Pain in or around your heel may be due to plantar fasciitis, or more correctly, plantar fasciosis. It can feel like a bruise or burning pain under your heel, tender on firm pressure. It usually starts for no apparent reason but can be the result of poor anatomical alignment of the foot and/or tight calf muscles. Poor standing and incorrect movement patterns in walking can put uneven load on the plantar fascia, which is a thick band of connective tissue along the sole of the foot that … [Read more...] about Plantar Fasciitis
General
Back Care
Back Pain Prevention The spine is designed to be in the upright position. If you are bending or sitting for a prolonged period, stand up and lean back a few times. This reverses stress on soft tissue and bony structures in the low back. Arching the back in standing is a simple exercise and is very effective for preventing acute onset of low back pain. If sitting for long periods, use a lumbar cushion. This maintains the normal curves in the spine (which is designed to be in the upright … [Read more...] about Back Care
Tendinopathy
Chronic tendon pain: no signs of chemical inflammation. Implications for treatment? Tendons are renowned sources of chronic symptoms in a wide range of upper and lower-limb disorders. This is not chronic inflammation, as inflammatory cells are never found in this degenerated tissue. With continued prolonged or repetitive loading, micro-trauma in a tendon may result and an inflammatory response is triggered, the first stage on the road to recovery. This is followed by tissue repair and … [Read more...] about Tendinopathy
Headaches
Headache can often be coming from the upper cervical spine, commonly called cervicogenic headache. The pain is usually associated with some degree of pain and stiffness in the neck. A common cause of headache is poor posture especially when the head is held in protruded positions for long periods such as in sitting using a computer. As the spine is designed to be in an upright position, long periods of sitting with the head forward can stress upper cervical spine segments and refer pain into the … [Read more...] about Headaches
Taking a Stand on Sitting
"Sitting is the new smoking" is a phrase that has taken the internet by storm for some time now. Indeed, most people know that sitting for lengthy periods each day is not ideal - its effect likened to that of smoking in terms of how it can negatively impact our health overtime. Safe Work Australia (SWA) reminds us that sitting is a sedentary behaviour which slows metabolism and results in the pooling of blood, thereby implicating blood pressure, blood glucose levels and overall cardiovascular … [Read more...] about Taking a Stand on Sitting
Chronic Pain
Chronic pain affects 17% of males and 20% of females in NSW and in a significant proportion of these people, it will impact on their daily lives. Major advances have been made in our understanding of pain in the last 40 years. It is now widely accepted that pain is a multi-dimensional experience. Major advances have revealed that not only are afferent nerve impulses modulated in the spinal cord, but by regions of the brain that regulate attention, emotion and memory. In essence this means … [Read more...] about Chronic Pain
Treating Lower Back Pain Without Drugs or Surgery
You're worn down by intermittent back pain. It's an unpredictable beast. It can come on so strongly you cannot walk, or sit. At least you think you can't (but read on). In desperation, you consider surgery — but this is not always a good move. The evidence of benefit from surgery is weak at best, as a recent Lancet series on lower back pain found. Despite this, plenty of people are still going under the knife. Lumbar spine surgery rates are doubling roughly every 10 years, according … [Read more...] about Treating Lower Back Pain Without Drugs or Surgery