Apple’s iPhone, but typing on the iPad’s glass display might not prove as comfortable as on the iPhone.
“With the phone, you can bring it up to your face, but [with the iPad] you have to put it on your lap if you’re going to do some serious two-handed typing,” Andre said.

“But once you do that, you have this little flat disk on your lap and you’re talking about the opposite of where computer work stations have come with their articulating keyboard trays that try to put you in a good posture,” he said.

Apple does sell keyboards that work with the iPad, as well as a cover for the tablet computer that can double as a stand to prop it up at an angle. But the majority of people who use the iPad won’t use these accessories most of the time, Andre said. “A few people will take advantage of the keyboard … but that only works if you’re using it at your desktop and that just makes it a deficient desktop [computer],” he said.

Neck and back problems

David Rempel, a doctor at the University of California, San Francisco who sees plenty of laptop-related pain in his consulting work, also worries about the iPad’s ergonomics.

While the iPad “creates a wonderful opportunity in terms of mobility and ease of interaction, … [it] poses a similar type of musculoskeletal problems as the laptop,” Rempel said in a telephone interview. Working on a laptop for long periods of time puts a heavy load on a user’s neck and upper back, causing fatigue and pain, according to Rempel.

Large U.S.-based companies that shifted their workforce away from desktops to laptops to increase productivity found their workers suffered from more neck and back problems, Rempel said.

Tips for mobile computing

If you have to go mobile, here are a few suggestions for minimizing the burden on your body:

  • Reduce time of use. The single most important factor in determining the impact of mobile-device use on musculoskeletal problems is the time spent on the device, Rempel said. One hour per day is not a problem; eight hours a day is a big deal.
  • If the device is used for long periods, Andre advises: “Minimize the amount of time you spend on it in a given instance. Take frequent micro-breaks and do something opposite with your body — stretch neck and arms in opposite direction [from the hunched over position].”
  • Be smart about your interactions, Andre said. Try to minimize the number of long stints of typing on a mobile device. Instead, consider other ways of communicating, that’s right you can pick up the good old-fashioned and cord-bearing telephone. Another idea is to use voice-recognition software.

Reference: iPadnewsdaily

How does chiropractic work?

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chiropractic
It’s actually pretty simple. We know that the nervous system (brain, spinal cord and nerves) controls all the other systems in the human body. It coordinates all your body’s functions, movement, your sense of the world, how you think, feel and express emotions. The nervous system is so important to our health that it is protected by the spine and its 24 movable vertebrae. Vertebrae can move out of alignment with each other, which puts pressure on the nearby spinal nerves. This affects the flow of information and in turn the function of muscles, organs and tissues of the body.This interference is called a subluxation and can be detrimental to your health. Chiropractors are trained to locate and remove subluxations. Chiropractors adjust the spine with the aim of removing subluxations. When the subluxation is removed, normal movement returns to the spinal joints. This also takes pressure off the nerves and allows the proper flow of information, leading to restored health. To sum it up – we take away interference from the nervous system so the body can do what its got to do! By undertaking a program of care with us the benefits to you as a patient can be immense.

Ongoing surveys of patients at Access Back Care reveal that they notice a whole range of improvements in their health as their spinal subluxations are corrected and their nervous system responds favorably. Increased energy levels, more movement and flexibility, no pain, better digestion, improved mood, coping better, hearing better, seeing better, better balance, breathing easier and lower blood pressure are some common responses that patients mention. Parents of children having chiropractic note reduced bed wetting, better attention span and concentration levels, more happiness, less bad behaviour.