A Powerful All Round Exercise for Back Pain, and Other Joints.

This is a great exercise if you're suffering from knee, low back, shoulder and/or neck pain, but only if done correctly.

This illustrated article by Colin Hoobler shows you how. It is a resistance exercise, this is much different than lifting weights. Lifting weights is boring, carries a high injury risk and requires little skill because the movement speed is inconsistent and uncontrolled.

Resistance training, however, is powerful medicine to combat disease and injury due to focus on specific muscles and total control throughout a specific range of motion. Further, sessions also take up to 75 percent less time to complete compared to lifting weights.

Don’t worry about the mention of weights. It is recommended that you use light dumbbells, but to see if this is something you can use you can always start with bottles of water, cans of beans, whatever you have to hand really.

Then if you wish to use it regularly proper dumbbells can be bought cheaply on auction sites and such. I got some at a local charity shop for £3. It's certainly helped my own back pain.

Anyway check it out here and maybe give it a go.

Pilates for Back Pain

As many of you will know I have often mentioned pilates as an excellent weapon in our armoury against back pain.

This article from pilates kingdom.com concentrates on the benefits of pilates for back and neck pain. How to incorporate pilates into your daily routine, understanding what it does and so on.

I think this is a very good article including some handy tips and exercises, and how to let pain be your guide when trying a new exercise.

This is informative stuff and you could do worse than read the whole thing here.

Back Pain Information Smartphone App.

How about something for nothing? I don’t know how many of you have a smart phone, I have to say I don’t yet, I’m probably not smart enough!

If you have, this information I found on easier.com may appeal to you.  Anadin have a little while ago launched their ‘Pain Adviser’ App.

Covering the body from head to toe including; headaches, migraines, toothache, neck pain, feverish aches and pains, back pain, period pain, muscle pain, sprains and strains, inflammation and joint pain, the ‘Pain Advisor’ App allows you to tap on the area of the body that hurts and find out the answers.

Sounds fun, and could be quite useful. The app is available to download for free from app stores. Or just go here and download from that page.

Postures for Acute Neck Pain Relief.

During my internet wanderings this week I discovered a new site for me, back and body care.com. This site has some great information.

One item I found was some good postures to relieve acute neck pain. I have been getting a lot of neck pain recently. I think from spending quite a bit of time at the keyboard, so I’m always interested in ways to help.

As mentioned before there’s lots to find on this site, you could spend ages on here. Here’s the link to the neck relief postures.

Flat Feet and Knee Pain.

According to an article on Reuters.com older adults with "flat feet" may be more likely than those with higher arches to have chronic knee pain.

By older they are talking about age 50 plus. To me that’s not old at all. Anyway in a new study researchers at Boston University School of Medicine say the findings raise the possibility that flat feet sometimes contribute to knee osteoarthritis -- the common "wear-and-tear" form of arthritis in which the cartilage cushioning the joint breaks down.

The findings are still open to interpretation, but it may well be that something as simple as wearing the right supportive footwear could save many people the chronic pain of osteoarthritis of the knees.

If you're interested you can find the article here.

Will Magnesium Cure your Back Pain?

I was e-mailed the other day by Elisa, one of my readers, who told me that she has recently begun to take magnesium chloride for her back pain. She has scoliosis. And what did I think.

Well, to be honest I had not thought anything at all about the subject until Elisa brought it up. I’ve done a quick bit of research and it would appear that magnesium, taken in the form of magnesium chloride is perhaps a bit of a wonder supplement.

It seems that most modern diets are somewhat deficient in magnesium, which is being promoted as something of a cure-all for all sorts of problems, not just back pain.

There is an interesting article about magnesium by Walter Last on the health science spirit.com website which you may find informative (although quite long). You can also find loads of information just by entering magnesium chloride for back into your search engine.

I am by nature a bit of a sceptic, and I can find no scientific studies as yet, although I only had a quick look. However it is thought provoking and I hope that Elisa will tell us how she gets on. If any other reader has experience of magnesium please tell me your experience.

Apparently it would only cost around $50 (£31) for a years supply so it wouldn’t break the bank to give it a go.

You can find Walter Last's article here.

New Treatment for Calcific Tendonitis.

I was requested by a reader recently to cover shoulders. Specifically calcification. Well, ever one to oblige. For those of you who are not aware calcific tendonitis is the build-up of calcium salts in a tendon.

There are two types of calcific tendonitis, reactive and degenerative. Reactive is more puzzling for Doctors as they are not sure what causes the calcium build up, although they suspect pressure on the tendons and/or a lack of oxygen in the tissues.

Degenerative calcification is that caused by wear and tear, often associated with younger people involved in physical labour of some sort.

Lesson over, but there seems to be hope on the horizon with a new treatment developed at Rowley Hall Hospital in Stafford. This is extracorporeal shock-wave therapy, which involves passing low-energy shock-waves through the skin to initiate an inflammation-like response in the injured tissue.

The treatments are in 15 minute sessions and are proving very beneficial with conditions such as tennis elbow, achilles tendonitis and calcification of the shoulder tendons.

If you want to read more go here.

Rice for Knee Pain.

No, I’m not going to be telling you to eat rice pudding every day to fix your knees. RICE is actually an acronym for remembering the basic things to do when you have an injury/accident to your knee(s).

I found this handy little tip on the all voices.com website and it’s easy to remember. They also give you some  useful information about knee pain.

There’s not much point in my repeating the acronym here. You can just go to this link and read it there.

7 Warning Signs of Back Problems and Back Care Tips. Plus a Lesson in Life.

Back pain itself is not the only sign that you have problems with your back. This article on the health 24.com website gives several other not so obvious warning signs which we probably should be aware of.

They also give some very useful back care tips to help prevent or relieve backache. I can recommend this article for good no-nonsense content.

A little lesson in life.

I’ve just returned from my morning walk with Winnie, and feel quite uplifted. Coming along the sea front we meet a few other dogs and their owners. A lot of whom Winnie has made friends with and has a good old game as we progress on the way home.

This morning we met a new one, this was different as the dog, a cross Labrador, was in a frame on wheels. Well his back half was, and he was propelling himself along with his front legs.

The owner told me that his dog Alfie had been involved in an accident some months before and was paralysed at the back end. I suppose the equivalent of paraplegic. Anyway he was advised to have Alfie put down.

His owner wasn’t having any of that so made this frame in his garage and Alfie took to it like the proverbial Duck to water. I suppose the point is that there is always a quality of life to be had and we shouldn’t give up.

He actually had a little game with Winnie and it was a treat to watch, she behaved as if it was the usual thing for a dog to be on wheels and wasn’t fazed in the slightest. We could learn a lot from little lessons like this.

Anyway that’s all for today folks. Carol has a day off today so as a treat I am being “allowed” to go supermarket shopping with her. Oh joy! I can hardly wait.

27 Possible Causes of Knee Pain, and How Your Wallet Can be a Pain in the Back.

As an ex chronic knee pain sufferer myself this page on the healthline.com website caught my eye this week.

It details 27 possible causes of knee pain. Giving symptoms for each cause, together with links to explore treatments. There is also a link to a video relating to that cause.

A very informative page and well worth a look if you are having knee problems. You can find it here.

And here's a fun little item. On CBS News a little while back Dr Kavita Mariwalla, a dermatologist at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York, pointed to some things in your daily routine that you may not realize could prompt pain.

One in particular, for the men amongst you out there, amused me, although he is serious and you might want to think about it.

Your wallet can be a real pain in the back and the buttocks, and it can even lead to shooting pains down one leg. Tucked in a back pocket, it may rest directly over the piriformis muscle, which is located over the sciatic nerve, compressing and irritating it day after day. A fat wallet may also put the spine slightly out of alignment, causing muscle tension.

Solution: Remove your wallet before sitting, especially in the car. Of course it doesn't apply to me, I've never had a fat wallet!

Are Your Gait and Posture Aggravating Your Back Pain?

If you have back pain or knee pain, your standing posture, the way you sit, the way you get up and the way you walk automatically change to ensure that you do not stress the area in pain. That explains why people hold their back and walk or exhibit a waddling gait (much like how the emperor penguins walk) when in pain.

So says human movement specialist B S Badrinath Rao who believes posture and gait are learned behaviours that often need immediate correction .

In this article on the Deccan Herald.com website she tell us that gait and posture are affected by situations around us and pain that affects us.

We can help our pain by re-learning “normal” gait and posture. A simple procedure, not nearly as difficult as you may think.

If you want to read the full story, and it is worth reading, find it here.