Physiotherapy for pain and injury in London
The brain is where it’s at. Or so it seems if you read the press or look at the bookshelves. The notion that brain is everything has been challenged recently and so it should — see here. We need enquiry at every point, challenging the comfort of thinking that we know. Despite this, it seems […]
The popular press is awash with neuroscience, now to the point that some authors are becoming ‘anti’. We need debate, so hats off to those contributors who rightly ask questions. We should never sit back and accept a ‘fact’ but instead, test, test, test. Despite this fresh discussion, we do accept that the brain has […]
It is useful to know where you are. Neil Burgess spends his time studying this important function by looking at the brain, the hippocampus to be specific. It would appear that the same brain cells that create our sense of where we are and recalling that information for practical use are also at play when […]
I see a number of cases of cervical dystonia (spasmodic torticollis) that features awkward posturing and movement of the head and neck. This can be painful and have consequences for normal activities. We rely upon being able to orientate ourselves to our environment by controlling our head and gaze direction and then responding appropriately. Primary dystonia has no […]
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 […]
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 […]
Recent research has identified biological reasons for joint pain in arthritis: Interleukin-6, a pro-inflammatory cytokine released both locally at the joint and in the spinal cord, consequently plays a role in the widespread nature of the pain via its role in central sensitisation. Sprouting of sensory and sympathetic fibres at the joint may well have […]
Pain is multidimensional. Pain is 100% produced by the brain in response to a perceived threat. The brain allocates a location using the cortical maps, hence why we feel pain in our backs or knees. The brain tries to make sense of the situation, scrutinising what is going on on the basis of past experience […]
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 […]
I once had a conversation with a member of staff who told me that she was ‘just a receptionist’. Anyone who has considered the patient journey will realise that this statement is untrue. There is no ‘just’. There are important people involved with the patient’s experience from the start, and usually the receptionist is the […]
Running in the woods today I was taken back to school days when we would go down to the habitat to learn about nature. Our enthusiastic science teacher, whose laboratory experiments would invariably go wrong, led us down the hill, across the playing fields and into a small wooded area that surrounded a murky pond. […]
Back pain is very common and most people will experience it. Many reasons are given for back pain, usually blaming the discs (they are not discs but rather amazing structures that work with the vertebrae to allow movement and force transduction — they are also very robust), joints, muscles and posture. The simple fact is […]