Spinal Health Week, running from 20-26 May this year, is a national initiative of the Chiropractors’ Association of Australia to educate Australians on the importance of spinal health to overall health and wellness.
The video below, produced to highlight the health risks of sitting and partly shot in Hands On Superhealth’s city clinic featuring our own Dr Marti Harris asks: “Is sitting the new smoking?”
Stress can mean all sorts of different things to different people. Sometimes we may not even know that we are suffering from stress but someone else can tell. Stress can occur when we have too much going on in our lives, too many pressures and too many demands. When we experience too much stress our bodies can show physical signs of stresses including subluxations, headaches, fatigue and muscle twitches. We can also experience emotional signs of stresses including anxiety, irritability, lack of concentration and anger. The trick is to be aware when we are stressed, identify what causes us to stress and figure out what we can do to help stress.
1. Healthy Diet instead of junk food
2. Relaxation Therapies including meditation, yoga and deep breathing exercises
3. Using positive thoughts instead of negative
4. Hot baths with Epsom salts
5. Massages
6. Herbal remedies especially herbal tea
Headaches are one of the most common ailments to affect Australians. Between 75 to 90 percent of the population suffer from headaches each year. Causes of headaches range from sinus, neck and dental problems too metabolic and hormonal disorders. Tension headaches are a form of headache that comes from holding tension in different areas of your body. Having a tight jaw or shoulders (brought on by stress usually!) can lead to tension headaches.
1. Drinking plenty of water each day
2. A healthy diet
3. Chiropractic Care
4. Exercise
5. Rest
6. Fresh Air
Dr Brian Callan – Hands On Superhealth Chiropractor
The way we stand, move and our posture, strongly reflects our emotional state. Think about your posture when you are feeling depressed or vulnerable – you may walk around with your head down or sit with a slumped posture. You truly look as if you have “the weight of the world on your shoulders”.
On the other hand if you feel happy and confident, you may walk with your head up, looking forward and even swinging your shoulders – you are walking with a “spring in your step”!
When we experience psychological shock, or emotional trauma, these experiences can settle into our body tissues. This may be evident in muscular tightness that is painful to touch, or sore spots. The memory of the ligaments, muscle and body tissue can become ‘locked in’ as tension gets fixated in the body. If we have a poor posture, there will be a disturbance that causes a whole body distortion pattern. Chronic pain and suffering is often a pattern linked to trauma experienced in our past.
The mind and body do reflect one another; a pattern of poor posture can be constant and feel almost normal for the person. Poor posture may be quite comfortable or quite painless – due to the length of time it has been in that position, the body will learn to cope. When these emotional experiences get locked as poor posture, this becomes a chronic stress using up extra energy and body resources.
Having poor posture is draining, both in terms of energy and health. In order to correct poor posture it is often necessary to also treat the underlying causes; emotional trauma as well as the physical pattern. Treating emotions linked to body tension usually requires a holistic care approach with a tailored program of care over a period of time. It will take time and repeated correction of the whole body posture for the body to accept changes and release of underlying emotional patterns.
At Hands On Superhealth practices, DRs of Chiropractic have experience in postural emotional work
New Concerns over the game of Soccer as to the practice of ‘Heading’ the ball!
Heading a soccer ball can woo fans and score goals, but it may also adversely affect a players ability to think, a study from the University of Texas Health Sciences suggests.
The neurological effect of concussions and other serious head injuries has made headlines in recent weeks, particularly in the USA and Australia. A recent study has found Australian footballers are experiencing higher than average memory issues later in life.
Less attention has been paid to the potential effects of pre-concussive impacts, such as those sustained when heading a soccer ball. In 2011, researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine found subtle structural changes in the brain that may be associated with repetitive small impacts to the head as occurs in the heading of the ball in soccer.
Although there were notable changes in the brain, its true impact on actual functional change has been difficult to measure…until now. Thanks to the ipad, previously unattainable data is now only a fingertip away!
Professor of neurobiology, Dr Anne B Sereno developed an iPad version of a well-accepted cognitive test involving boxes and squares that light up in sequences; “a good test of executive function” in the brain, according to Dr Sereno.
Initial studies have found that when comparing soccer players to non-soccer players, cognitive levels were lower in the soccer players. The more hours a week of soccer being played, the observation was that there was poorer performance in the cognitive tests.
Although the study so far was not large enough to make any definitive remarks, researchers note “it is a bit concerning.” They have recommended a series of larger studies to further understand the effects of heading the soccer ball over time.
Ryan Hislop
Chiropractor
There are Australians who vote with their feet.
Australians consult Chiropractors in hundreds of thousands every year and want to develop productive professional healthcare relationships that are about their families health, their healthcare choices and options for care. These healthy and productive relationships do exist between non-medical and medical practitioners; only the individual needs of each patient are in focus, not some inappropriate turf war.
This patient focused approach is helping the individual patient to become informed and involved in decision making and health outcomes, these are the goals of the emerging healthcare system of Australia.
Unfortunately there has been a continued and concerted effort by only some medical doctors’ (these are represented by their unions; AMA in Australia and the AMA in the USA) to destroy the role of chiropractic in the healthcare system in the 70s and 80s.
The CEO of the Chiropractors’ Association of Australia (CAA), Andrew McNamara, has described recent media comments about Chiropractors by the AMA and a group claiming to be friends of science in medicine as “alarmist and offensive.” The comments, published in several newspapers, purported to be concerns about Chiropractors treating children, but Mr McNamara said they did not provide any evidence to back up these concerns. “Chiropractic is safe, effective, affordable and mainstream. These tactics have no place in modern thinking about a healthier Australia. They are the latest instalment of an old and tiresome turf war by the doctors’ union that has nothing to do with patient care,” Mr McNamara said. “Moreover the Chiropractor is a professional thriving in the environment of Australians actively seeking healthy lifestyles and preventative health care advice,” he said.
I remind us all again that the final decision about where a child receives appropriate care is for their parents. I am in private practice and work with a group of general medical practitioners. I observe their dedication to patient-centred outcomes and they are well aware of the services that we are able to provide for their patients.
Working at our Springwood practice in the Blue Mountains, within a GP Superclinic, I observe parents bringing their children to the GP and talking about their chiropractor and the improvements they have seen. These parents should be supported in their healthcare decision-making wherever possible.
I very much ask that Mamamia request more research and information from broader based authorities across the world in regards to children and chiropractic benefits. There are authorities specializing in world-wide reporting of adverse reactions in children to many areas of healthcare intervention. The question of safety is not a question; it has been investigated and there is no evidence of risk or a lack of safety for chiropractic care for children. I know of only one specialized association.(International Chiropractic Pediatric Association ICPA )
Please get a few comments across these arguments for your readers to consider.
In a general sense, however, I do suggest that it is difficult to cite the meaning and validity of research /reports and the substance of their references. This area of argument is best left to representation by academia / statisticians who continue to research and resolve these issued in their combined forum of publications.
As practicing health care professionals in clinical practice, we must focus on the patient in front of us every day. Whenever they are concerned about their health we must give honest counsel and support. The demonstration of improved health benefits to a GP and/or a chiropractor from a chiropractic treatment of the spine or related area is undeniable in clinical practice. It could be argued that to withhold a treatment that is know from clinical experience to be of benefit, is unethical. There is truth in delivering the least invasive care for a child as the most desirable. For example it is now the normal after years of medical experience in the USA to never administer antibiotics for the child presentation of an ear infection unless there has been confirmation that it is bacterial in origin.
Professor MacLennan’s belief that a parent who takes their child to a chiropractor is abusing their child is a most unfortunate and inappropriate comment. He does not explain his attack on parents; whether it is the lack of scientific evidence for chiropractic treatment or whether potential injuries are the basis of his belief that it is abusive for a parent to take their child to a chiropractor. I note that his opinion is out of step with the medical insurance industry. This fundamental watchdog does not share his safety concerns and chiropractic professional indemnity premiums are not subsided due to added risk concerns; Federal Government Report-Professional Indemnity
Dr Sue-Ellen Mckelvey-Chiropractor
Dr Brian Callan- Chiropractor
