The General Chiropractic
Council
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This has to be one of the most commonly asked questions I have to answer when a new patient comes in for the first treatment. And I don’t give a straightforward answer like two weeks five visits or such like. It is in reality impossible, it is the chiropractic equivalent of how long is a piece of string.
This ties in nicely (bad pun) with a new book I have started to read Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. Inside front cover of the book summarises the book, why do some people achieve success so much more than others? Can they lie so far outside the ordinary? What is the secret of their success?
The simple answer is 10,000 hours. From Bill Gates to the Beatles it is the way you spend your time that will make you a success, and that amount of time is 10,000 hours. So back to the original question, how long before my back gets better? 10,000 treatments is obviously the answer! Well maybe not. Most patients get out of pain with in the month, maybe after two hours of treatment. But to make a success of your back and achieve ‘wellness’ then maybe 10,000 hours over your life just devoted to your health is about right.
So getting you out of pain is generally quick but getting you to a point where your back is a success is going to take a long time and you will have to be serious about it. Which is okay with us as we are here for the long term and will help you to help your back.
The next Blog is about procrastination and is why it is so hard to change the habits of a lifetime and why prioritising your health is low on “the task list of life!”
Its no wonder laptops are becoming increasingly popular. They offer convenience and liberation from the office. Eve
ryone knows the less time spent in the office the better! But with these benefits can come pain. Even the lightest laptop these days can become quite cumbersome and tiresome to haul around between the office and home. I am seeing more and more patients coming into Angel Chiropractic Clinic complaining of aching neck and shoulder pain which can be traced back to improper laptop us
e and more commonly just the simple strain of carrying them around.
So, the question remains what can one do to reduce these nasty side-affects of laptop usage. Firstly you can take steps to stop the inevitable neck and shoulder strain from hunching over your computer for hours at a time. Take regular breaks, roll your shoulders and neck around gently to release the build up in tension. Invest in a laptop stand which can offer relief by elevating the screen to your eye level.
Secondly minimize the stress on your shoulders by switching to a wheeled case if you spend long periods in transit. If this doesn’t appeal make sure you have a bag that hugs the body, and has a wide, heavily padded shoulder strap to distribute the weight and reduce shoulder strain as much as possible.
Fed up with the doom and gloom that’s in the papers at the moment or wallowing in it by adding a dose of self pity to the mix?
What about that dreaded ‘R’ word? RECESSION. It seems to have the same stigma to it as MACBETH does in the theatre business or VOLDERMORT in the Harry Potter books!
Is there a problem with accepting the situation and moving forward, onwards and upwards? Isn’t that what you have to do if you are an alcoholic? Accept what you are, own up to your personality and your behaviour and move forward? Only then can you get better. Not easy of course, and perhaps there is the same lack of acceptance over the recession, in turn prolonging the agony. Are we tempted use doom and gloom in the media as a distraction from our true selves and our own lives?
After all, we do not have any power over the economy and can’t on an individual basis do anything about it. What we can do, is change aspects of our lives and how we live them. That takes personal reflection, insight and honesty, which is naturally a little uncomfortable. The easier or ‘safer’ route is to avoid these feelings and reality and work ourselves up into a state over the recession.
So what can we do? We can take personal responsibility for our health. For some, the obvious things are to stop smoking or drinking and with Christmas a New Year on the horizon I am sure there will be plenty of publicity about these ‘vices’. For others targets may be to take a bit more exercise or to eat more healthily. But for the majority of the patients I see, the biggest problems are more general ‘lifestyle’ problems and in particular problems associated with work.
Many of us already spend a third of the day sitting at a desk and in this financial climate this may increase. In an economic downturn, stress and pressure make everything that bit harder so it’s more important than ever to look after yourself. My two top tips are to get your spine adjusted to keep yourself well (easy, it only takes 10 minutes and you an even fit it in on your way to or from work) and to create (more difficult as you probably need a little more time, and you’re probably prioritising work right now) some time and space to do the things in life that you enjoy.
When it comes down to it you can only enjoy yourself if you are coping with work and stress in a healthy way. Come and see us and find out how Angel Chiropractic Clinic can help you function better, help your body cope with stress and set you free to gain more from life.
No, this doesn’t refer to McCain’s mental state in having Sarah Palin as his running mate. I think if he knew as much about her then as he does now and he still chose her then he would clearly be one state short of a majority. This ‘is he or isn’t he’ refers to David Beckham signing for AC Milan after Christmas.
There have been lots of suggestions as to “why AC Milan?” such as “his missus will like the shopping”, “Posh likes pasta and pizza” – well, maybe individual lengths of spaghetti or a pizza the size of a canapé. Or maybe it could be because he will get to
play football with some of the world’s finest players and have his fitness managed by a chiropractor at the Milan Lab!
This period with Milan Lab’s chiropractor Dr Messerman will not do his value as player any harm and I am sure it will keep the England manager and former manager of AC Milan happy. Maybe this spell will enable him to get to Bobby Moore’s number of caps and even more interesting this move may help him prolong his career as a footballer. I am sure that the owners of LA Galaxy wont see it like this as they will prefer him to have a bit of a rest when their season finishes but they are Americans and what do they know about football, sorry, soccer.
Beckham's move to AC Milan may help him no end, after all Beckham is a great athlete and has kept himself comparative
ly injury free in his career - there is a chance that he can emulate the other AC Milan pensioner Paolo Maldini who is 39 and contemplating another year on his contract. Maldini is a full six years older and still playing at a top level, albeit as a defender (okay, he has spent a good deal of his career laying on the pitch and rolling around feigning being fouled).
So what has AC Milan’s chiropractor got to offer and why is a chiropractor in charge of fitness and rehab? A complete approach to wellness and injury prevention without the shackles of conventional medicine’s paradigm into health. This complete approach to wellness is what we have here in Islington. Upper Street’s own Milan Lab (not quite), but an understanding that there is a lot more to health and fitness than treating illness and injuries. It is about making sure that the whole body is 
functioning as well as possible.
Here is quote from David Beckham’s chiropractor:
"Players are seen every day by the chiropractor," Meersseman explains. "This allows us to prevent numerous injuries, while maximising the player's performance. We apply chiropractic in a subluxation‑centered, wellness‑oriented perspective. We especially place a strong emphasis on the upper cervical area and applied kinesiology allows us integrate the biochemical and mental aspect of the triangle of health, as well as to respond to the specific needs of sports chiropractic."
The figures for Dr Meersseman are very good, he has improved injury recovery time, he has reduced the number of steroid injections the team has over a season and consequently this has allowed AC Milan to have a smaller squad that saves the finances and has kept Maldini going at 39.
All these are the benefits of chiropractic for a professional football but it doesn’t take a lot of thought to see how the population of Upper Street, Islington and the surrounding areas can also benefit form chiropractic, especially in these ‘grim’ economic times. If you are an employer you want what staff you have to work at their best, you may have thinned out your staff over recent months and maybe the remaining staff are having to work a bit harder. So looking after them is going to pay off. They will be off work less often and they will feel better at work.
I imagine that a lot of time at Milan Lab is spent at looking at how the upper body and neck function in conjunction with the biomechanics of how the ankle, hips, knees and pelvis function when striking the ball. This is no different to looking at how the body is functioning at work sitting in front of a pc. We can assess how your body is functioning and make changes to how your spine functions in response to your working environment and prevent injury and fatigue at work.
So maybe David Beckham and Dr Meersseman are going to increase the public’s awareness of chiropractic. I will let you know when the first male patient comes in to the clinic wearing a sarong!
Read more about the Milan Lab here:
www.worldchiropracticalliance.org/tcj/2006/nov/k.htm and
Will my back pain get better if I spend £150 on MBT’s?
If spending £150 on a pair of MBT’s means that you are going to do a lot more walking then there is possibly a benefit from buying them. But will it cure your back pain, I doubt it.
There is a lot in their advertising about Masai warriors not getting back pain and how the shoes simulate the ground giving way under foot. Here are some of the claims:
• Improves posture and gait.
• Tones and shapes the body.
• Can help with back, hip, leg and foot problems
• Can help with joint, muscle, ligament and tendon injuries.
• Reduce strain on knee and hip joints.
• MBT activates the whole body.
I have no problems with people buying shoes or trainers to help with a physical activity. You only have to go into one of the big sport shoe shops to see the range of specialist shoes, dedicated running shoes for the aspiring marathon runner, running shoes for cross country running, tennis shoes that come in all sorts of different configurations for the different surfaces, cross training shoes that do a bit of everything and then the more ‘off-road’ type of shoes for running up and down mountains or in my case worn when walking the dog.
So there is clearly a shoe for everyone out there and of course they all purport to help cushion the foot, provide support, prevent fatigue in the foot muscles and of course they all claim to help protect against injury and aid performance. None of them until now claim to ‘activate the whole body’.
Can a shoe activate the whole body? Nothing that is laced to your feet, strapped to your arm playing music or stuck to your shoe to record how far and fast you have run can activate your body. The only thing that can activate the whole body is you and marketing a shoe as the panacea, and this is what it is in this way I feel is unhelpful.
There has been a lot of press coverage in the past about obesity and diet. In particular mentioning that children growing up now are going to be less fit than their parents and even having a predicted lifespan less than their parents. I have a child and this is indeed worrying so how do I address it at a family level? My little boy is keen on walking and having a dog we walk a lot. He enjoys running around with his cousins. We play tennis and throw a rugby ball about; I am getting off the point here. So what is it that I am going on about? It is our choice of lifestyle that causes the problems that we have and not our footwear.
I imagine that a Masai warrior has a very different lifestyle to us, I reckon that one of the reasons the Masai don’t get back pain is because they don’t spend a third of their day sitting at a computer staring at a screen, I imagine they are out and about hunting and gathering to a level that we over here haven’t done for centuries. We are all designed to be hunter-gatherers and actively seek out our food and have a diet of lean meat and fish, fruits and nuts, live an active life and die in middle age. I guess there isn’t much time for back pain.
So back to the original question. Can a shoe activate the whole body? No. Only you can activate the whole body, it is your choice to change your life and look at what you do and of course the effect your choices in life have on you and your health.
So maybe the Nike slogan is best ‘Just do it’.
Brian Bamberger
Read Article in Irish 'Independant' reviewing MBts
Did you know you could be getting more out of your gym workout by understanding your spine? We’re working with local gyms Sequinpark, Kinetic and Fitness First to help you develop a personal training plan which work for you . Done correctly you can use your gym workout as rehabilitation for past injuries or even to improve your posture.
Look out for us at Sequinpark, Kinetic and Fitness First this month – we have advice and free spinal screening stands on several forthcoming dates: