Would a healthy back bag help my prolapsed disc?

I have arthrits, what can I do?

Will exercise help my scoliosis?

I have to be honest here and say there is no simple, quick answer to any of these questions as every case can be different. But there are general answers which should help you get on the right track.

First off, if you are in pain, read my Natural Pain Relief page on my clinic website.

If you suffer specifically with back pain, from any cause then you will almost certainly benefit from corrective exercises. Although it is best to get professional, individual care there is a DVD i found that goes through a good routine that you can taylor to your needs:
Loose the Back Pain

With problems like scoliosis there are special clinics that work with it, but it takes a long time, and a lot off effort. The best resource I found was SOS scoliosis – http://www.scoliosis-treatment.scoliosissos.com

Please keep the questions comming.

“Dr Chris”

Chris Pickard DC is a Doctor of Chiropractic

Regular stretching is a great way to avoid back pain, since it lengthens tight muscles, loosens joint and promotes fluid and blood flow. Stretching any part of your body can help, including shoulders, arms, legs, trunk, and pelvis, as well as the back itself.. To help you avoid back pain here are a few examples to help you stretch those muscles and get the circulation going.

Starting from the top, first stand erect. Rest your hands upon the hips and shrug your shoulders. Rotate the shoulders in slow motion and to the back up to ten times. Next, perform the same motion in reverse.

Back of the arm: the triceps. Stand erect and lift your right arm over and behind your head and rest the tips of your fingers on the left shoulder. Use your left hand to try and pull the right elbow further to the left, or grab the right forearm and push it back towards the right shoulder, while keeping your right elbow up behind your head. Count to eight and perform the same stretch on the opposite side. Repeat 3-5 times.

Next, swing the arms. Stand up strait with your arms relaxed by your sides. Then raise your arms up in front of you and overhead while breathing in. As you breathe out let your arms carry on circling down and behind you. Repeat this for 10 breaths, then go in the opposite direction – breathe in as you bring your arms up behind you, and out as they come down in front of you.

Now work that torso. Stand erect, keep your feet shoulder distance apart and gradually rotate, starting at the waist, and stretch to one side. Take 3 -5 seconds to rotate. Then stretch and rotate your body to the opposite side. Continue on each side 10 times.

Now, a bit more dynamic. Stand erect, feet shoulder distance apart. Bend the knees slightly. Lock the fingers behind the head, then bend and twist your right elbow towards your left knee, while bringing your left knee up to meet it. Try and bring your knee as high as possible so you don’t have to bend forward so much – it should be more of a rotation. Come back to the starting position so you are standing erect again, then bring left elbow to the right knee in the same fashion. Repeat this 10 – 20 times.

For the lower limb, a great little exercise to perform is leg swinging, especially if you are sat down most of the time. Stand up and hold on to a chair, or something else to balance yourself. Raise one leg strait up in front of you, not too high at first, keep it easy, then let it swing back behind you like a pendulum. Keep this going for about a minute, swinging back and forth. Then repeat with the other leg.

If you are after more exercises then please check out my videos:

Spinal Hygiene Exercises

Best of Health

Chris Pickard DC aka ‘Dr Chris’

The first is on my clinic site and is a complete article: Natural Pain Relief

The second is a Squidoo Lens (a great place to browse for information) and is a work in progress: Natural Pain Relief Tips

Having been forced to give my eldest – Nicolas, 9 years old – some paracetamol recently on our flight home from Turkey, I thought I’d give you my overall opinion…

Paracetamol, often given to children as Calpol, is perceived by the general public as being a safe from of pain relief.

When you compare this to the 16,000 deaths a year in Europe caused by aspirin then yes it is safe, but it is not without risks.

Regular use has been linked with increased kidney cancer, increased stroke and heart disease. Paracetamol can also quickly cause liver damage – and is in fact the number one cause of liver failure in the west – mainly because it is so easily available, and is found in a number of related preparations often taken mistakenly together.

Most recently the first examination of its effects on children where looked at – that’s right, even though Calpol is marketed as safe for children there has been no studies to confirm it.

The investigators found that taking it 12 times within a year doubled the risk of asthma and also increased the risk of childhood eczema. They also found that even a single dose of paracetamol per year was related to an increased asthma risk.

So what should you give your child if they have a fever of a pain?

Well the first answer is – do everything you can to ensure their good health in the first place. Apart from plenty of exercise and trying to get my kids to eat well, they take pharmaceutical grade fish oil, a probiotic, a vegetable pill, and glyconutrients daily. In winter I add vitamin D3 to that list too.

On top of this they receive regular chiropractic care to ensure their brains get adequate spinal stimulation.

Our medicine cabinet contains oregano oil (good for 1001 things) and a number of herbal anti-virals safe for kids (blackcurrant, elderflower and hibiscus for example).

Should all this fail, I’ve treated them (which sometimes means a massage rather than chiropractic) and they can’t sleep (healing can not happen unless they are) then I have used paracetamol. I then explain that even though the pill may take away the pain, it is not curing the problem. If its in the day time then there is no paracetamol.

Well I hope this email has brought more valuable information to you. If you want to know more about how to look after children safely, then I recommend “How to Raise a Healthy Child” – its on the links page of my website under recommended reading
http://www.thepainreliefcentres.co.uk/Links.asp

It can go the other way too, for example common emotions caused by chronic back pain include depression, irritation and hopelessness.

So what can you do to resolve emotional back ache, or emotions caused by your pain?

The rule of thumb is to listen to what you are trying to tell yourself, learn what is stressing you out, and put a plan of action together – a strategy to cope.

This can include avoiding unnecessary stress – such as the stress you put upon yourself, or it can be learning active ways to resolve stressful situations. It can also include building your resistance to stress, or your ability to handle more.

The most effective ways to build your resilience are of course things like exercise and meditation which actively turn off the stress centres of the brain. Chiropractic will also help as it seems to work both on the physical source of the pain, and many feel ‘better in themselves’ after being treated to.

Then there are simple techniques such as EFT (emotional freedom technique) or TFT (thought field therapy) – more about which can be found in the download section of this website:
http://www.thepainreliefcentres.co.uk/Patients_Only_Download_Area.asp

If you want to really find out the power of EFT then I strongly recommend contacting Glynes Mewton at www.supportedjourneys.co.uk

Over the years I’ve had many people come to me feeling low, even depressed, but as their spine starts moving more, and they make consistent, steady improvements in lifestyle their mood improves. I once had a manic depressive say he stopped getting such roller coaster rides of emotions once he started chiropractic.

If you want to discuss any of this further, or feel your aches and pains have a more emotional rather than physical cause, then feel free to contact me – and we’ll figure out an appropriate strategy for you.

Best of Health

Dr Chris
The Pain Relief Centres – Home of Natural Pain Relief

For instance, the nerves from the top of the neck go to the blood supply for the head, pituitary gland, scalp, bones of the face, brain, inner and middle ear, sympathetic nervous system, eyes, ears. So any problem with the top bone or joints in the spine can potentially cause a lot of problems.

For more information on why and how you should look after your spine read through my in depth article about chiropractic here: Why Look After Your Spine

According to the back health charity BackCare, as many as 80 per cent of children carry too much weight in poorly designed bags and in the most harmful way – on one shoulder. It warned that excessive load-bearing for long periods on immature spines could put children at increased risk of future back problems in adulthood.

A survey carried out by the British Chiropractic Association (click here to see more) revealed that many kids just don’t use both straps, so the one strap healthy back bag could be the answer as it distributes weight far more evenly than even some two strapped bags.

It is quite probable that an even greater concern may be their general lack of exercise and increasingly poor diet. Keeping children’s spines moving with simple exercises as outlined in my videos – Spinal Hygiene
Or the ‘straighten up’ campaign by the BCA - Straighten Up Link

Whatever bag you choose, backpacks should weigh no more than 10 per cent of the child’s body weight.

Although carrying a heavy bag does not, in my opinion, cause a high shoulder (or as some ask – a low shoulder), prolonged carrying on one side will cause problems due to uneven contraction of muscles, then leading to spinal problems.

One of the best things to do if you cannot stop carrying, or do not have time to do corrective exercises on a daily basis, is to convert to a bag that distributes weight over both shoulders, or at least more evenly – such as the healthy back bags.

If you are in pain and swapping bags does not help, then seek help from a health care professional.

If you are serious about trying to improve your posture and live in Hertfordshire, or North London, and then please feel free to contact me if you need further help.

If you live elsewhere then look up a local chiropractor or other postural specialist.

I must answer this question in two parts.
First – carrying a baby/toddler. From a purely biological, evolutionary point of view, women’s hips are designed to carry babies on them, and is therefore something all adult women should be able to do with no problem.

Second – shoes. Walking for a lifetime in badly fitting shoes will cause changes in the feet that for some will cause problems. The remedy can be as simple as doing a few exercises, or buying a pair of decent arch supports.

If you are getting back pain you should consult an expert though – and usually the sooner the better. The longer you leave a ‘niggle’ or an intermittent problem the more likely it is to develop into something more permanent and harder to treat.

Here are some simple tests for you to do at home that will help you determine if you need to seek professional help.

Either look at yourself in the mirror, or ask someone to check for you for the first test. Stand up and look at your posture – is one ear lower than the other, are your shoulders level, are your hips level, and are your knees level?
If you are uneven it is best to seek the help of a chiropractor, osteopath, physiotherapist, or someone else that works with posture.

Sit down with bare feet on the floor – there should be a little arch under the inside of your feet where you can place your fingers. When you stand up do those arches completely go, or does one side compress more than the other?
Find a podiatrist, chiropractor who works with feet, or another biomechanical specialist.

Next – try balancing on one leg, then the other. If this is easy and you can balance equally well on each leg, then try with eyes closed. You should be able to balance on each leg for ½ minute. If you can not balance with your eyes closed, you need help – even if you are not in pain, it is an early warning sign.
Next, lie on your front, on the floor, and try and lift up one leg behind you, as high as you can. Now try with the other leg. You will need to have some one watching for this as you should be able to raise each leg the same height. Pain is also an indicator you need help.

The best person for you to see if you have back pain is a chiropractor or an osteopath, and some experienced physiotherapists. They will spend time to ask questions and examine you to determine what type of care you will need.

If you particularly wish for me to help you I am available for email and telephone consultations if you can not get to one of my clinics. You can contact me through my clinic website
The Pain Relief Centre – the Home of Natural Pain Relief

For this one reason alone – pain – it is worth looking after your back and doing things to prevent injury.

Two simple things you can do:
First start getting into the habit of looking after your spine on a daily basis, just as you woul look after your teeth. This video I made should help – Spinal Hygiene Exercises
Second – make sure you carry things in a good bag (you guessed it), such as the healthy back bag.

Spinal health extends beyond just ‘back pain’ though. It also affects your head, neck and shoulders and interferes with health generally. I’ve put an article in the Free Stuff section which may surprise you - Does a Healthy Spine Keep You Young?

If you want to know a bit more about spinal health, and specifically how chiropractic may help, then I’ve posted a longer article on my chiropractic blog

Just to sum up – the spine is very important for your overall health – ignore it at your peril.

Best of Health