Why Do I have Aches and Pains?

A little bit of inflammation spread all over the place is one possible culprit as to why you have aches and pains. Inflammation in one particular area e.g. a joint contributes to the breakdown of that joint causing osteoarthritis - please note that this process can take several years. Inflammation seems to be suppressed at night which accounts for more aches and pains first thing in the morning. It is also related to metabolic syndrome: being over weight, poor fitness and ageing. Smoking, inactivity, stress and sleep deprivation make inflammation worse - they don’t so much make you feel old as literally age you.  

Inflammation can make the pain of Fibromyalgia worse. If you aren't familiar with what Fibromyalgia is, according to the Mayo clinic it is an unexplained sensory dysfunction resulting in widespread oversensitivity to stimuli, exhaustion, and mental fog, among other things. 

Inflammation hasn't been proven to make stress and the associated pain of it worse but there are strong links to suggest that it does. Short term stress is ok for us, such as being stressed when sitting in traffic causing you to run late but long term stress i.e. more than 3 months is not ok for our body and health. Sleep disturbance is one cause of long term stress.

What can you do about it?

• Eat a healthy diet - intermittent fasting and ketogenic diets (low carb) for short periods of time can help as well. Try to reduce your animal and animal product intake.

• Lose weight

• Exercise: including lifting weights

• Reduce stress: through whatever means that is for you - having a couple of alcoholic drinks after work each night isn't a good idea

• See a sleep specialist if you have any sleep issues

• See one of our chiropractors or Andrew, our remedial massage therapist to help reduce your pain

If you would like help with your stress levels or aches and pains, get in touch with us so we can help you out or book in online.

This has been adapted from https://www.painscience.com/articles/inflammation-chronic-subtle-systemic.php

What might be causing my pain?

It might be coming from your fascia.

What is fascia?

You have most likely seen it before. It is the thin, yellowish, white-ish stuff that is wrapped around meat. In your body, it is wrapped around individual muscle fibres, muscle bellies, nerves, blood vessels and organs. It connects your musculoskeletal, circulatory and nervous systems together.

It was initially thought that fascia was just a connective tissue scaffold helping to give the body its shape and hold it together. It is now being discovered that cells move throughout our fascial system transporting nutrients and waste products. It has also been found that cells within our fascia communicate with our Central Nervous System.

Fascia can be damaged in a variety of ways but the most common ones are:poor posture, RSI, child bearing, sports injuries, car accidents, falls, wear and tear and inflammation, which is often due to ageing. When an area of fascia becomes damaged, it develops cross-linking fibres of collagen to help it heal, these do not go away once the area has healed and they actually cause the fascia to move less. The fascia develops adhesions or scar tissue, as a result, it becomes stiffer and stretches less. Over time, the by-products of sugar and sugar itself get stuck in these adhesions causing even more stiffness. Think of healthy fascia being like nicely, combed hair where the hair strands are parallel and unhealthy being like a big knot in the hair that is hard to comb out. Apart from being really stiff and in-elastic, it becomes more painful as well.  It is also going to lead to joint stiffness eventually, which causes pain. Scar tissue is more sensitive to pain than normal tissue. Fascial injuries aren't usually seen on imaging even very detailed ones like MRIs.

So, what can be done about it?

To keep our fascia healthy we need to be well hydrated but we also need movement to help get the water into it. So, another reason to exercise and stretch. If this doesn't help with your pain, see one of our chiropractors as we help to restore the correct motion to your joints which takes the pressure off the fascia. We also will do soft tissue work to allow the fascia to move more freely. Many of our clients have benefited greatly from seeing, Andrew, our remedial massage therapist as this also helps to loosen stiff fascia.

This has been adapted from https://www.doctorschierling.com/fascia.html

If you experience any back pain please get in touch with us so we can help, please contact us or book online.

Anti-ageing

Exercise really is an amazing tool to keep ourselves healthy and also younger. New research compared the muscles and cardiovascular capacity of people who regularly exercise in their 20s, people in the 70s who exercised their whole adult lives and an inactive group in their 70s.

They found that the muscles of people who have exercised their whole lives closely resemble those of people in their 20s who currently exercise. The inactive group's muscles showed significant changes. The cardiovascular system of the active older group was reduced compared to the 20 year olds but their capacity was 40% higher than the inactive group as well as their cardiovascular health being equivalent to people 30 years younger than them.

So, with most of us having time off shortly, it is a great time to start making exercise a habit that you can't live without. 

If you experience any back pain whilst exercising please get in touch with us so one of chiropractors can help, by contacting us or book online.

Plank Progressions

Planks are great for helping to build your core muscle endurance but they do get a bit boring after a while. Check out this video if you want to challenge yourself further. Remember to squeeze your butt whilst you're planking to avoid your back taking unnecessary load which may lead to injury.

If you experience any pain, please contact our chiropractors to see if there are any areas that need addressing.

Gardening and Your Back

We have seen quite a few clients recently who have hurt themselves whilst gardening. It can be quite a strenuous activity so warming up your body beforehand by rotating your arms forwards and backwards, doing some light squats and reaching down for your toes is a good start. At the end, do some gentle to moderate stretching to loosen up your muscles and minimise pain the next day. 

Gardening tip: If you are using a mattock, make sure you aren't using your back to bring you back up to the starting position, use your Glutes (butt muscles). Using your back to generate the movement is a great way to strain a muscle or sprain a joint.

If you experience back pain whilst gardening, please reply to this email or book online, as we can help you.

Back Pain After a Sleep In

How much time do you spend in bed each night? Does your back hurt after you treat yourself to a sleep in on the weekend? Did you know that night time is when your spinal discs rehydrate and renourish themselves? You're taller in the morning due to this and throughout the day your spinal discs become dehydrated so you're shorter at night. 

The ideal amount of time required to rehydrate and re-nourish your spinal discs at night is 8 hours of bed rest. Less than 8 hours means your spine doesn't receive enough inflow to get adequate nutrition. Any more than this and your discs continue to swell and can become damaged under stress. Both too much or too little predisposes you to pain and spinal injury.

Thrills, Spills, Pills 1

Welcome to part 1 of ‘Thrills, Spills and Pills’.  This will include tips covering the 3 different stressors that affect one's health.  We will regularly post more tips to help you achieve better health.

Thrills: Mental and Emotional Stress – relationships, work, finances etc
Spills: Physical Stress – Sitting, sports injuries, training, car accidents etc
Pills: Chemical Stress – Diet, alcohol, cigarettes, pollution, supplements, medication etc

Thrill Tip: Can’t sleep because your mind is too active?  Try getting out of bed and writing down your thoughts.  Spend ten minutes jotting down what you are thinking, how you are feeling and any relevant action steps that you can take over the next few days and weeks.  This will help to still the mind and return you to a calmer state. Sleep should come more easily after this.  It is important to hand write it out, typing it or just thinking it doesn’t seem to have the same effect.

Spill Tip: When working out at the gym a lot of people isolate individual muscles and train until failure e.g. bicep curls with a dumbbell.  This is not a great idea as it can and often does create imbalances with your body. Instead aim for composite movements that incorporate multiple body parts: squats, push ups, pull ups, burpees etc.  I know a couple of awesome personal trainers who can help with this if you need some support.

Pill Tip: The standard western diet has a ratio of 26:1 of Omega 6 to Omega 3. This is far from the ideal.  Instead the recommended ratio should be something like 3:1 or even 2:1.  There are two ways to improve this ratio.  The first is to reduce your intake of Omega 6.  The best way to do this is reduce your intake of vegetable oils and the processed foods that contain them.  The second is to increase your intake of Omega 3 essential fatty acids like EPA and DHA.  Eat small wild fish (farmed fish are feed grain and corn which changes their Omega 3 content to Omega 6) and/or supplement with a high quality Omega 3 product. We sell the best available if you’re after it.