Thank you for joining us for today’s livestream where we talked about why you might be dealing with upper back pain, whether it’s coming from your back or your neck and how to resolve the problem!

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We’ll be talking about 4 main reasons you might be experiencing back pain. We’re talking upwards of the thoracic spine, around the area of the bra-strap. This will be less about where neck problems refer pain down.  Dull Aching In The Mid-Back This is quite common in teenage boys particularly where the thoracic spine is growing quickly. It’s essentially growing pains. Teenagers are very vulnerable to this. There’s not much that can be done to prevent this pain from occurring, but trying to make sure they’re sitting with generally good posture will help them to feel better, as well as doing things that will help to reduce the inflammation - such as using ice. Try to stop them from having poor posture when playing video games, or make sure they’re frequently moving around.  Sharp Pain Shooting From The Spine You might end up straining a rib, which will cause sharp pain shooting from the spine. This isn’t really a serious injury although it’ll likely be very painful. If you’ve compressed an intercostal nerve, you might experience the sharp pain that shoots around the rib.  

Rib/Chest Pain Just out to the side where the ribs join with cartilage. This joint isn’t supposed to move. When alignment isn’t good, it is possible to get inflammation and movement on the front of the ribs. If this is causing any kind of sharp pain to occur on the left side of your chest, you should get this checked out as soon as possible in case it is posing a threat to your heart. As long as the cardio system has been checked over and you’re fine, you can then go on to address the back. Correcting your posture here will be most helpful for you.  

General Aching Between Shoulder Blades This can be caused by ongoing tension in the thoracic spine, caused by spending long periods in front of the TV or slouching over a laptop. Coughing fits can also cause this. This isn’t usually a quick fix unfortunately as it involves changing behaviour. This is going to happen due to poor muscle support and poor core stability. Over time when you’re less active, you start to round over the postural muscles. This stretched posture can cause the muscles to ache and become sore. If you reach for a posture support at that point, you’re going to see further degradation of the muscles because a support is holding you up now and not your muscles. Strengthening your postural muscles is going to be most helpful but it’s not going to be a quick fix. It takes time to build muscle, just like it takes time to actually get these problems to begin with. The Phase 3 of our Back In Shape program is going to help you do this.

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Thank you for joining us for today’s livestream where we talked about what sciatica is, what it’s not and a practical definition so that you can get the help you need.

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Sciatica is pain that stems from the lower back, travelling along the sciatic nerve that runs down the back of the leg down into the feet. It’s a description of a symptom. There is a misconception that sciatica cannot be cured, which is simply not true. Sciatica is a lumbogenic leg pain, meaning that an injury is present in the lower back that’s causing you that sciatic pain - accompanied (or not) by back pain.  Slipped discs, bulging discs, spinal stenosis, degenerative disc disease or spondylolisthesis etc, can all cause sciatica.  In a neutral lumbar spine, there’s a normal height of discs and size of the hole where nerves travel through out of the back.  In a forward bending spine, there’s squashing on the front of the disc and inflammation decreases the hole size at the back where the nerves travel. This is where you get disc bulges. This lessening in the size of the hole places pressure in the nerve, causes things like knee hugs and nerve flossing to be prescribed. Knee hugs place more pressure on the front of the disc, although they create a bigger hole for the nerve which is why you’re prescribed them. We often lean forwards because it feels better.  In extension, there is an unloading of the spine. If you backward bend, the hole out the back becomes smaller. You’ll get pain associated with that, but you won’t be making the problem worse.  Exercise is important to rehabilitate the problem for the long-term. A lot of people will feel comfortable with forgoing exercise because of the pain, but feel comfortable about doing their day-to-day activities. The exercises we recommend in the outset are so gentle that everyday activities are harder on your body than these exercises, but they’re actively helping you.

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Thank you for joining us for today’s livestream where we talked about how to fix bad posture.

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 We’ll be going into what good posture looks like, how you can correct bad posture and how good posture can help how well your body is functioning.  If you’re in our Back In Shape membership area, we did a video on good posture recently. Good posture protects our spine and nervous system. Ears over the shoulders, over the hips and over the ankles. Good posture doesn’t always lead to good alignment. You can stand against a wall to see how close your posture is too good. If you find it difficult to have the head against the wall, your posture may have deviated from normal. This good posture allows the body to effectively shock absorb the movements you make.  

There can be articles out there that say posture doesn’t cause back pain. You can certainly get away with having bad posture, just like you can get away with having worn tyres or brake pads, but that doesn’t mean they won’t become a problem at some point. If it would hurt to have bad posture, we wouldn’t have this problem.  If you spend a lot of time sitting down on a daily basis, you might sit during your commute, sit down to eat dinner and then sit down to do more work or relax in front of the TV in the evening. A lot of us don’t sit upright when relaxing on the sofa, it’s this semi-recumbent position or slouching in a chair. This compresses the front of the spine and squashes your discs. It leads to stretching of the neck which stresses the muscles and ligaments that keep your spine in good alignment. If you accentuate the thoracic curve in the spine, you will still stretch it further and stress out the area.  If you have a straight neck, you have a 75% stretch on the ligaments. The muscles are stretched and not primed to take any stress away from the spine. We see significant neck alignment issues in the neck even though it looks like you have good posture.  Rounded shoulders decrease our ability to fill the lungs and can give you chest pain. There’s a simple fix to just open out the chest.

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Thank you for joining us for today’s livestream where we talked about chronic back pain and the exercises that are going to be the most beneficial for this type of problem. Anyone can injure their back regardless of how healthy or active they are, but why do sometimes these problems become chronic?  

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Sometimes we can see people with worse injuries, recover quicker than someone with not such a severe problem. You may have a flare-up that continues to crop up from time to time, we would still class this problem as chronic as it likely didn’t heal properly to begin with.  The role of your spine is to provide a solid base of support and weight-bear. We can injure our backs by repeatedly adopting poor posture or by lifting something with poor form. When your lower back becomes compressed. If you tear a ligament, and do the correct things that help the problem to heal - it can take a bit of time to return back to its normal strength but you will get the integrity back over the next few months. 

What frequently happens is that people are spending excessive amounts of time sitting or doing knee hugs to help it feel better, but this continually weakens the area. Your body will still try to heal itself but you’ll start getting scar tissue like if you were to continually reopen a cut on your hand.  Not understanding the mechanism of the injury can cause the injury to become chronic. A lot of things affect the healing of your injury, such as being overweight, smoking, inactivity, alcohol consumption, no muscle mass, poor diet, poor movement habits and hobbies that encourage poor movement patterns.

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Thank you for joining us for today’s livestream where we talked about hypermobility. 

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Having good flexibility is a good thing, as it helps your muscles and joints to function correctly. We’re going to be talking about the gymnasts, ballet dancers or acrobats that are likely to have more flexibility than is normal. Strength based activities can be more difficult for this type of person, whereas ones involving flexibility will come easier.  If you do have hypermobile joints, you may find dealing with back pain more difficult. We have ligaments that hold our spine together, and when we have normal levels of flexibility the spine allows normal range of flexibility. For those with hypermobility issues, the joints can fall out of place very easily. There is a spectrum of more flexible than normal to the extremity of where joints can dislocate extremely easily because of lax ligaments.  You’re innately more wobbly, so having strength and integrity is important. An injury is an extra wobbly part that needs support. This type of person will need more strength in their muscles than the average person. Very often, in more flexible people they may pursue these activities like gymnastics or ballet rigorously during childhood and then stop cold turkey at some point. You then lose the strength you’ve built during that time relatively quickly.

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Thank you for joining us for today’s livestream where we talked about back supports. We’re going to talk about perhaps why you might wear them, when you shouldn’t wear them and any considerations you need to make if you are thinking of purchasing a back brace.

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Upper Back Posture Supports There are posture supports that pull the shoulders back, even T-shirts can have built in posture supports now. Poor posture occurs due to weakness, which can cause people to jump to using these posture supports. We provide a serious word of caution because these supports feel good - that’s due to your body not doing the work and being in a good position. They’re often used so that you can withstand longer hours doing repetitive activities. We have posture supports built into our body, they’re called muscles and can get stronger with the right persistence. We’re not designed to sit at desks for hours on end.  Lower Back Posture Supports / Bodybuilding Belts Weightlifting belts might be gravitated towards in the gym. The belt would sit just above the hips, but the most commonly injured discs do set below this level. Generally the belt will protect the middle of the lumbar spine, which forces strain directly to those commonly injured segments. If you’re using it due to an injury in those discs, it’s only making the problem worse because of the segments it’s protecting. The only reason to use these would be a very high level powerlifter.  If you’re using a fabric lumbar support belt, these resemble more of a corset. The use of these will be more specific. If you’ve got a very severe back issue and are having to make a long journey by car or by plane. Sit it lower so that it covers the whole lumbar spine and only use it for the day you’re travelling if you are usually unable to move for no more than a few minutes without pain.

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Thank you for joining us for today’s livestream where we talked about how to treat sacroiliac joint pain. We’re going to be explaining the relationship between the SIJ and the lower back and how to deal with these problems in the future.

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The sacroiliac joint can often be pinpointed as an issue following many different diagnoses in the past. Unlike many joints, we don’t directly control the sacroiliac joint, so you can’t move it on demand. It allows the transmitting of forces from the hip into the lumbar spine. It provides stability to the structure.  You can’t specifically rehabilitate the sacroiliac joint because you can’t isolate the area. Looking at the research, practitioners can be inaccurate when it comes to testing mobility of the sacroiliac joint, so it’s not hugely accurate to make a diagnosis on the area without imaging.  During pregnancy, the ligaments loosen and can cause a genuine problem in the sacroiliac joint. If you have a lower back problem, you might see issues with the SI joint come to light, and they may be more mobile. The structure alone does not become injured, rather it’s likely to be an additional area of problem in addition to the lumbar spine.  Poor movement can contribute to this issue as it makes the back more exposed to injury and compromise the sacroiliac joint. There’s usually instability in the sacroiliac joint that causes people to come in complaining of a problem there. This instability is caused by gravity compressing down onto the joints and making them unstable, which if you’ve seen any of our other videos you will recall why. If your spinal alignment changes, the way we absorb the weight of gravity changes and we become more susceptible to injury. Taking the pressure off can resolve the problem.  Improving the mobility in your lower spine, increasing the strength and reengaging the core allow you to improve the function of the back. Supporting the natural curve in the back is important to take the pressure off. Strengthening then allows you to improve long-term prospects.

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Thank you for joining us for today’s livestream where we talked about how you can get back into the gym when they’re due to reopen next week. If you have back pain you’ll need to be careful how you proceed when getting back in the gym as chances are you haven’t been using the traditional dumbbells at home during this time. We’re going to talk about how you can get back in the gym after lockdown without re-injury!

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Have a Plan Have a program that you’re going to be doing, a workout structure that’ll introduce you into working out gently and build slowly. This is important to avoid doing too much too soon.  Don’t Overdo It It can be really fun to workout with weights, but don’t do too much too quickly. You should do a slow progression to get back into a routine, make sure you’re doing the exercises with good technique and don’t resume where you were before lockdown as you’re likely to injure yourself.  T.R.E.A.T Test, rest, evaluate, adjust and test again. See how you’re feeling after the first workout, whether you have any delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). See if it was too hard, too easy, adjust and then try again.   Stretching Maintaining the stretching when you’re incorporating strengthening is very important. A good stretching routine can take about 15 minutes, and if you neglect it over a day or two you may not notice the difference. Over a couple of weeks of neglecting stretching, you may notice that you’re starting to tense and stiffen up again. Keep the Phase 1 routine going on your rest days to help with recovery.   What We’re Doing Going back in at about 60%, steering clear of low repetition exercises. We’re training for general health and wellbeing, sticking to 15 repetitions of squats, deadlifts, bench presses and rows - these are compound exercises that work multiple muscles. We’re also doing the towel afterwards.  Classes Classes are very generalised so perhaps steer clear of these for the meantime. They’re not designed to be one-on-one so you may not get specific enough guidance.

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Thank you for joining us on today’s livestream where we talked about the cause of pins and needles sensations in the toes. With issues stemming in the back it can be very common to experience a wide range of symptoms, including pins and needles in the legs, feet and toes. We’re going to explain today why that happens and what you can do to help!

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We see a lot of patients experiencing numbness, they might complain of their leg being numb. If you’re able to specify when you see a doctor the level of numbness you’re feeling in the leg can help the practitioner better understand. You might have complete loss of feeling or just an altered sensation.   You’re going to get this through blocking of the blood vessels or nerves, in the same way you might get tingling arms if you sleep on your arm. If you regularly cross your legs, you may experience frequent pins and needles in the legs but this is a vascular problem - the feeling returns when you remove the pressure.  If it’s due to a compressed nerve in the spine, you might feel burning, stabbing or pins and needles like pain in the legs, feet or toes. It’s possible to take the pressure off but you need to make sure you’re doing the right things. Does the sensation fluctuate when you have it? If the sensation changes when you sit, stand or walk then this is usually a good sign. If you treat the disc problem that causes this, you should see a reduction in these symptoms.   Another possible cause of pins and needles in the feet is peripheral neuropathy caused by diabetes. The blood vessels become damaged with diabetes which usually affects the extremities of the body first, usually beginning in the feet and working up.  Deficiencies in sodium and potassium can also affect your nerves. Calcium also helps the nerves to function as does B12. You can check your levels by taking a blood test, of which there are plenty of providers online where you can get them done.

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Thank you for joining us for today’s livestream where we talked about the best non-surgical approach to treating back pain. We’re going to go through what back pain is, what treatments we do that are non-surgical and are effective at treating back pain, and also tie this treatment into some exercises that mimics the treatment you can do at home!

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What is back pain? Back pain is a failure of your body to deal with repetitive stress and strain. Your body adapts very easily to stresses, which means that your spine realigns according to how you use it. This can cause problems like muscle spasm, which is usually the first identification of a problem that you’ll notice besides stiffness. Most of the time, this problem will just be identified as muscle spasm but not take into account the spine alignment that’s caused it. So the muscle spasm is treated instead of the root cause.  Our Process At The Clinic & At Home Our approach is unique to us here at The Mayfair Clinic. Having said that, the 2 hours you spend with us can make a big difference to how you feel, but the other hours in the week you spend at home are even more vital to your recovery. Just because you’re having treatment, doesn’t mean you can overlook rehabilitation or the habits that have caused the problem. We explain what our approach is in the clinic and the steps in the Back In Shape program that have been informed by this approach.  Injury Healing - we use our laser therapy here at the clinic to speed up tissue healing. At home, using ice can help relieve inflammation. Avoid using heat as this can make inflammation worse.  Unloading Injured Tissues - we use our spinal decompression to apply a small amount of pull on the spine to gently decompress a squashed structure. At home, using the towel stretch can simulate decompression by unloading the discs and surrounding muscles.  Joint Mobility & Muscle Function - recommending the right stretches to you and easing off the muscles using vibration therapy. At home, using the right stretches can improve your ability to take the stress off the spine and improve your range of motion. We also incorporate strengthening into our Back In Shape program as well to help you build more robust back and core muscles.

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