Stuck at home and can’t get to your regular practitioner? Or if you’re simply experiencing pain and prefer natural alternatives to medications, our illustrious neighbour Naturopath Tania Flack from Bondi Health and Wellness put this guide together.

Of those Australians reporting back pain, nearly half experience difficulty with mobility, daily activities and self-care, which significantly impacts quality of life. And the financial impact of back pain on the Australian economy is staggering. It’s reported to cost approximately 1.2 billion dollars per year, split between hospital care, out-of-hospital appointments and prescription medications.

This article summarises:

Common causes of back injuries,

The best nutrients for natural pain relief and

The best dietary modifications for reducing inflammation.

Natural remedies for back pain

With a global pandemic running around, there’s never been a better time to work on your immune system. You want it functioning at its absolute peak right now.

As we age, our immune system ages too. This means it doesn’t quite function as well as it used to. Luckily there is something we can do about it.

I just read an article talking about this and thought I would share the link as well as give you a few of the key points. This stuff is important because we actually need our immune system to function BETTER as we get older, not worse.

Here are a few key quotes from the article:

“exercising and adopting the right diet may help a person maintain healthy immunity into older age “

“Chronic, low-grade inflammation is associated with almost all conditions linked to older age, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and dementia. It also plays a leading role in certain autoimmune conditions that are more common in older adults, such as rheumatoid arthritis. “

“One study found that aerobic fitness among 102 healthy males, aged 18–61 years, was inversely proportional to the number of senescent T cells in their blood after adjusting for age. In other words, increased physical fitness was associated with less immunosenescence. “

“Another study compared the immune responses of 61 healthy males, aged 65–85 years, to a flu vaccination. After adjusting for their age, the researchers found that the intensively and moderately active males produced more antibodies in response to vaccination than the least active males.”

“A growing body of evidence also suggests that people who eat a Mediterranean diet are less likely to become “frail” in older age, such as by losing muscle strength, walking slowly, and tiring easily. “

To see the full article and get all the tips, click here.

HPH Physiotherapist Kenny Merlevede knows a thing or two about rehabilitation and returning to exercise after a break. Literally! He was cycling in Centennial Park recently and while trying to avoid hitting a wayward child on a bike he came off and broke his collarbone. The surgery involved 5 pins being inserted into the collarbone. With the right treatment and rehab approach he was back at work in a little over a fortnight and back to exercise the next week. Here are his thoughts on safely returning to exercise.

We are expecting to be seeing a lot of people with injuries related to the sudden desire to quickly get in shape. Their exercise regime drifted a little over the last few months but with Summer approaching they need to get their bikini body back. Bravo I say! But, we need to temper that enthusiasm/desperation with a little common sense. If you’re trying to fit 6 months worth of training into the next 6 weeks read on.

I think the most common times people get injured is when they start a new activity, or when they make a big change to the amount of exercise they are doing, even if it is something they have done before. To give you an example, if you’ve never included running in your fitness program but start doing so, that’s a time when your body is adjusting to the new stimulus and as such you’re prone to injury. Or if you usually run 5km three times a week but change to 10km five times a week, that’s also a time when you’re prone to injury.

It’s a fine line; you want to push yourself to get fitter, but if you push too hard you can hurt yourself. When you’re exercising, there inevitably comes a time when you will feel a bit of discomfort. When you reach that point you might wonder whether you can keep going and push through it, or if doing so could cause an injury. There is such a thing as ‘good pain’, which is the pain you feel during exercise but in the absence of an injury. Then there’s ‘bad pain’, which is the pain you feel when you have suffered an injury.

How do you tell the difference between good pain and bad pain? In other words, what are the signs that you may have injured yourself and you should stop your workout? Bad pain has the following characteristics:

• The pain you’re feeling is ‘sharp’

• The pain you’re feeling is ‘shooting’, or accompanied by numbness, tingling or pins and needles

• There was a sudden onset of pain

• The pain developed in association with something ‘popping’, ‘clicking’, ‘snapping’ or ‘giving way’ underneath you

What does good pain feel like? Think about when you climb a really tall set of stairs or a steep hill. As you start to breathe harder, you get less oxygen to your muscles. When that happens you start to develop lactic acid. At the beginning you feel almost nothing, then it becomes slightly uncomfortable, then if you’re able to keep going, it becomes really uncomfortable. So we would say that one point of differentiation from bad pain is that good pain has more of a gradual build-up.

The location of the pain is also a clue. Good pain will be generalised to a region, whereas bad pain is quite specific. For example, if you’re ‘feeling the burn’ in your quads from climbing stairs (good pain), then most likely the entire front of your leg will feel it, all the way from your knees to your hips. On the other hand, if you tear or strain your quadriceps (bad pain), the location of the pain will be a lot more specific – you’ll feel sharp pain right at the point of the tear and in a small area surrounding it.

I’m sure you’ve all watched something like the Olympic Games, where you can see prime examples of the two types of pain. For instance, in the 100m when someone tears their hamstring, they grab their leg as if they’ve been shot. They feel sharp, shooting pain that has a sudden onset, the leg gives way underneath them and they’re unable to continue.

Then you see someone in a longer-distance event with a grimace on their face as they push on and on. They’re definitely in pain, but the pain has built up gradually and doesn’t affect their ability to keep running (well, for a while at least). While this is not a nice feeling, this is the ‘good pain’ we’re talking about.

There’s a fine line between pushing yourself and hurting yourself. It just comes down to using a bit of common sense. Build up your training gradually. Warm up a little before going too hard. If something doesn’t feel right, you’re better off missing part of a session and being okay for your next session than trying to get a little bit more done and having to miss the rest of the week.

Stay safe and if you have any questions let me know!

Hello,

With a couple of Eastern Suburbs beaches reopening this week, are we allowed to start feeling cautiously optimistic? 

We hope you and yours are all safe and well.

Our Osteopath Jerome has very generously offered to give FREE online ergonomic assessments to those of you working from home. He can skype/zoom etc you to see what your setup is and give you advice on little modifications you can make or exercises you can do during the day.

Email us harleyplacehealth@gmail.com if you want to grab that great offer.

There have been a LOT of people coming in the last couple of weeks with problems related to working from home. Most of these people coming in are experiencing lower back or neck pain. Others just want to escape their partners and kids for a while….

You have a great opportunity at the moment to move more than ever before. In a conventional office setting it’s probably not practical for you to get down on your mat and use your foam roller a couple of times a day, but it is now.

So rather than feeling worse from working at home, if you create a routine and get it done a few times a day you can actually come out of this feeling better.

The NUMBER ONE cause of injuries isn’t the chair you sit on, it’s HOW LONG YOU SIT.

Your traditional working day probably involved a lot more incidental exercise than you may think. The walk to the bus stop. The walk from the train station to your office. Popping out for a coffee or to get lunch. 

So you should try to find ways to incorporate more movement into your day. Instead of getting up, having breakfast then sitting down at your ‘desk’, walk a lap of your block. At lunchtime, do another lap. And at the end of the day, before you reach for that glass of wine, do another lap. 

At least three times a day get away from your chair, and do a few stretches. If you need advice on routines you can do during the day, check out our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/HarleyPlaceHealth/ where we have filmed some videos showing you what to do.

Harley Place Health remains open. We have changed our operating hours to ensure there is space between appointments.

This minimises patient interaction and gives us time to clean the rooms thoroughly. Your health is always our top priority.

We are taking all patients temperature on arrival and are happy to report that there has been nobody even close to having a fever enter our clinic.

Check our videos https://www.facebook.com/HarleyPlaceHealth/ or email us if you need any more tips, we are here to help!

If you are self isolating but still need help, we can arrange a Skype call so that you can tell us what is going on, we can figure out a plan of action for you, and advise you on exercises to do, whether to use heat or ice, pain relief advice and help get you out of pain as quickly as possible.

Stay safe and look after yourselves and each other.

Peter, Jerome and Chris

Stay safe and look after yourselves and each other.

Peter, Jerome and Chris
 

We wanted to talk you through some basic strategies you can employ to boost your immune function so that if it does get to you, its impact will be far less.

Immunity is strongly linked to the autonomic nervous system (stress response). When we are stressed and our sympathetic nervous system is in full swing (fight or flight mode), adrenaline and other stress hormones surge in our bodies and this can cause short term suppression of our immune system. 

This means our bodies are then less equipped to deal with opportunistic infections. It is also the reason long term stress is linked to chronic inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. 

We’ll break this down into the supplements you can take to boost your immune system, the habits you can employ to reduce your risk of infection, and the exercises you can do to have your body primed to stave off infection.

Supplements: Our neighbour and great friend Tania Flack sat down with us to discuss the best supplements for immune function:

Vitamin C – This 2017 study talks about which dose to use to get the best immune system boost https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170330115246.htm

Vitamin D – Here is a link to a 2019 study explaining its role in boosting immune function https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190417111440.htm)

Zinc – Here is a link to a study showing how it modulates infection https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130207131344.htm)

ArmaForce (my personal favourite)

Olive Leaf Extract – to reduce severity of symptoms. Here is a 2019 study showing its effectiveness https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6412187/)

Habits:

Wash your hands. Here is a video showing great technique https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/28/health/how-to-wash-hands-coronavirus-trnd/index.html. And here is an article with song suggestions https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/28/health/how-to-wash-hands-coronavirus-trnd/index.html as they say you should wash your hands for as long as it takes to sing Happy Birthday Twice!

Soap and water are better than hand santiser but definitely use hand sanitiser if that is all you have access to.

Try to reduce how often you touch your face. This is one of the best ways to reduce the spread of infection. I find it hard to never touch my face, but I can easily reduce how often I do it by 50%, and am aiming for more.

Exercises from an Osteopathic Approach:

I am going to talk about 2 articles which showed how Osteopathic treatment can help fight infections of this nature, and the lessons you can learn to prime your body to fight off infection.

The first study looked at how osteopaths do lymphatic drainage techniques to improve immune system function, specifically focusing on pneumonia https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3437985/.

The second looked at the mortality statistics during the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-19 where an estimated 40 million people died. In the US Osteopaths work in hospitals and according to data of people treated by Osteos during that time the effectiveness of treatment was huge.

In people treated by an Osteopath, only 0.25% died.

In people not treated by an Osteopath, 5-6% died. That’s a 20-25 times higher death rate.

What does that mean for you? The treatment involved work on upper back, chest, ribs and neck to improve breathing, reduce pressure on lungs, improve blood flow in the area, and stimulate the immune system by improving lymphatic drainage.

• So you should do some foam rolling to increase mobility in your upper back.
• Stretch your chest and neck and shoulders. 
• Get up from your desk and move more to improve your circulation. Ideally get out in the sunlight to get some natural Vitamin D.
• Drink lots of water to keep your system well hydrated.
• Get plenty of sleep, as sleep has been shown to affect immune function in a huge way. Going from 8 hours to 7 hours a night can increase your risk of catching a cold by 3 times. Going to 6 hours increases your risk SIXFOLD!