All posts by Alex Newton

One of the most likely times men and women get back pain is when there is an infant in the house needing to be picked up and carried. Both these times are paradoxically when you would like your back to be functioning at it’s best.

Caring for an infant puts stress on your back. Initially, you may be lifting the 7 to 10 pound baby up to 20-30 times a day. By the time the child is a year old, you are lifting and carrying around 17 pounds. Two years later, you will be lifting a 25 to 30 pound child.

Here are some ways that new mothers, fathers and grandparents can help reduce their risk of injury and back pain.

Safe lifting, the basics: Stand with your feet at least a foot apart, this will give you a stable base of support. Keep your back as straight as possible and bend your knees. Do not stretch your arms out straight to pick up the baby. Bring the baby close to your chest before lifting.

Lift using both arms and your thigh muscles, which are amongst the largest and strongest muscles in the body. To pick up a child from the floor, bend at your knees-not at your waist. Squat down, tighten your stomach muscles and lift with your legs. When carrying and moving a child, pivot with your feet until you are facing your destination then lower the child into the crib or onto the floor by bending at the knees, with a straight back.

Carrying: Hold your child in an upright position, directly against your chest. Carrying a child on one hip creates postural imbalances that can lead to low back pain over time. Consider using a ‘front pack’ to carry the baby when you are walking.

Exercise for women:   Begin exercising again soon after delivery to restore muscle tone to the abdominal and back muscles. While the baby is napping, take 10 minutes to do stretching exercises on the floor or bed each day. This will help restore hip and back flexibility. Try to return to your normal weight within six weeks after giving birth. If you had a Caesarean-section (C-section) delivery, wait six weeks or until you get the permission of your obstetrician or GP before you begin exercising.

Breast feeding: To avoid upper back pain from breastfeeding, bring the baby to your breast, rather than bending over the baby. While you are nursing, sit in an upright chair rather than a soft couch or ask your chiropractor about biological feeding – this is a better and more effective posture for you and your baby.

Birth is one of the most traumatic experiences a baby can go through. It is not often known, for example, that the baby’s cranial bones move and overlap affording the flexibility required during delivery. Even after a successful delivery, a baby’s spine is still at risk.

However, there are some precautions you can take as a parent to minimize this risk both to your baby and to yourselves. Here are the healthiest positions for you to care for your baby.

Holding baby: your baby should be held close to you with the back of your baby’s head supported with your index finger behind the ear.

Bathing baby: your baby’s head should be supported using your thumb and forefinger while your free hand is used for bathing and supporting your baby in the tub.

Parent/child interaction: throwing your child up and down can actually cause spinal problems due to a lack of support as your child is being bent forward and backwards.

Picking children up: when lifting your child, you should be on your haunches, lift your child while holding them under both arms, and avoid carrying them on one hip. Preferably, your child should be carried in front of you with one leg either side of you.

Papoose type slings and carriers: unfortunately contraptions that allow your child to sit before it is naturally able to can cause major spinal problems. Most of the holding devices keep your baby’s spine in the ‘c’ shape curve it’s born with and do not allow the normal curves in the neck and low back to develop.

Dressing the child: clothing that has a tight collar can put a strain on your child’s spine in the neck and the area between the shoulder blades. Buttons and zips should be used as much as possible.

Feeding: if breast feeding, you should hold the baby at the level of the breast whilst supporting your arm on a pillow, to reduce spinal problems in yourself. You should place the baby so that it faces your breast so that rotation of your baby’s neck is minimized or aim for the biological nurturing position.

Crawling: crawling should be actively encouraged, as a lack of sufficient crawling is responsible for weak spinal architecture. If your baby resists lying on their tummy during this time it may be an indication of a spinal problem that should be assessed by your chiropractor.

Emotional stress can also affect your baby. Domestic disharmony and maternal distress is very quickly picked up by the infant and translated into irritability, crying and unsettled behaviour. The negative effect on muscle tone, sleeping and feeding patterns is a major contributor to spinal subluxations.

As parents, bonding should be encouraged immediately for you both. Holding the infant close to your body, maintaining sustained eye contact, smiling and making soothing sounds are all important.

The new school year has just started. Children are back in the classrooms, will be running around playgrounds and playing sports. However, children, like adults, can be prone to back pain, and there can be several causes.

The most common causes of joint and back pain in school children are:

• Lack of exercise or excessive exercise
• Weight of school bags
• Bad posture
• Poorly set up desks
• Use of a computer or computer games
• Sports injuries
• Ill-fitting shoes/improper shoes

Lack of exercise and excessive exercise

The general finding from various studies is that children involved in competitive sports and those who are sedentary are more prone to getting low back pain while those that participated in moderate activity were protected. The children involved in competitive sports run the risk of getting repetitive strain injuries. Those children who are sedentary are often those who sit and watch a lot of television or play on computer games. The implication of this will be discussed below.

Weight of school bags

School bags are exceptionally heavy for those attending secondary school due to the number of different subjects covered and therefore the number of textbooks required and the fact the children often have to move between classes. Not all children have access to lockers, which mean that books have to be carried with them. Bags carried on one shoulder causes an asymmetry of the body and therefore certain muscles will have to tighten and others lengthen in order to carry the bag. These kinds of imbalances can cause long-term problems.

Bad posture

All aspects of life can induce bad posture; lack of exercise, weight of school bags, spending too much time playing computer games or on the computer, incorrect shoes, and growth. Those children who grow faster and become taller than their peers may slouch in order to not tower above their friends and this can ultimately lead to bad posture.

Poorly set up desks

Whether at school or home, ill-fitting desks can lead to bad posture. School desks and chairs cannot cater for individual heights of children and, as mentioned earlier, the children often have to move between classes. The desks and chairs are uniform and unable to be altered to the child’s individual needs. Guidance on correct desk set up should be implemented at home; not just for the kids but also for everyone in the family who uses the desk. At school this can’t be done, but by advising the child to sit upright and not to slouch and not to cross the legs will help.

Use of a computer or computer games

Anybody position requires certain muscles to shorten and others to lengthen. This occurs every time we move. If we were to stay in one position for too long those muscles will eventually stay that particular length. When children play on computer games it quite often requires time. This leads to the above situation with muscles. Children should be encouraged to not spend longer than 30-40 minutes at any one time playing games, using a computer, or even doing homework before having a break. The child should spend a few minutes walking around and then returning to the game/homework by reviewing their posture and sitting correctly.

Sports injuries

Those children who play a lot of sport and those who play contact sports such as rugby may be injured either by direct contact or by overuse of certain muscles. If a child is injured it is advisable that they are seen by a chiropractor as problems unresolved can lead to compensations, i.e. walking differently due to sprained ankle leading to low back pain, a rugby tackle causing neck pain and headaches.

Ill-fitting shoes/improper shoes

Children are conscious of fashion, which can affect their shoe wear. Girls particularly may wear shoes with a high heel. This causes the calf muscles to shorten and pushes the body forward. To prevent falling over the girl would have to lean back and causing an increase in the low back curvature which can not only cause low back pain but also pain between the shoulder blades.

Wearing improperly fitting shoes can cause many problems from blisters, pressure sores and ingrowing toenails in the short-term, to feet deformities like hammer toe, and knee and posture problems in the long-term. It can take up to 18 years for feet to fully develop, so teenager’s feet need to be looked after just as much as younger children’s.

Shoes should be the correct size and offer the right amount of support. When purchasing new shoes, get the child’s feet correctly sized by the shop assistant and ensure that the shoes are the correct length as well as width.

Here’s some advice to help your child:

• Rucksacks should be worn across both shoulders and the straps adjusted so the bag is held close to the body.
• If a locker is available, encourage your child to use it and ensure they only take the books and equipment needed for that day.
• Check their shoes are correctly fitted, supported, relatively flat, and are not too worn.
• Encourage your child to enjoy regular exercise, such as swimming and cycling.
• Use of the computer, playing computer games and homework should be in blocks of no more than 30-40 minutes. Advise them to have a little walk before returning and again that they sit with their shoulders down and back (not slumped) and their legs are uncrossed.
• See a chiropractor if your child is experiencing pain or discomfort, or even just to get a check-up.

What you need: Yourself your eyes, mouth, and a good left/right brain connection!

Instructions:  Work through the sheets to get more points. You have to say the correct colour out loud and ignore the written words

I.e. for the sequence below it would be green, red, blue, yellow etc.

What this shows:

You have different sections of your brain which are in control of different tasks i.e. vision, speech, movement, sensation etc. There are two sides or hemisphere’s of the brain (connected by the corpus callosum) – and colour perception and reading are on opposite sides of the brain, so they have to communicate with each other so you get the right answer and ignore the text!

If I was going to use a sporting example to illustrate a point then you would think I would go topically, with football or tennis being the sport of choice! However we can all still relate to cycling and the success of team GB in recent years. When Sir David Brailsford took over in 2002 the team had previously had very little success with only one gold medal win in almost 80 years. So how did he make such huge changes to their success to the point that they have won so many gold medals at the Olympics in recent years? He used the theory of marginal gains, whereby if he took every aspect of the bike and the race and managed to achieve 1% improvement, then the total improvement collectively would significantly change results.

Obviously everyone knows that a drastic change in your diet will have an impact on your health (both positively and negatively depending on what you change!), but the question is can this idea of marginal gains be applied to your diet to have an improvement on your health?

I think so. And by applying this method you can constantly be fine tuning and tweaking what or how you eat. For this to work all you need to do is pick one aspect of what you are focusing on each time: this could be anything from sugar content, where you are getting your food from, how many veg are in a meal or how many takeaways you are having etc. Next just think, can I make a small improvement by making a change?

In terms of sugar for example, if you have x 2 teaspoons of sugar in your tea then going with no sugar at all is a big change – you can make a small change by looking at the ‘worst, better, best’ scale: worst = x2 teaspoons white sugar, better = 1 teaspoon brown sugar, even better = organic agave syrup/honey best = no sugar or stevia. You can then just pick the next smaller improvement and make the change a habit; and next time you review everything sugar intake might not be as high on the list, or you can move onto the next step.

Admittedly this is not a text book diet that you follow like a cookbook recipe because it involves learning a little bit more each time so that you can fill in the blanks and learn what is bad, better and best for you, but in the long run you can make huge changes to your diet which are sustainable over a period of time.

Many drivers don’t realise that the back pain or a stiff neck may primarily be caused by bad driving habits, although you might not always feel it while you’re on the road.

Most of us spend a good couple of hours a day in our cars, commuting to and from work or running errands. This may cause us to suffer from aches and pains known as Repetitive Driver Injury.

According to the British Chiropractic Association (BCA), 40% of people say that simply sitting down for long periods of time exacerbates neck and back pain.

Did you know… Long periods of time on the road puts extra strain on the vertebrae and discs and we lose the lumbar curves in our backs.

Remember… Avoiding back problems while driving may not require anything drastic, such as, buying a new car, however, taking practical measures should help drivers feel comfortable behind the wheel:

• After a long journey muscles can become very stiff, therefore, simple exercises, such as, side bends and seat braces, are very effective.
• Remain relaxed whilst driving and take breaks.
• Maintain a good lumbar support to ensure that there is a slight arch in your lower back to avoid pressure on your discs.

Remember… If you have any issues you should book in for a check up. These types of problems are more easily treated if dealt with promptly

For Further information or comments, please contact your chiropractor 

According to the Football Association, one in five adults play football in some shape or form across the UK. In sport, injury comes with the territory and football is no different. 

Common injuries

The majority of football related injuries are trauma-based injuries affecting soft tissues. Owing to the nature of the sport a large proportion of the injuries affect the lower extremities. Common injuries are often to the hamstrings, knees and ankles.

How to avoid or recover from sport injuries

There is no doubt that being active is beneficial to your health. However, there are always risks involved and so, it is paramount that you also look after your body. To minimise the risk of injury enables individuals to remain active for longer, improving health over a lifetime. There are a couple of injuries that footballers commonly sustain, but in the context of sport injuries, football is relatively safe compared to activates such as rugby.

Repetitive strain injury

The first are injuries obtained through repetitive straining. These often develop when individuals do not leave enough time to recover between training and fail to cool down or stretch properly. Injuries can include shin splints, pain in the back of the knee (patellar tendinitis) and pain at the back of the ankle (Achilles Tendinitis). In severe cases overuse can even lead to stress fractures.

Trauma based injuries

The second type of injury common among those who play football is trauma-based injury. These can arise from overextension or contact between players. These injuries can often be more serious and in some instances may even require surgery. Common trauma injuries include ankle sprains, hamstring stains, anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) strains and cartilage tears.

Instability problems

Often more serious injuries to lower extremities such as cartilage tears or ACL damage can lead to instability problems, which in turn can lead to alignment problems. This occurs as weight becomes unevenly distributed across the legs in order to overcompensate for the injury. This can amount to problems such as a misaligned pelvis and back pain.

For further information or advice, please talk to your chiropractor.

Balance is important throughout life and in our more elderly population poor balance can lead to falls which increase the risk of breaking a hip and losing mobility/independence as a result.

Please make sure you attempt the challenge in a safe environment!

Ø  Firstly stand on one leg.

How good are you? Are your arms moving to keep your balance? Does staring at one spot help?

Ø  Next try standing on the other leg.

How does it compare? Is one side easier than the other?

For each of the next progressions try it first standing on one leg and then compare it to standing on the other leg. Only progress this challenge when you can do the previous step comfortably.

Ø  Try closing your eyes.

Ø  Try turning your head left and right (eyes open).

Ø  Try turning your head with your eyes closed.

Ø  Try standing on one leg with something small under your big toe (a stone/pencil/etc)

Ø  Try standing on one leg with a cushion under the entire foot.

Ø  Try all the above holding your right arm out, then try again with the left arm.

Your eyes, ears, neck, ankle and big toe are all key contributors to your balance. If you are having issues with these challenges chat to the chiropractor –they will see what they can do to help.

With the summer in full swing, it is likely that you will be planning an overseas holiday at some point. Flying is usually the worst part of any holiday, but for some people, it can be excruciating. If you already suffer from back pain then a long haul flight can make matters a lot worse.

A substantial 88 per cent of people experience increased back or neck pain following a flight, according to a survey by Spine Universe. With limited movement, long periods of time spent sitting down and cramped seating areas, it is hardly surprising that so many people suffer.

However, don’t let flying ruin your holiday. Here are some ways to ease, manage and possibly prevent back pain once you’ve taken to the skies.

Firstly, try to get up and move regularly when flying. Sitting for too long in the same position can cause stiffness and pain. Therefore try requesting an aisle seat, from the airline, so you can stand up easily, without constantly disturbing others – especially if it’s during a night time flight. You can also try to do some simple stretches at the back of the plane if possible. If this isn’t possible you can do some stretching in your seat. Neck rolls, rolling your shoulders back and forth or raising your hands as high above your head as possible are good ideas. The most important thing is you keep your body moving every now and then so your muscles don’t spasm and seize up.

Before a flight, you should try to pack as light as possible. A small backpack that distributes weight evenly can also help once you’re at the destination. Think twice about packing unnecessary items, do you really need your tablet, extra clothes etc. for a day trip?

Finally we suggest investing in anything that might help to decrease the pain. Lumbar pillows, seat cushions and heating pads are all useful. Test out any new products before your trip, you don’t want to waste your time by taking something that doesn’t work properly. It is also wise to bring a few extra days worth of medication, if you’re on any, in case there are any flight delays or other unexpected circumstances.

If you’re worried about your back while flying make sure to contact the airline as they are likely to have some advice and be aware of making sure you’re comfortable when you’re on board. Most importantly – make sure to enjoy your holiday.

Teenagers can be at risk from suffering back or neck pain due to sedentary lifestyles and the excessive use of technology.

Findings from the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) show that 40% of 11 to 16 year olds in the UK have experienced back or neck pain. More than one in seven (15%) parents said their son’s or daughter’s pain is a result of using a laptop, tablet or computer.

The research revealed that almost three quarters (68%) of 11 to 16 year olds spend between one and four hours a day on a laptop, tablet or computer and 73% spend between one and six hours on the devices.  More than a third (38%) of parents said their child spends between one and six hours a day on their mobile phone.

Chiropractors are now noticing a rise in the number of young people presenting with neck and back problems due to their lifestyle choices. Today, the BCA is encouraging parents to limit the time their children spend using technology and instead encourage more active pastimes over the Summer holidays.

Based on a two hour period, young people spend more time on games consoles (33%) than doing an activity like riding a bicycle (12%). When asked how much time their teenager spends on their bicycle, one in five (21%) parents admitted that they don’t have one.

Nearly half (46%) of parents questioned, acknowledged that their children don’t spend enough time exercising, despite NHS guidelines stating that children and young people between 5 and 18 years old need to do at least one hour of physical activity every day.

More people under the age of sixteen are being seen with back and neck pain, and technology is so often the cause. Young people are becoming increasingly sedentary which is damaging their posture. There is the tendency to sit in a hunched position when working on computers and laptops, putting a lot of strain on the neck.

Learning how to sit properly and keeping active will help to keep young people healthy and pain free. It’s important that parents seek help for their children from an expert as soon as any pain starts – if conditions are left untreated it could lead to chronic back and neck problems in later life.

The BCA offers the following top tips for parents to help their teenagers reduce the risks of back and neck pain:

• Get your kids moving: The fitter children are, the more their backs can withstand periods of sitting still. To increase fitness levels, your child should be more active which can be achieved by doing activities including walking to school, riding a bike or going for a run.
• Teach them how to sit: It’s important that children learn the correct way to sit when they’re using a computer. Teach them to keep their arms relaxed and close to their body and place arms on the desk when typing. Make sure the top of the screen is level with the eyebrows and the chair is titled slightly forward, allowing for the knees to be lower than the hips and the feet to be flat on the floor. Using a laptop or tablet away from a desk will encourage poor posture, so limit time spent in this way.
• Don’t sit still for too long: Make sure children take a break from the position they’re sitting in on a regular basis and stretch their arms, shrug their shoulders and move their fingers around – this helps to keep the muscles more relaxed.
• Lead by example: Maintaining good posture and promoting good back health is something that everyone should be doing, adults and children alike. If you make it a priority, it’s easier for your children to see the relevance.
• Seek medical advice: Seek professional advice if your child is experiencing pain which has lasted for more than a few days. If your child wants to be more active, check that there are no medical reasons why they should not exercise, particularly if they are not normally physically active.