Ankylosing spondylitis….and food

Jo Harding and her Ankylosing spondylitis……

Love this – this was a patient of ours that has done really, really well by stripping out her diet and becoming responsible for ‘what’ and ‘how’ she eats.  It was a journey for her….but she was motivated and would not listen to someone saying ‘no’.   She is doing brilliantly and is happy!  Jo is now in remission and off all of her medication!  So proud of her!!!!

Look at the amazing story of Jo.  She has put huge thought into her recipes gleaned from her direct experience with this condition and its gives life back to food.

Have a read here.  It has some information about Ankylosing spondylitis and some great ideas of how you can help yourself.  Links to Jo Harding are below too….

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If you need some help with Ankylosing spondylitis or other back or joint problem, come in and see one of our great osteopaths.  Call at the clinic on 020 8605 2323.

Function and Functional Osteopathic Clinic

Wow…Did you know that…….?

Back to Back – The Earlsfield Osteopath has the greatest number of osteopathic practitioners that have completed the unique and prestigious GIFT programme in the USA.  Neil, has also enrolled to do this in 2016!

What does ‘Functional Osteopathy’ mean and how can it benefit our patients?

Functional osteopathy involves a new way of assessment and treatment.  It uniquely combines Osteopathy with Applied Functional Science (AFS). AFS uses chain reaction biomechanics and is based on the principles of functional movement. Instead of looking at isolated areas of the body, AFS realises that everything is connected and integrated. For example, it can explain how a lack of ankle motion can affect the hip, lower back, neck or shoulder.  Hands on osteopathic therapy is used. However, assessment is based around what you do in real life. There are no artificial testing methods such as touching your toes if it doesn’t relate to the way you move naturally. Treatment often occurs in upright functional positions.  This enables treatment to directly translate back to improving your movement in everyday life. Treatment is unique to your ability, function and goals and will not be the same as the client before or after you. This treatment approach gives the body access to parts it has not been able to use and teaches it how to move better. The power of combining Osteopathy and Applied Functional Science is in utilising the body’s natural moving state.

Lying someone on their side and asking them to lift up their leg in not ‘functional’ to work the glut muscle and it does not get them more successful at walking, dancing, running or jumping.  Asking someone to stand with a leg forward and to reach in a particular way becomes a better way to improve glut function and is closer to what we all do everyday.  We all need to function in an energy efficient manner, but ideally in a pain free way.  When our bodies are in pain, most often it changes the way we move and go about our daily lives.

The ‘functional’ way works fantastically well with elite athletes and performance enhancement, but also is brilliant at treating everyday injures, such as back or neck pain, hip, knee and foot pain or shoulder and elbow pain.

A combination of Osteopathic methods and AFS is used for treatment and in the rehabilitation of injuries.

When assessing a patient, we are really trying to see WHY something has happened and not the fact that it has happened.  This enables us to go faster to the route of the problem.

We feel that creating great function enhances our health and well-being and is a remarkable way of encompassing movement into an integrated way and not an isolated way.

If you would like to see one of our ‘Functional Osteopathic’ practitioners, book in to see James, Annie or Steph.  reception can be contacted on 020 8605 2323.

Golf and the Golf Swing

At Back to Back we treat more than a few golfers and their injuries.  An injury common to the golfer may be one of many…. But often a golfer presents with pain in their elbow, shoulder, their back, hip or knee.  It could be their neck or other area.

Identifying with their pain can be the easy part.  Working out why they have pain is often a little more challenging.

Our AFS (or Applied Functional Science) team will be best to do this.  Their aim is to track down the ‘why behind the what’.  What I mean by this is … why has that particular area of your body failed?  What in that person’s body is not working as it should and increasing the ‘load’ elsewhere?

What encouraged me to write this was a patient that I saw just over 4 weeks ago.  He was in his late forties with a handicap of 4!  He had been suffering with right shoulder pain for the last 5 months!  He had seen a few other practitioners before find his way to the clinic.

To me, it was crucial to see him swing as if he was hitting the ball!  Watching this and adapting the way he hit the ball, it immediately became apparent that he was restricted in his left hip.  As he was halfway through his backswing the movement that should have been available at his left hip was not there and he was then using his upper back and right shoulder to do much more work than it needed or was build to do.

All that was happening was his shoulder was becoming strained because of his hip!  Before coming to see us, this lovely patient had had his shoulder and surrounding area rubbed for 14 treatments.

Working with his left hip and left foot and integrating them into his swing gave great results in 3 treatments and he was almost pain free at 4 treatments.  He still has a small way to go, but it just goes to show that rubbing symptoms (in this case the shoulder) is not always the right answer.  Getting fully assessed by someone that appreciates integrated movement and treats the body as a whole is critical.

Get assessed properly and get properly fixed!

James Dodd BSc (Hons)Ost. FAFS  GPS

Clinic Director

Back to Back – The Earlsfield Osteopath

Web:       http://www.backtoback432.co.uk

Twitter:   @jamesDosteopath

If you have any concerns about your swing or pain in golf, call reception on 020 8605 2323

and come in and see Steph or James

Paracetamol for back pain??

Do you take paracetamol for your back pain?

Have a look at this link on some of the more recent research about this.

This states…..

‘Paracetamol is ineffective at treating back pain and osteoarthritis despite being a recommended treatment, a group of Australian researchers has warned’.

One of the most important issues to understand here is WHY you have pain in the first place.  WHAT has put your body  in a position where it feels under threat?  Pain is an OUTPUT from your brain and just by blocking that output you are not fixing WHY you have pain.  Would it not be far better to get the WHY addressed and sorted?

If you can, get properly assessed by a professional who has been fully trained to assess, diagnose and treat you appropriately.  Pain in your back may be due to another part of your body working less effectively and so your back ends up having to work harder.

Call us on 020 8605 2323 if you have any questions.

Spinal Manipulation from therapists…..

A little bit of a rant….. Physiotherapists, Osteopaths and Chiropractors train a long time to learn what they do.  Part of the Osteopathic and Chiropractic training involves spinal manipulation and many physiotherapists go on and do post graduate training to learn and fine-tune these in-depth techniques.  We all do a thorough training in anatomy, physiology, pathology and pathophysiology over our YEARS of training.

I have been seeing that more and more ‘massage therapists’ have been learning to do spinal manipulation after doing only 25 days training to be a massage therapist and 5 or so days learning how to manipulate someones spine.

In my opinion this is wrong and unsafe.  Case history questions will not be sufficient and neither will their examination of the patient!

Many patients seek treatment for back or neck pain of some sort.

In seeking a practitioner who may manipulate you, please make sure you see someone from one of these disciplines who has had full and sufficient training so that you are in the safest possible environment for that sort of treatment.

Keep safe

If you have any questions, please call the clinic on 020 8605 2323

Back to Back

Sports Massage… the low down

Here is a great write up by Bhavesh Joshi about the benefits of Sports Massage.  It does make a difference and people do report that they feel and notice the difference.  With those of you that are training for an event such as the London Marathon or triathlons in the near future, make sure that you try a regular sports massage to keep your muscles less tight and feeling better!

Bhavesh says…..

Research shows that there is moderate data supporting the use of massage to facilitate recovery from repetitive muscular contractions, as well as being effective in alleviating DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness – that achey feeling you get after tough exercise) by approximately 30%.

Call us on 020 8605 2323 and come and see Nick.  Nick is our Sports Massage Therapist here at the clinic and he is also training to be an osteopath, so has great knowledge.  There is even a special offer on at the moment!

Core Stability exercises…….are they any good??

This paper goes further to suggest that core stabilisation exercises do no more for lower back pain than other regular exercise regimes.  Have a read here

Any concerns about lower back pain or other musculoskeletal pain, call the clinic on 020 8605 2323

Active Fascial Release (AFR) and James Earls

If you are a bodyworker of any kind and want to develop it further,  this would be a great course to check out.  James Earls has pulled together a great new technique.   It combines the famous ‘Anatomy Trains’ with movement and effective fascial and soft tissue manipulation.  Nice one James!

It is called Active Fascial Release or (AFR).

The problem with statistics…..

The problem with research is people can often get what results they want from the data they get.   It lies in the surprisingly slippery nature of the P value, which is neither as reliable nor as objective as most scientists assume.

Have a read of this to gain more insight.

This is why you cannot always rely on research to give you the best information.  Look at the whole picture!  Sometimes you have also just got to talk to the people around you to get an opinion as to what may or may not work.

Use Eccentric Training to Improve Max Lifts, Says New Study

Have a look at this link

What the research says:

• Eccentric one-rep-max (1RM) on the bench press was about 50lb heavier on average than the concentric version.
• At 90% 1RM, subjects could do 3-7 reps on the concentric portion of the bench press, but could do 4–11 reps on the eccentric portion.

BUT go carefully plea