With the Chelsea Flower Show in full bloom the world of gardening is full of excitement and wonder as the designers exhibit their creations. Gardeners can relate to this sense of cultivation and creativity as they work hard to illustrate their vision through their plants, flowers, grasses and other garden features. Gardening is often physically [...]
Back pain in football and sport
August 29, 2012 By 265 Comments
Back pain is a common experience across society. Millions are spent each year on treatment yet we do not seem to be making any significant progress in tackling this vast problem. Undoubtedly footballers are also subject to spinal aches and pains, either from a direct injury or insidiously. Most people whom I see fall into [...]
Manual therapy, pain and the immune system
February 11, 2012 By 256 Comments
As a physiotherapist I frequently use my hands to treat the joints and tissues. It comes with the territory, everyone expects hands-on therapy and it does helps to reduce tension and pain. Most likely, the pain relief from joint mobilisation is due to descending mechanisms that include those that are powered by serotonin and noradrenaline [...]
Central sensitisation is more common than you may think
January 21, 2012 By 242 Comments
Clifford Woolf recently said this about central sensitisation: Nociceptor inputs can trigger a prolonged but reversible increase in the excitability and synaptic efficacy of neurons in central nociceptive pathways, the phenomenon of central sensitization. Central sensitization manifests as pain hypersensitivity, particularly dynamic tactile allodynia, secondary punctate or pressure hyperalgesia, aftersensations, and enhanced temporal summation. It [...]
Is immediate imaging important in managing low back pain?
January 20, 2012 By 774 Comments
Careful thinking is required when judging whether to image or not. J Athl Train. 2011 Jan-Feb;46(1):99-102. Is immediate imaging important in managing low back pain? Andersen JC. Source The University of Tampa, 401 West Kennedy Boulevard, Box 104F, Tampa, FL 33606, USA. jcandersen@ut.edu Abstract REFERENCE: Chou R, Fu R, Carrino JA, Deyo RA. Imaging strategies [...]
Back Pain and the BackCare Charity
December 19, 2011 By 176 Comments
Back pain is an enormous problem that impacts upon individuals and society. Most people will experience back pain at some point in their lifetime and a proportion will suffer continuing and recurring problems. Those who do continue to experience pain require effective treatment and strategies so that the impact and the distress that it can [...]
Using neuroscience to understand and treat pain
October 21, 2011 By 207 Comments
I love neuroscience. It makes my job much easier despite being a hugely complex subject. Neuroscience research has cast light over some of the vast workings of our brains and helped to explain how we experience ourselves and the richness of life. An enormous topic, in this blog I am briefly going to outline the way in [...]
Mastering your rehabilitation – Part 1: why exercise & train?
September 29, 2011 By 254 Comments
When we sustain an injury or experience a painful condition, our movement changes. In the early stages this can be obvious, for example we would limp having sprained an ankle. Sometimes the limp, medically termed an ’antalgic gait’, persists without the individual being aware. This is the same for other forms of guarding that is part of [...]
Dysmenorrhoea & Pain
September 26, 2011 By 113 Comments
You may wonder why I am writing about dysmenorrhoea. It is because in a number of cases that I see, there is co-existing dysmenorrhea and other functional pain syndromes. These include irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), migraine, chronic low back pain, pelvic pain, bladder pain and fibromyalgia. Traditionally all of these problems are managed by different [...]
Neuropathic pain Update
September 14, 2011 By 247 Comments
