Shop 3gc, 15-19 Claremont St, South Yarra, 0413 297 801
Turn down for what?!
Everyone handles stress in different ways: running, meditating, eating a dozen donuts, screaming into a pillow, cranking up the volume on a favorite song, etc. Anxiety disorders affect approximately 40 million adults between the ages of 18 to 54, and unfortunately, it’s on the risein America.
As someone who falls into the 19% of anxiety-suffering millennials, I know how difficult it is to find a good stress coping mechanism. Most of the time, canceling plans, ignoring texts or accepting failure before trying is better than dealing with people and priorities head on. But then, the guilt burrows into my brain, contributing to the endless cycle of anxious thoughts. That’s why when I deal with my anxiety, I seek an escape from those negative thoughts.
As an introvert, music is my go-to stress coping mechanism. It’s a no-pressure, natural remedy to turn off that self-loathing thought cycle. Music and sound therapy has been used through the centuries to enhance well-being and quality of life. Our brains are wired to seek comfort in patterns, which is why we tend to gravitate towards music with repetitive harmonies and melodies. When we hear a song that’s pleasurable, our brains release the feel-good chemicals, endorphins and dopamine, and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
Neuroscientists in the UK discovered that one song in particular reduced anxiety at a whopping rate of 65%. Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson of Mindlab International led a team of researchers to test participants’ anxiety levels while completing a series of puzzles as quickly as possible, some more stress-inducing than others. While listening to different songs, researchers measured both brain activity and physiological states including heart rate, blood pressure and rate of breathing.
The song “Weightless” by Marconi Union produced a greater state of relaxation than any other music tested to date. Along with its significant anxiety reduction, there was also a 35% reduction in their normal physiological rates. Amazing.
As its name implies, “Weightless” allows your mind to drift into a calm state. The repetition of ambient harmonies, rhythms and bass lines are trance-inducing. You can almost see your problems floating away, one by one. When I listen to “Weightless,” I feel like I’m floating on a fluffy cloud, wearing a bedazzled onesie, waving “boy bye” to each of my stressors. It feels great.
Chronic anxiety can negatively impact not just mental health, but physical health too, leading to complications such as heart disease, obesity, depression and more. Finding an escape or coping mechanism is necessary, and music can be the greatest healing power of all.
Along with “Weightless,” here are the other songs found to be most anxiety-ridding.
10. “We Can Fly,” by Rue du Soleil (Café Del Mar)
9. “Canzonetta Sull’aria,” by Mozart
8. “Someone Like You,” by Adele
7. “Pure Shores,” by All Saints
6. “Please Don’t Go,” by Barcelona
5. “Strawberry Swing,” by Coldplay
4. “Watermark,” by Enya
3. “Mellomaniac (Chill Out Mix),” by DJ Shah
2. “Electra,” by Airstream
1. “Weightless,” by Marconi Union
Even if you’ve only lightly dabbled in wellness methods, odds are you’ve probably come across the term “infrared light.” Infrared light and infrared light therapy is known for its many health benefits and for the good it can do to mind, body, and soul. But what is it exactly?
Let’s get scientific.
A method of harnessing light frequencies, infrared light therapy promotes healing on a cellular level. The world is made up of different frequencies, and infrared light frequencies lie just below our visible frequency spectrum. Even though we can’t see infrared light, we can still feel it by way of heat. Infrared light energy, also known as thermal radiation, transfers heat, and after many years of research, scientists discovered this natural heat energy could be used for benefit.
Infrared light therapy, also known as photobiomodulation, promotes the benefits of infrared light by distributing the infrared light spectrum to the body. As it is absorbed, infrared light kicks cells into gear, fighting many underlying health problems right at their root. The light produces a spike in oxygen, which increases blood flow and cellular regeneration. This leads to a wide array of benefits including better sleep, clearer skin, and faster metabolism.
If you’ve read your blogs lately, you may already know that one of the best (and most trendy) infrared light therapies is the infrared sauna. Infrared saunas often look like out-of-this-world, spaceship pods from the outside and their light-bulb-lined interiors are just as alien. But don’t be frightened by their looks, infrared saunas are extremely efficient when it comes to infrared light.
For those of you who want to use infrared light for its skin benefits, there are infrared masks that target just your face area. And yes, they look just as strange as the sauna pods.
Note: if you come across a sauna advertised as “near infrared,” skip it. If you really want to feel repair, far infrared light is what you’re looking for.
What makes an infrared sauna different from a regular sauna? Unlike regular saunas that heat the air, infrared saunas heat you. The heat you feel from an infrared sauna is coming from inside your body rather than outside. Infrared saunas break down water molecules within your body creating a deeper, more detoxifying sweat. Plus, because your head stays outside your pod, you don’t have to withstand the unbearable stuffiness and suffocating heat of your usual sauna.
No. While infrared light may feel and act like sunlight, it has no skin-damaging UV-rays, making it safe for exposure. UV rays, which have the power to cause cell mutations, act at a much higher energy level than infrared light. Because of its lower energy, infrared light doesn’t have the ability to cause such mutations.
Most agree that infrared light therapy can be a daily activity. But that may not be recommended for everyone. Infrared heat can dehydrate you, making you tired and exhausted. Because of this, you should listen to your body and feel what it needs. Some people find that undergoing infrared light therapy 3 to 4 times a week works just as well.
Massaging therapy is proved to be the finest alternate treatment to cure diversified ailments. Massaging includes various techniques and processes that target specific diseases. There are many popular massages discovered by the therapists to intensify the healing effects. However, deep tissue massage is established as one of the finest ways to reach the deeper layers of connective tissues and muscles.
Movements of Deep Tissue Massage
Deep tissue massage involves some of the techniques and movements of the Swedish massage with intensified pressure. The aim of this massage is to untangle the muscle knot or chronic muscle tension. A few of the people have misconceptions about the deep tissue massage due to the pressure associated with the therapy. However, the reality is different from that of the myth.
Do You Feel Pain During the Deep Tissue Massage?
Usually, deep tissue massage doesn’t impose any kind of physical pain on your body. However, it is not as smooth as the Swedish massage as well. The key to enjoying a massage is the proper communication with the therapist. Disclose the painful areas of your body to her so she can understand your concerns and follow appropriate steps to offer relief to your mental and physical health.
Give Time to Your Body
The body prefers mild pressure and gentle movements, which are the opposite of a deep tissue massage. It is suggested to tolerate the pressure on the key areas of the body in order to enjoy the benefits of this massage therapy.
Post Therapy Precautions
After the therapy is accomplished, it is important to intake sufficient amount of water in order to flush the lactic acid released from the muscles. Even if you feel soreness in the body, it is important to be patient and keep yourself hydrated. This not only flushes the toxins from the body but also reduces the soreness in no time.
Want Better posture?
Get your UPRIGHT GO today and start improving your posture with daily training sessions.
Buy NowOnly $99.95
“Don’t slouch.”
“Sit up straight.”
“Keep your shoulders back.”
As a child, you probably heard some form of those commands once or a thousand times. At the time, they were just words adults liked to say. Now, they hold a much deeper meaning. Bad posture doesn’t just make you look sad and pathetic; it affects your health.
Bad posture is an epidemic in the U.S. affecting millions of individuals. And it’s not a simple or unimportant matter. It causes more mental and physical complications than most people know and can have disastrous effects on your long-term health.
1. Adversely Changes Your Spine
Bad posture changes the alignment of your spine, putting pressure on areas that don’t need it. In your natural, healthy state, your spine has a certain curve to its shape. But after you spend years slumping at your desk and standing with bad posture, the natural curve of your spine is lost. In fact, the excessive strain can become so bad that it decreases the integrity of your spinal column causing your discs to weaken and compress and your vertebrae to erode. These changes not only cause long-term pain and discomfort, but the new alignment can even make you shorter and stop your ability to absorb shock and maintain proper balance.
2. It Worsens Depression and Stress
As stated earlier, bad posture doesn’t just make you look sad it actually makes you feel sad. A study at San Francisco State University discovered that students who slouched while they walked had increased feelings of depression and stress compared to those who skipped. A similar study at Harvard revealed that the way you carry yourself, with good or bad posture, can affect how you feel. For example, people with good posture saw a rise in testosterone, giving them a sense of power and control, and a decrease in cortisol, the stress hormone.
3. Digestive Trouble
Bad posture doesn’t just affect your spine; it also affects your innards. Sitting and standing slumped over constricts your intestines, which can make digestion uncomfortable and contribute to issues such as acid reflux and hernias. Even more surprising, bad posture can impact your metabolism causing you to gain weight and to develop a belly pouch and larger bottom.
4. Increased Pain
When your body isn’t in alignment, it isn’t happy, and the way your body tells you its unhappiness is through pain. In fact, bad posture can lead to chronic back pain and disc degeneration. The reason why is because of increased strain on your back muscles, bones, and other parts of your body. Bad posture can even cause pain in other parts of your body including your hips, shoulders, and neck, leading to tension headaches.
5. Cardiovascular and Lung Issues
Just as slouching hurts your digestive tract, it also hurts your lungs and heart. An Australian study on bad posture found that individuals who sat all day slumped over their desks had a shorter life expectancy and increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Part of that increased risk could be because bad posture also restricts blood and oxygen flow, making it more difficult to breathe, speak, and engage in physical exercise.
1. Strengthen Your Back Muscles
If you want to get rid of your bad posture, first, you need to make it easier to stand and sit up straight. There are a few simple exercises you can do to improve your back muscles. They include squats with weights, lunges, and shoulder rolls. Doing these exercises a few times a week can make it easier to keep the correct posture.
2. Train Yourself in Good Posture
For most individuals, good posture doesn’t come naturally. That’s why you need to train yourself to sit and stand appropriately. The UPRIGHT Posture Trainer is simple to use and works in just 15 minutes a day. It works by gently reminding you to correct your bad posture and allowing you to track your progress over time.
3. Stand Up Often
It’s easier to have good posture when you’re standing. Take regular breaks throughout the day to stand up and walk around your office.
4. Fix Your Chairs
Since you most often have bad posture when you sit, make it easier on your body to correct the problem by investing in the right chairs. For your office, invest in an ergonomic chair, keyboard, and mouse. In your car, adjust your seat so your headrest is in the middle of your head and so your head is not more than 4 inches away from the seat.
5. Stretch
When you live your life with bad posture, not only do you shorten your spine, you shorten your muscles. Stretching can help lengthen your muscles back to their natural state while also helping you to open up your body, so your organs get the oxygen they need.
Being a sportsperson, you seek improvement with every passing day to beat your previous records. Hence, it is necessary to keep the body fit and painless, which directly affects your performance. One of the finest and full-proof ways of achieving a favorable physique of an athlete is to opt for a sports massage. This is specially designed to take care of the muscle cramps, stiff tissues, damaged soft tissue, and other injuries.
How the Sports Massage Help Improve the Performance of the Athletes?
Along with you, most of the athletes prefer incorporating massage into the daily fitness routine. It enhances the performance, accelerates the effects of rigorous training, keeps injuries at bay, and recovers from the old injuries faster. Seek help from the expert massage therapist who understands your concern and delivers the massage accordingly.
How is Sports Massage Different from the Other Massages?
Sports massage is a kind of a deep tissue massage that targets the deeper layers of the muscle fibers and heals the soft tissue pain, aches, and other injuries caused due to the miscellaneous recreational activities. This also contributes to a relaxed muscle and nerves resulting in the regulated heartbeat and blood pressure.
How is the Performance Enhanced with Sports Massage?
Massage refers to the strategic application of pressure on the various parts of the body with the help of the palm. The mechanical pressure on the muscle fibers and soft tissues leads to reduced muscle adhesion, enhanced range of motion and flexibility, and depleted stress and stiffness of the muscles.
The deep massage helps elongate the muscles after a rigorous workout while releasing mitochondria. This converts the nutrients of the cells into useful energy that helps in a better performance.
Due to the aforementioned physical conditions, your performance in the arena of sports elevates manifolds, irrespective of the kind of game you are involved in.
Even if you're not in pain, you have no idea the good a proper massage will do for your body - by Scott Henderson
Getty Images
Getting a massage is one of those health care treatments that has unfortunately been placed in the ‘luxury’ category. As a general rule, men only seek out the heaven-sent treatment when we’re irreparably sore from training, or between piña coladas on an island getaway.
But we're missing out on something truly great, and the ancient art of massage shouldn’t be reserved as a reactive measure to pain. It's actually one of the most successful preventative health measures available.
Jackie Messaike, owner of Jackie’s Sports Massage, recommends getting a massage at least once a month, more if there are underlying issues. And it’s not just injured athletes who benefit from regular massage therapy, according to Messaike. Everybody should be seeking out regular massage as part of their holistic health care routine, from athletes to sedentary office workers, even if they don’t feel soreness or pain.
Pain is a common symptom arthritis, and we have a culture that promotes medicine for pain — but we can do much better. Here are steps for easing pain while avoiding pills.
By Lillie Rosenthal, DO
Published: May 16, 2018
Last updated: May 16, 2018
Pain is a common symptom associated with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and osteoarthritis (OA). We have a culture that promotes pills for pain — but we can do much better. Pain medications are “chemical band-aids” that should never be the first line of treatment. We should instead be investing our time and energy in non-pharmacological alternatives that not only treat pain more effectively, but spare the potential for serious side effects.
The 5-point plan below offers pain relief and increased function as well as better health and well-being for the arthritis patient.
Inflammation is what causes the muscle pain from arthritis. What you eat makes a big difference! The best choice to limit inflammation and the pain it causes is a whole-food, plant-based diet consisting of vegetables, fruits, nuts, berries and whole grains. If you want to include animal products in your diet, keep them to a minimum and be mindful of the quality. Avoid processed foods and those with added sugar.
This diet will not only support a healthy gut microbiome to reduce pain and inflammation and boost your immune system, but will support a healthy body weight to maintain joint health. (Extra weight means extra pressure on your joints.)
When we have pain, the last thing we feel like doing is exercising! Yet exercise is critical for the arthritis patient as it increases musculoskeletal strength and flexibility as well as reducing joint pain. Strong muscles that support already vulnerable joints reduce the torque and stress at the joint lines. Non-weight-bearing exercise such as isometrics, biking and swimming can be especially effective. Remember to stay hydrated and use heat before exercise (warm up) and ice after (cool down) as needed.
Mindfulness meditation can be a valuable tool in the management of arthritis pain. Remarkably, after only 4 days of mindfulness meditation training, pain unpleasantness and intensity were reduced by 57% and 40% respectively, according to one study. My patients’ favorite meditation apps are Calm and Headspace. Deep breathing exercises can also help manage pain –- inhale for 4 counts, hold for 4 counts, exhale for 4 counts. These techniques are quite effective in reframing the pain from something to fight into something to acknowledge and accept (in small amounts).
Osteopathic manipulation is a manual therapy that can often provide immediate pain relief. These gentle, hands-on techniques involve stretching, mobilization and traction, which improves circulation and joint function as well as reducing muscle spasm, pain and swelling, without side effects. Osteopathic manipulation assists the body in healing itself on a cellular level to optimize function.
Find this type of care by seeking out a DO (Doctor of Osteopathy) near you. DOs have the same level of training that MDs do, with the same ability to write prescriptions. But don’t expect your DO to encourage medical intervention. Philosophically, DOs focus on whole-person care -— rather than treat the symptom, the DO will more likely encourage you to make lifestyle changes to eliminate the cause of the problem. Most, but not all, insurance programs will pay for osteopathic care.
Have a comment? Post a message on our Facebook page or message us on Twitter @Med_Shadow
Pain can be exhausting during the day and may keep you up at night. Sleep is when the body repairs and rebalances. Sleep deprivation decreases our threshold for pain and impairs healing. We should aim for 7 to 9 hours of sleep nightly.
To support your sleep success, have a regular bedtime, limit or refrain from alcohol use, shut off all devices with screens at least 1 hour before bedtime and keep the bedroom dark and cool. Valerian herbal tea is a safe and helpful sleep aid.
We all want to feel and function optimally, and we all have important choices in our healthcare. The best choices offer high rewards and low risks. The lifestyle modification program outlined above can safely reduce the pain of RA and OA along with improving health and well-being without side effects. The choice is yours!
An expert in lifestyle management with a focus on injury prevention, pain management and biomechanics, Lillie Rosenthal, DO, is a board-certified physical medicine and rehabilitation physician in New York City.
Dr. Rosenthal sees a variety of patients in her Manhattan practice, including world-renowned musicians, dancers, choreographers, and writers, as well as marathon runners and other athletes, and treats such conditions as back pain, tendonitis and repetitive stress disorders. She is also a consulting physician for the New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Metropolitan Opera, MTV Video Music Awards and several Broadway productions and is, herself, a dancer and a marathon runner.
Dr. Rosenthal’s media experience includes national television appearances on “The Dr. Oz Show” and she has been featured as an author and expert source in a number of publications, including U.S. News & World Report, the New York Times, The Huffington Post and Consumer Reports.
17 May 2018
By Osteopath Oliver Eaton
Oliver Eaton
According to the National Fibromyalgia Association, 3-6% of the world’s population has fibromyalgia syndrome, estimating that somewhere around 300 million people worldwide suffer from the condition.
The NHS estimates that 2-4.5% of people in the UK may have fibromyalgia syndrome – estimating between 1.2 million and 2.8 million people. 75-90% of people with fibromyalgia syndrome are women.
SPONSORED CONTENT
BY CONNATIX
It is a condition that conventional medicine currently has no answer for and sufferers are often prescribed with long lists of symptom-managing medication with often damaging side effects. So here are some things your doctor might not tell you about causes and treatment of fibromyalgia, based on my own personal experience and that of my patients:
Prolonged Virus – if you have previously suffered from a prolonged virus such as glandular fever it can either be a primary cause of fibromyalgia or significantly increase your chances of getting it in the future. A prolonged virus increases the sensitivity of your nervous system, lowering your resilience to stressful situations in the future.
Prolonged Emotional Stress – whether it’s work stress of domestic stress, if it has been constant for a while it can play a large role in an individual developing fibromyalgia. Stress affects a part of the brain called the amygdala. The amygdala is responsible for controlling our stress response. If it becomes overloaded by repeated daily stresses then it can often start to malfunction and lead to conditions such as fibromyalgia and its sister condition chronic fatigue syndrome.
Previous Injury – if a previous injury has failed to heal then the constant output of pain signals to the brain can cause a similar response to the amygdala that I previously spoke about. Pain is one of the most debilitating forms of stress and can rob people of a good night’s sleep. During your sleep your body helps to replenish its own natural store of pain killers and brain chemicals, so once disturbed it can leave an individual susceptible to developing fibromyalgia.
Misalignments – misalignments in the body can cause chronic stress on the muscles and nerves in the body, subsequently causing pain. Misalignments occur from poor posture or repetitive movements to one side of the body.
Gut bacterial overgrowth – bacteria such as candida can overgrow in the gut and can cause many of the symptoms associated with fibromyalgia, including; pain, insomnia, fatigue, IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), food sensitivities.
Silent Food Intolerances – The difference between a silent food intolerance and a symptomatic food intolerance is that a silent intolerance causes inflammation in the gut without any evident symptoms such as IBS (irritable bowel syndrome). Your gut represents 80% of your immune system so if there are certain foods that are causing inflammation in your gut then this can cause inflammation and pain in other parts of your body. Common silent intolerances are foods containing either gluten or dairy.
Electromagnetic Fields/WIFI – Wifi and phones signals have been shown to cause a considerable amount of stress on particularly sensitive individuals. Leaving your phone switched on next to you on your bedside table can effect the quality of your sleep and can also be a cause of headaches and migraines, a common symptom with Fibromyalgia.
Vegan Diet - there have been many studies proving that a vegan diet can help to reduce the symptoms of Fibromyalgia. A vegan diet involves eliminating from your diet anything that has come from an animal: mainly meat, dairy and eggs. The problem with meat and dairy products these days is that the animals they have come from have been injected with synthetic hormones and antibiotics. These hormones and antibiotics are passed onto humans and can cause inflammation in the body. The University of Kuopio in Finland conducted a study to determine the effect that a vegan diet had on Fibromyalgia sufferers over a 3-month period. The study concluded an overall reduction in pain and joint stiffness, alongside an improvement in sleep quality.
EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) - It’s like an emotional form of acupuncture as it involves tapping on specific acupuncture points in the body whilst speaking certain sentences over yourself. Professor Gunilla Brattberg at Lund University in Sweden performed a study involving 86 women suffering from Fibromyalgia. They undertook an 8 week course of EFT which concluded in an overall reduction in symptoms of the condition.
Anti-Inflammatory Foods - There are many foods available that can help to reduce inflammation in the body including:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Oliver Eaton is a qualified and registered Osteopath, Medical Acupuncturist and Musculoskeletal Injection Therapist. He specializes in the treatment of Fibromyalgia with patients all over the UK and Europe. Much of Oliver's specialties were learnt through personal experience; suffering from a series of chronic conditions from which he made a full recovery using the same alternative medicine approaches he uses within his clinics. As one of the leading practitioners in his field on Harley Street, he has built his reputation on achieving results with patients who had previously had no success elsewhere.
Oliver’s approach for treating Fibromyalgia first involves a series of tests to identify the root cause of the condition in an individual. Once the cause has been identified, he then puts together a tailored treatment plan which involves a combination of osteopathy, nutrition, supplementation and cognitive therapy.
Website: www.prohealthclinic.co.uk
You May Like
If You're Over 30 And Own A Computer, This Game Is A Must-Have!Throne: Free Online Game
"How I Watch U.S. Netflix From Australia In 3 Easy Steps"Express VPN
Diet Expert Tells All: "It's Like A Powerwash For Your Insides"Gundry MD
Plastic Surgeon Reveals: “You Can Fill In Wrinkles At Home” (Here’s How)Beverly Hills MD
Skin Specialists Are Blow Away By This Anti Aging ProductHealth Findings
Massive Pay Outs For Aussies Born Between 1941-1981Survey Compare
Win A Champneys 2 Night Stay For 2 People...
Win A 2 Night Stay For 2 People At...
Win A Copy Of Winchester: The House That...
Win A Copy Of The Nineties On DVD
Win A Copy Of Molly's Game On DVD
Win Cinema Tickets For Everybody's Talking...
Win A Pair Of Tickets To An Outdoor...
6 Signs You’re Not Getting Enough Potassium
10 Signs That You Might Have Coeliac Disease
From The Web
1stdibs.com$1,795 - 1stdibs.com
Well Made Tyson Box Tee Melon for $5$5 - culturekings.com.au
'I lost 32 kilos without eating cardboard and drinking shakes'Lite'n'Easy
Discover Why Over 1 Million Aussies Choose Non-Profit HealthcareMembers Own Health Funds
Woman throws dinner parties to take MDMA...
Newly discovered animals on the brink of...
Win A Champneys 2 Night Stay For 2 People...
Andy Whyment 'gutted' at Shaun Thomas'...
See Rami Malek As Freddie Mercury In New...
Mum renames son after misspelt tattoo
FemaleFirst Social Media
FemaleFirst on Social Media
Meghan Markle's friend says star and Prince Harry are 'very similar'
#RoyalWedding
https://t.co/NvXdNtgrY7https://t.co/PsFjAwDgmL
15 h
Daniel Falconer 🐺 @DanielJFalconer
#RoyalWeddinghttps://t.co/669kYm3RfF
15 h
The guests -Clooneys and the Beckhams arrive for royal wedding https://t.co/DgfbxMRkld
17 h
News on Meghan Markle's wedding ring made from gold from Queen Elizabeth https://t.co/ILy0979Ko1
17 h
Just in time! Thanks so much @EOnlineUK - were watching the #ERoyalWedding! #RoyalWeddinghttps://t.co/4BH68LDXwz
17 h
Ask Yin & Yang
Game of Thrones: Why should Daenerys Targaryen sit on The Iron Throne?
Sherrie Hewson quits Loose Women
Colton Haynes returning to Arrow early in season 5
LGBT representation in television - Are we moving forward?
See the cast of Ordinary Lies series 2 in new first look image
Kelvin Fletcher leaving Emmerdale
© 2018 FemaleFirst Ltd. all rights reserved.
duration : 0.47581s v4.2 - 2018-05-20 04:55:26
What is quantum physics?
A quantum is the minimum unit of any physical entity involved in an interaction.
Quantum theory is a branch of physics which is the fundamental theory of nature at small scales and low energies of atoms and subatomic particles.
Quantum mechanics differs from classical physics in that energy, momentum and other quantities are often restricted to discrete values (quantization).
Quantum physics or quantum mechanics provides a mathematical description of the wave/particle duality and interactions of energy and matter
What is The connection between quantum physics and consciousness?
Consciousness, or observation, can affect the physical world around us is called the “Copenhagen Interpretation”. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, as long as there is no consciousness observing a system (a system of particles, planets, light, chairs, etc.), then the system will evolve in time according to the rules of quantum mechanics (waves and super-positions and whatnot). However, the moment that a conscious observer observes the system it suddenly stops obeying the laws of QM and, rather than being in a superposition of states, snaps to one state. Essentially, the act of observation creates a definite reality.
Among quantum physicists, the best theory is the “Many Worlds Hypothesis”. Here’s the basic idea:
Light was the first thing that clearly demonstrated super-position (being in more than one state at once). After that we saw super-position in electrons, protons and neutrons, alpha particles (helium), and even Buckyballs (also called “Buckminsterfullerene”, a molecule with 60 carbon atoms). The larger a thing is, the harder it is to do an experiment that shows super-position, but so far everything seems to be capable of being in a super-position of states.
So, extend this from “everything we’ve ever been able to measure can be in a super-position of states” to “everything can be in a super-position of states”. Where “everything” includes people. Now the QM laws apply at all times, without awkward questions, exceptions, and explanations. And, even better, the relationship between quantum physics and consciousness is revealed to be: nothing.
Are quantum physics and spirituality related?
Spirituality is a human construct; quantum mechanics is a science. Quantum theorists aren’t just shooting in the dark, or making up fanciful things — there are experimentalists out there who’re working on these theories, verifying them experimentally and bringing them to fruition.
There are several interpretations of quantum mechanics, however, and that’s arguably more philosophy than science. The scientific community hasn’t zeroed in on one interpretation, but the theories and axioms that make up QM have been experimentally demonstrated to be correct.
Quantum mechanics says nothing about life/death, God, or anything else that isn’t even remotely related to the domain of science. Some physicists do talk about consciousness (this is very rare because it’s entirely possible to ignore consciousness completely and still do quantum mechanics; most of their efforts go into either figuring out ways of using quantum mechanical resources to do nifty things, or building theories upon the existing framework to learn more about the universe) and I suggest you exercise caution while reading about these things because it can be hard to tell the difference between interesting questions and quackery.
Is it correct to use quantum theory to explain spirituality?
Quantum Mechanics is a mathematical model that is used to describe the Universe (or at least certain aspects of it) and which can make testable, falsifiable predictions with hard numbers. Spirituality (at least to the extent I understand it) is mathematically ill-defined and thus has nothing to do with Quantum Mechanics.
In fact, forget mathematically-the entire domain in ill defined to its core and thus has an orthogonal relationship with science.
Science is only concerned with making models that are consistent with experimental observations and which can make predictions that can be validated or negated via experiment. Spirituality does no such thing.
Quantum physics is our best explanation to date of the fundamental nature of the material world but not the spiritual world. I believe, like many, that our world has both a material and a spiritual aspect. So, any complete understanding of our world must take into account both quantum physics and spirituality.
Physicists who study quantum physics do not generally also study spirituality. So, most physicists have little educated understanding of it. Yet, there are a few physicists who, in their ignorance of spirituality, make disdainful statements such as: Spiritual people think that since there is a mysterious aspect to quantum theory and also to consciousness, the two must be related.
Quantum physics tells us that the fundamental particles that underlie both matter and physical forces such as electromagnetism can be completely described by mathematical equations. A growing number of physicists believe that not only does mathematics describe our universe; our universe IS, at bottom, mathematical constructs—a bunch of equations playing out over time.
This theory states a huge truth but also has a huge hole in it. What are the steps that take us from a set of mathematical concepts to our experience of three-dimensional space, the smell of a rose, the colors of a sunset, and ….? This is Stephen Hawking’s question.
Consciousness turns these equations into subjective experience. We are living in the Matrix (the movie in which human beings lived in a virtual reality which they experienced due to their brains being hooked up to computer coding). But this is only an analogy because in “The Matrix,” a physical computer generates the virtual reality.
Another analogy is that we create realistic experiences for ourselves when we dream during sleep—yet all that is really happening is firing of electromagnetic signals in our brain. How do we create an entire “fake” universe out of electromagnetic signals?
Consciousness does this for us. It gives us our subjective experience of electromagnetic signals.I am describing a basic theory of Buddhism and other spiritual traditions, the philosophical theory of “Idealism”: We live in a dream created by the consciousness of our individual minds or possibly by only one mind that we’re all hooked into. This dream appears very consistent because, unlike our fantastical dreams at night, it follows mathematical equations.
And it appears very objective because we’re somehow or another all hooked into it.
The new trend is said to improve your skin and mood, and maybe even help you lose weight—all while you sit there doing nothing. Here's what you need to know about how infrared saunas work.
Jenn Barthole and Kylie Gilbert | Apr 26, 2018
Topics:
Photo: HigherDOSE
It's safe to say that infrared therapy is currently the *hottest* treatment in the wellness and beauty industry. Sitting in the specialized sauna reportedly offers a laundry list of health benefits, including increased energy, improved circulation, and pain relief. Plus the whole glowing skin and calorie-burning thing.
So how could sitting in a 120-degree heated box provide so many perks? Well, for starters, it's totally different from your traditional sauna experience, explains Raleigh Duncan, D.C., cofounder of Clearlight Infrared. "Unlike a traditional sauna that just warms the air, infrared heats the body directly, which produces a deep, sustainable sweat at the cellular level," he explains.
What does that mean? "Infrared can penetrate up to an inch into the soft tissue of the body, reducing joint and muscle pain," says Duncan. The infrared light therapy stimulates the circulatory system and more fully oxygenates the body's cells, which allows for better blood circulation, he explains. That's why it's especially helpful for athletes, he adds, and why physical therapy centers have been using infrared saunas for years to help patients with pain relief and recovery. (In fact, Lady Gaga swears by it for managing her chronic pain. Here, more on whether or not it can actually help, according to a pain management doc.)
So it's no surprise that as recovery becomes buzzier than ever (rightfully so), boutique studios dedicated to the service—like HigherDose in New York City and HotBox in LA—have popped up around the country.
HigherDOSE founders Lauren Berlingeri and Katie Kaps explain that infrared light radiates energy that we feel as heat (the same way we feel heat from the sun, but without the harmful UV rays)—and that clients swear by the mind *and* body buzz a sweat session can offer. (Related: Crystal Light Therapy Healed My Post-Marathon Body—Sort Of)
Photo: HigherDOSE
One of the biggest perks is the reported calorie-burning benefits—up to 600 calories per 30-minute session, according to Duncan. "Sitting in an infrared sauna causes the body's core temperature to increase, increasing our heart and metabolic rate, which burns calories similar to the amount of a light jog," says Berlingeri.
Sound too good to be true? Maybe not. A 2017 study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology found that users experienced elevate heart rates for up to 30 minutes following a sauna session. And recent research conducted by Binghamton University found that on average, participants who spent a 45-minute session in an infrared sauna three times a week lost four percent body fat in 16 weeks. Still, there are few studies that can point to any direct long-term weight-loss benefits.
But while proponents say incorporating infrared into your wellness regimen can be both a means of recovery and enhance performance, it's largely about the mental perks, too. HigherDOSE spa has private, oasis-like rooms where you can control the intensity of the heat and chromotherapy lighting, which selects a color depending on your mood and preference. You can even plug your phone into the complimentary aux cord, so you can listen to music or podcast, to get the mood. (Infrared saunas found in fitness centers, physical therapy centers, and spas offer a similar zen experience—and ability to stream Netflix!—so you can get those same perks even if you don't live near a dedicated studio.)
Kaps says that "infrared also triggers our brain's happiness chemicals (especially serotonin and endorphins) so you get your high naturally—and leave feeling beautiful and buzzed." Plus, one study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry found that exposing skin to heat from infrared lamps can mimic the effect of antidepressants by stimulating the production of serotonin.
"It's both relaxing and stimulating," she says. "After a session, you'll feel like you're on clouds, and you'll have that glow-from-within, dewy skin. You're refreshed and re-energized, but you also feel cleansed, focused, and clear-headed."
Sorry, but regardless of possible calorie-burning effects, hopping in an infrared sauna is not a replacement for an actual workout. Still, the energizing and stress-relieving potential alone make trying this wellness trend well worth it.
Naturopathic doctors are on the front lines of the battle against opioid addiction
APR 29, 2018
2:00 PM
Naturopathic doctors are on the front lines of the battle against opioid addiction
APR 29, 2018
2:00 PM
Margot McKinnonPilates and movement specialist, founder and president of Body Harmonics Studios/Clinics in downtown Toronto.
Pelvic floor health is already one of the hottest topics of the year. More and more physiotherapists are specializing in pelvic floor issues as research shows strong correlations between poor pelvic floor function and many health conditions and postural misalignments. Yes, pelvic floor function affects both men and women, and faulty mechanics can contribute to back pain, hip issues, incontinence and SI Joint dysfunction to name a few.
PRASIT PHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES
Medical communities in various parts of the world treat the pelvic floor differently. In Europe, for example, pregnant women and new mothers receive physical therapy to recondition this area of the body as part of the regular medical protocols around pregnancy and birthing. In North America, this is a relatively new line of thinking that is only starting to catch on.
What is the pelvic floor?
The pelvic floor is made up of a series of muscles that fold and drape over each other, wrapping around the openings at the base of the pelvis. Women have three openings and men have two. You can think of the pelvic floor muscles like a layered hammock that stretches from front to back (pubic bones to tailbone) and side to side (between sitting bones). The pelvic floor has four functions, and one of the most important is how it helps to support our pelvic organs (bladder, bowels, and uterus).
The two primary muscle groups of the pelvic floor are the levator ani set at the front and the coccygeus muscle at the back. There is a causal relationship between the two. Interestingly, the pelvic floor works in an automatic, reflexive, and voluntary way. To ensure optimal function in this area of the body, manual intervention by a trained physiotherapist along with specialized exercises to improve timing, strength, and elasticity of the pelvic floor can work wonders.
Too tight? Too weak?
When we look at how the pelvic floor works, it is not an either-or situation of being too tight or too weak. We want the pelvic floor to be elastic and supportive, front to back and side to side so that it can fulfill its different roles. A typical scenario of dysfunction occurs when the coccygeus muscle at the back becomes overly contracted, while the pubococcygeus muscle at the front becomes weak and non-supportive. The result is a fixing and downward pull on the tailbone; the sacrum, in turn, can become destabilized and the deep spine stabilizers, elongated and weak. In this most common case, the sitting bones (ischial tuberosities) are unable to widen when we sit down, reinforcing poor mechanics that then can result in pain syndromes, incontinence, or even sexual dysfunction.
What causes pelvic floor problems?
When it comes to pregnancy, the sacred Kegel is not as beneficial as we once thought. Doing hundreds of Kegels a day as often prescribed, may end up strengthening the part of the pelvic floor that is already strong and weakening other areas by default. In fact, you may end up exacerbating existing problems or creating new ones. Some cues may also create imbalanced tension and weakness in the pelvic floor.
The pelvic floor muscles are often referred to as the pelvic diaphragm because they move the same way that the thoracic diaphragm moves in your chest. In other words, when we breathe in, the pelvic floor musculature is supposed to expand and move slightly downward; on the exhale it should recoil and gently contract. Ideally, this process happens naturally within the body.
Because most of us breathe somewhat inefficiently, however, our pelvic diaphragm and chest diaphragm motions can be poorly timed (or non-existent), and the pelvic floor cannot stretch and contract naturally. So, if you are a shallow breather, you may lose the natural rhythm between the two diaphragms and adversely affect the way your pelvic floor functions.
The pelvic floor is part of a deep fascial support sling in the body. Tension and weakness in the wrong areas are more often than not caused by numerous factors: Breathing, how we hold our pelvis, strain due to obesity, improper lifting techniques, pregnancy, inappropriate exercises, and even stress can play a role in creating an imbalance.
Do not self-diagnose
To get the pelvic floor working efficiently, a combination of manual and active therapies is often the best course of action. By reconditioning and re-educating the pelvic floor this way, other postural issues or pain syndromes may start to dissipate.
Our kinesthetic sense (our ability to feel and sense our bodies), will often inaccurately assess what is happening in the pelvic floor. And when we self-diagnose, we may create or exacerbate an existing problem. Therfore, it is essential to have manual testing done to determine the specific pelvic floor issues.
Seek out a pelvic floor physiotherapist, osteopath, or manual therapist trained in internal examinations and manual techniques to release or stimulate the layers of muscle and fascia of the pelvic floor. The key is to get an accurate diagnosis as a baseline. You may need to focus only on manual intervention for a while before integrating active exercises to condition the area. Depending on the issue though, it may be better to do manual and active therapy simultaneously.
Active therapy
When the conditions are right in your pelvic floor, your sitting bones at the base of the pelvis should widen slightly as you squat, and then narrow when you stand up. During the squatting phase, the pelvic floor elongates and widens. As you stand, the muscles shorten and gently contract. This tiny movement of the sitting bones helps make the pelvic floor elastic and strong so that it can fulfill its supportive and reflexive roles. A natural movement like squatting helps improve pelvic floor health.
As North Americans start to understand the importance of the pelvic floor, during and after pregnancy, and for musculoskeletal health for both men and women, we can move towards effective treatment and preventative measures. Below are five simple exercises that would be part of active therapy to keep your pelvic floor healthy.
Cathryn Jakobson Ramin’s back pain started when she was 16, on the day she flew off her horse and landed on her right hip.
For the next four decades, Ramin says her back pain was like a small rodent nibbling at the base of her spine. The aching left her bedridden on some days and made it difficult to work, run a household, and raise her two boys.
By 2008, after Ramin had exhausted what seemed like all her options, she elected to have a “minimally invasive” nerve decompression procedure. But the $8,000 operation didn’t fix her back, either. The same pain remained, along with new neck aches.
At that point, Ramin decided to deploy her skills as a journalist and investigate the $100 billion back pain industry. She went on to write Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery, an incredible tale of back pain and its treatment, published last May.
The big takeaway: Millions of back patients like Ramin are floundering in a medical system that isn’t equipped to help them. They’re pushed toward intrusive, addictive, expensive interventions that often fail or can even harm them, and away from things like yoga or psychotherapy, which actually seem to help. Meanwhile, Americans and their doctors have come to expect cures for everything — and back pain is one of those nearly universal ailments with no cure. Patients and taxpayers wind up paying the price for this failure, both in dollars and in health.
Thankfully, Ramin finally discovered an exercise program that has eased her discomfort. And to this day, no matter how busy her life gets, she does a series of exercises every morning called “the McGill Big Three” (more on them later). “With very rare exceptions,” she says, “I find time to exercise, even when I’m on the road.”
More and more people like Ramin are seeking out conservative therapies for back pain. While yoga, massage, and psychotherapy have been around for a long time, there was little high-quality research out there to understand their effects on back pain, and doctors sometimes looked down on these practices. But over the past decade, that’s changed.
To learn more, I searched the medical literature on treatments for lower back pain (the most common type) and read through more than 80 studies (mainly reviews of the research that summarized the findings of hundreds more studies) about both “active” approaches (yoga, Pilates, tai chi, etc.) and passive therapies (massage, chiropractics, acupuncture, and so on). I also talked to nine experts and researchers in this field. (For more detail on our methods, scroll to the end.)
What I found surprised me: Many of these approaches really do seem to help, though often with modest effects. But when you compare even those small benefits with the harm we’re currently doing while medically “treating” back pain, the horror of the status quo becomes clear. “No one dies of low back pain,” one back pain expert, University of Amsterdam assistant professor Sidney Rubinstein, summed up, “but people are now dying from the treatment.”
Lower back pain is one of the top reasons people go to the doctor in the US, and it affects 29 percent of adult Americans, according to surveys. It’s also the leading reason for missing work anywhere in the world. The US spends approximately $90 billion a year on back pain — more than the annual expenditures on high blood pressure, pregnancy and postpartum care, and depression — and that doesn’t include the estimated $10 to $20 billion in lost productivity related to back pain.
Doctors talk about back pain in a few different ways, but the kind most people (about 85 percent) suffer from is what they call "nonspecific low back pain." This means the persistent pain has no detectable cause — like a tumor, pinched nerve, infection, or cauda equina syndrome.
About 90 percent of the time, low back pain is short-lived (or in medical lingo, “acute”) and goes away within a few days or weeks without much fuss. A minority of patients, though, go on to have subacute back pain (lasting between four and 12 weeks) or chronic back pain (lasting 12 or more weeks).
Chronic nonspecific back pain is the kind the medical community is often terrible at treating. Many of the most popular treatments on offer from doctors for chronic nonspecific low back pain — bed rest, spinal surgery, opioid painkillers, steroid injections — have been proven ineffective in the majority of cases, and sometimes downright harmful.
Consider opioids. As of 2016, 14,500 Americans died from opioid-related deaths. Opioid prescribing is common among people with back pain, with almost 20 percent receiving long-term opioid prescriptions.
Here’s the outrageous part: All these opioids were being prescribed before we actually knew if they helped people with chronic lower back pain. It gets worse: Now high-quality evidence is coming in, and opioids don’t actually help many patients with chronic low back pain.
This newly published randomized controlled trial was the first to compare the long-term use of opioids versus non-opioid medications (such as anti-inflammatory drugs and acetaminophen) for chronic low back pain, and hip or knee osteoarthritis. After a year, the researchers found opioids did not improve patients’ function any more than the non-opioids, and the patients on opioids were actually in slightly more pain compared to the non-opioid group (perhaps the result of “opioid-induced hyperalgesia” — heightened pain brought on by these drugs).
As for surgery, only a small minority of patients with chronic low back pain require it, according to UpToDate, a service that synthesizes the best available research for clinicians. In randomized trials, there was no clinically meaningful difference when comparing the outcomes of patients who got spinal fusion (which has become more and more popular in the US over the years) with those who got a nonsurgical treatment.
Steroid injections for back pain, another popular medical treatment, tend to have similarly lackluster results: They improve pain slightly in the short term, but the effects dissipate within a few months. They also don’t improve patients’ long-term health outcomes.
It’s not entirely surprising that the surgeries, injections, and prescription drugs often fail considering what researchers are now learning about back pain.
Historically, the medical community thought back pain (and pain in general) was correlated to the nature and severity of an injury or anatomical issue. But now it’s clear that what’s going on in your brain matters too.
“Our best understanding of low back pain is that it is a complex, biopsychosocial condition — meaning that biological aspects like structural or anatomical causes play some role but psychological and social factors also play a big role," Roger Chou, a back pain expert and professor at Oregon Health and Science University, summarized.
For example, when you compare people with the same MRI results showing the same back injury — bulging discs, say, or facet joint arthritis — some may experience terrible chronic pain while others report no pain at all. And people who are under stress, or prone to depression, catastrophizing, and anxiety tend to suffer more, as do those who have histories of trauma in their early lives or poor job satisfaction.
The awareness about the role psychological factors play in how people experience pain has grown more widespread with the general shift away from the dualist view of the mind and body toward the more integrated biopsychosocial model. Chronic nonspecific low back pain “should not been considered as a homogenous condition meaning all cases are identical,” researchers in one review of the research on exercise cautioned.
A new understanding of pain called “central sensitization” is also gaining traction. The basic idea is that in some people who have ongoing pain, there are changes that occur between the body and brain that heighten pain sensitivity — to the point where even things that normally don’t hurt are perceived as painful. That means some people with chronic low back pain may actually be suffering from malfunctioning pain signals.
Despite the clear risks, doctors have continued to prescribe painkillers, and perform surgeries and injections, sometimes to patients who won’t take no for answer or who can’t afford to try alternatives (which usually aren’t covered by insurance plans).
Slowly, though, the tide is shifting.
Medical societies and public health agencies are now advising doctors to try less invasive options and even alternative therapies such as acupuncture before considering opioids or surgery.
Most recently, in February 2017, the American College of Physicians advised doctors and patients try “non-drug therapies” such as exercise, acupuncture, tai chi, yoga, and even chiropractics, and avoid prescription drugs or surgical options wherever possible. (If the non-drug therapies fail, they recommended nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs as a first-line therapy, or tramadol or duloxetine only as a second-line therapy.) In March 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also came out with new guidelines urging health care providers to turn to non-drug options and non-opioid painkillers before considering opioids.
At the same time, research has mounted suggesting active therapies (exercise programs, yoga, tai chi) can really help people work through back pain, and alternative approaches (massage, spinal manipulation) can be effective, too — with the caveat that they’re often no panacea and the effects tend to be short-lived and moderate.
But most of the alternatives also carry little or no harm (except to patients’ pocketbooks) — which makes them all the more appealing amid the historic drug crisis.
“We have a slew of modalities and procedures that the American College of Physicians cannot endorse — such as opioids, fusion surgery, such as injections,” Ramin said, because there’s now so much evidence of ineffectiveness or harm. “So all those things are off the table, and now they are looking for things they can endorse that will not cause harm.”
When back pain strikes, your first instinct may be to avoid physical activity and retreat to the couch until the pain subsides.
But doctors now think that in most cases, this is probably the worst thing you can do. Studies comparing exercise to no exercise for chronic low back pain are consistently clear: Physical activity can help relieve pain, while being inactive can delay a person’s recovery.
Exercise is helpful for a number of reasons: It can increase muscle strength, which can help support the spine; It can improve flexibility and range of motion in the back, which can help people’s functional movement and get them back to their normal living; it can boost blood flow to the soft tissues in the back, which promotes healing and reduces stiffness. These are just a few reasons why researchers who study back pain suggest opting for exercise before some of the passive therapies like acupuncture or massage (we’ll describe those later).
Researchers in this 2016 review of the research on exercise for chronic nonspecific low back pain summarized exercise’s range of benefits, including these pretty amazing findings:
Those researchers suggested that a combination of exercises — strength training, aerobic exercise, flexibility training — may be most helpful to patients, and that there seemed to be no clear winners among the different approaches but that each had its own benefits.
“My general take,” Chou said, “is that all [exercise types] seem to work.” If people find a program that makes them feel better, he added, they’ll probably see benefits not only with their back but with their overall health and sleep patterns, too.
To be clear, exercise doesn’t always help with those short-lived acute episodes. But if you have chronic back pain, you’ll want to find ways to work through the discomfort and keep active. Next, we’ll turn to some more specific exercises that are popular (and well studied) for back pain.
There’s lots of research on back pain and yoga. Not all of it is high-quality, but taken together, the evidence pretty uniformly suggests yoga can both decrease pain and improve back-related function. (You can read more about yoga’s health benefits — and the difficulties of studying the practice — in this Show Me the Evidence.)
The most recent Cochrane systematic review on yoga and chronic low back pain, published in 2017, sums up the results of the best available studies, which mostly focused on the Iyengar, Hatha, or Viniyoga forms of yoga:
So again, this isn’t an end-all treatment — but the evidence we have points in the direction of a benefit.
Importantly, the review authors also noted that it’s not clear whether yoga is better than other exercises, since there were few head-to-head comparisons tracking yoga against other kinds of workouts.
As for tai chi and Pilates, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), a federal agency that crunches the best available data on the effectiveness of health care interventions, recently published a comprehensive 800-page systematic review of research on noninvasive treatments for low back pain, including these two kinds of exercises. It found tai chi seemed to reduce chronic back pain and help people return to their daily activities when compared with no exercise, and that it was more effective in alleviating pain than backward walking or jogging but not necessarily better than swimming.
For Pilates, the evidence was a little more mixed: It was associated with small or no effects on pain and no effects on function compared with other types of exercise. Again, though, pretty much every back expert I spoke to said any exercise is better than no exercise, so if Pilates is something you enjoy, do it.
Ramin, the journalist and author of Crooked, makes a compelling argument for seeking out a specialist who deeply understands the back to tailor an exercise program that targets your specific pain.
These “back whisperers” come from many different backgrounds: doctors of physical therapy with an orthopedic clinical specialist certification, personal trainers with a degree in exercise science, physical therapists.
“They are able to observe how you walk and sit and stand, and grasp what your posture and gait say about your muscles, tendons, and ligaments,” she writes in Crooked. “Generally, they focus on functional training, prescribing exercise regimens that are ‘non-pain-contingent’ (you don’t stop when it hurts, sorry), ‘quantitative’ (you will not be allowed to quit until you hit your ‘number’), and ‘high-dose’ (you will do this routine on a schedule rather than when the spirit moves you).”
One renowned “back whisperer” is spine biomechanics professor Stuart McGill, of the University of Waterloo in Canada, who has treated everyone from Olympic athletes to professional football players. He spends several hours watching his patients move, and identifies the specific motions, postures, and loads that trigger their back pain. He then tailors exercise programs that build a foundation for pain-free activity, so that those triggers no longer result in pain. (He’s also written a popular book, Back Mechanic, which walks readers through his process — an approach based on decades of research at his spine biomechanics lab and clinic at the University of Waterloo.)
McGill has a set of spine-stabilizing exercises — the McGill Big Three, which Ramin does daily — based on research in his lab that are targeted at people with chronic back pain.
It can be difficult to find someone with the expertise of a back whisperer like McGill, and their time can also be costly. There’s also no study that brings together research on these folks, but if you can find a good one who works for you, your back pain could be improved.
So where does physical therapy — usually a combination of guided exercises, mobilization, superficial heat or cold, and health advice — fit into the back pain treatment picture?
In AHRQ’s read of the evidence, it didn’t seem to work better than simple advice to remain active when it came to reducing pain and improving function. (The researchers I talked to said this lack of effect may be because of the variability in physiotherapy approaches and programs, and the difficulty in coming to clear conclusions about the variety of programs on offer.)
Nowadays, though, there are also several different kinds of physical therapies that also integrate psychotherapy or cognitive behavioral therapy, often called multidisciplinary rehabilitation.
Multidisciplinary rehab takes the “biopsychosocial” view of back pain — again, that the pain arises from the interplay of physical, psychological, and social factors. It can of course be tricky to disentangle whether mood disorders like anxiety or depression contribute to people’s pain, or whether they arise out of the pain, but either way, the biopsychosocial model views the physical as only one part of the equation. So these practitioners deal with what’s going on inside the head as part of their back pain therapy — helping patients get treatment for their depression or anxiety, or guiding them through cognitive behavioral therapy to improve their coping skills.
Perhaps not surprisingly, multidisciplinary therapy appears to work slightly better thanphysical therapy alone for chronic back pain in both the short and long term. Patients who get these more holistic treatments are also more likely to return to work.
Passive therapies can also play a role in helping people manage back pain, though there’s no silver bullet among them, and their effects also tend to be modest and short-lived. (Again, active approaches to managing back pain should be your first stop.) The research base for these alternative therapies is also generally weak: There’s a lot of variability among the practice styles and programs on offer, even within one category of treatment like massage. It can be difficult to blind the patients to the treatment they are receiving, and the people who seek out particular therapies — acupuncture, massage — are probably more amenable to them, which may bias the results. With that said, here’s what we know.
Spinal manipulation, the cranking and tweaking on offer when you visit a traditional chiropractor, is among the most popular approaches to back pain. Practitioners lay their hands on the patient and move their joints to or beyond their range of motion — a technique that’s often accompanied by a pop or crack.
There is some evidence the approach can help people with chronic back pain — but not any more than over-the-counter painkillers or exercise, and you need to take precautions when seeking out a chiropractor.
First, a quick look at the evidence. There are two recent Cochrane reviews on spinal manipulation for low back pain: one focused on people with acute (again, episodic/short duration) pain and the other on chronic pain. The 2011 review on chronic low back pain found that spinal manipulation had small, short-term effects on reducing pain and improving the patient’s functional status — but this effect was about the same as other common therapies for chronic low back pain, such as exercise. That review was published in 2011; UpToDatereviewed the randomized trials that have come out since — and also found that spinal manipulation delivered modest, short-term benefits for chronic back pain sufferers.
The Cochrane review on acute pain found that spinal manipulation worked no better than placebo. So people with a short episode of back pain should probably not bother seeing a chiropractor.
“Based on the evidence,” University of Amsterdam assistant professor Sidney Rubinstein, who is the lead author on the Cochrane reviews, told me, “it would appear [spinal manipulation] works as well as other accepted conservative therapies for chronic low back pain, such as non-prescription medication or exercise, but less well for patients with acute low back pain.”
As a chiropractor himself, he had some advice for patients: They should avoid chiropractors who routinely make X-rays or do advanced diagnostics for low back pain because this adds nothing to the clinical picture, particularly in the case of nonspecific low back pain. Patients should also beware chiropractors who put them on extended programs of care.
“Patients who respond to chiropractic care traditionally respond rather quickly,” he said. “My advice is those patients who have not responded to a short course of chiropractic care or manipulation should consider another type of therapy.”
While the risks of serious side effects from spinal manipulation for back pain are rare — about one in 10 million — the risks associated with chiropractic therapy for neck pain tend to be slightly higher: 1.46 strokes for every million neck adjustments.
The issue is the vertebral artery, which travels from the neck down through the vertebrae. Manipulating the neck can put patients at a higher risk of arterial problems, including stroke or vertebral artery dissection, or the tearing of the vertebral artery (though Rubinstein noted that people in the initial stages of stroke or dissection may also seek out care for their symptoms, such as neck pain, which makes it difficult to untangle how many of health emergencies are brought on by the adjustments).
In general, massage therapists work by manipulating the muscle and soft tissue of the back and body. There are many, many different styles of massage: Swedish, deep tissue, sport, myofascial release, Thai, the list goes on. Massages also vary in how long they last, how much pressure is used, and how frequent sessions are, which makes the evidence for massage pretty difficult to interpret.
But there’s good news here: Massage is pretty harmless, and the researchers who study back pain say the approach makes sense from a pain relief perspective. So it may be worth trying.
According to AHRQ, for subacute (lasting between seven and 12 weeks) and chronic low back pain, massage seems to improve symptoms and function in the short term (i.e., one week) — but there’s no evidence that it leads to any long-term change. At best, you’ll get a bit of immediate relief, but nothing lasting.
The Cochrane systematic review on massage for low back pain looked at 25 trials on massage and, like AHRQ, found short-term improvements in pain and function for both subacute and chronic low back pain but a very mixed evidence base.
One of the oldest approaches to back pain is acupuncture, a core part of traditional Chinese medicine. The philosophical underpinning of acupuncture is that disease or pain in the body is the result of imbalances between the body’s “yin and yang forces.” “Vital energy circulates throughout the body along the so-called meridians, which have either Yin or Yang characteristics,” the Cochrane authors explain. Using needles to stimulate the parts of the body that are located on these meridians can modulate pain or reverse disease, practitioners claim.
A 2005 Cochrane review looked at the evidence for acupuncture and low back pain and came to a few useful conclusions: There was “insufficient evidence” to make any recommendations about acupuncture for acute low back pain — so it may or may not help people. For chronic pain, acupuncture seemed to offer more pain relief when compared with no treatment or sham acupuncture (when practitioners use needles that don’t actually penetrate the skin). The needling also improved function in the short-term when compared with no treatment for chronic pain sufferers. But acupuncture was not more effective than other treatments.
UpToDate looked at more recent research and noted that the studies on acute pain were still limited, and that evidence for acupuncture’s effects on chronic pain is somewhat conflicting. The review also noted it was unclear whether acupuncture’s benefit lies in the needling, or in the placebo effect.
The author of the Cochrane review, Andrea Furlan, pointed to a more recent randomized trial, which came out in 2009 after her review was published: It also found that acupuncture seemed to reduce chronic low back pain — but it didn’t seem to matter where the needles were placed, raising questions about the meridian philosophy guiding the practice.
This is what makes acupuncture controversial. Science suggests it might work — but the squishiness of the findings, combined with the lack of scientific underpinning in acupuncture’s philosophy, leaves room for interpretation. And evidence-based medicine thinkers and skeptics view the results of studies as suggestive of nothing more than acupuncture’s potent placebo effect.
Researchers have found that the more dramatic the medical intervention, the stronger the placebo effect. And getting poked all over the body by needles is a pretty dramatic intervention. (See this classic study comparing water injections with sugar pills for migraines, as well as Vox’s placebo explainer by Brian Resnick.) That’s not to mention you can never run a double-blind placebo — the gold standard in health research — on acupuncture, since that would involve both practitioners and patients not knowing (or being blinded to) what treatment they are giving and receiving.
There’s a pretty simple adage public health officials stick to: Make it easy for people to stay healthy, and make it hard for them to get sick.
When it comes to back pain in America, we make it easy for people to get sick and hard for them to stay healthy.
There’s a complete disconnect between what insurance providers will cover for people and what actually helps their back pain. It’s still much easier to get your opioids or back surgery paid for by your insurance provider than to get a massage or exercise program reimbursed.
More states need to move in the direction of places like Oregon, where insurance payers are making the default options for people with back pain healthier by expanding access to, and coverage for, non-drug options.
For example, the Oregon Health Plan (the state’s version of Medicaid, federally funded health insurance for the poor) has ensured that alternatives like acupuncture and physical therapy are covered. It’s also expanded access to treatment for the behavioral health factors that are associated with back pain (such as depression and anxiety) by paying primary care clinics extra to be able to hire behavioral health specialists and meet patients who may not have had access to those services. Finally, it’s opened non-medication pain clinics, where people with low back pain can get a range of treatments as well as help to taper off their opioid prescriptions.
Amit Shah, the chief medical officer at CareOregon (one of the insurance companies administering the Oregon Health Plan), said they decided to move in this direction in the face of the mounting evidence of the harm opioids were causing. “Chronic lower back pain is very prevalent, and we know some people with chronic lower back pain have used opioids for it,” he said. “There’s been a lot of evidence and studies about how opioids are not necessarily the most effective approach, while other medical interventions are effective.”
This knowledge, along with “the continual realization that patients deserve more than a prescription that doesn’t necessarily work,” Shah said, pushed Oregon to experiment with a new benefit structure that might actually help people. “We’re trying to expand the options instead of limiting choice only to opioids.”
Officials in Oregon haven’t yet determined the cost of this new scheme, but opioid prescriptions are already down. Shah also said he’s confident that the measures are bound to reduce the cost burden overall, since alleviating pain can help people can get back to work and bring down the numbers of opioid deaths. If only other states would follow Oregon and take back pain this seriously.
No back pain article would be complete without a mention of the late John Sarno, an NYU psychiatrist and probably America’s best-known back guru. He believed there is an emotional basis for all chronic back pain.
More specifically, he thought that the brain distracts us from experiencing negative emotions by creating pain. We may not want to accept the uncomfortable truths that we are angry with our children, or that we hate our job, so instead of thinking those thoughts, we focus on the pain.
Back pain researchers and doctors generally still don’t find Sarno’s theories entirely convincing — particularly his one-size-fits-all diagnosis — and I’ve written about why at length here. But Sarno got some things right. As I’ve mentioned, it’s now mainstream to view chronic back pain as a “biopsychosocial” condition, and “central sensitization” is also gaining traction. Both ideas suggest it’s not just what’s going on in your body and back that matters for your pain.
That means he was also ahead of his time when it came to treatment. “What [Sarno] recommended as treatment was essentially cognitive behavioral therapy — elimination of fear avoidant behavior and catastrophizing — before anyone had ever heard of it,” Ramin said, “and it’s exactly what is being used now to treat patients with central sensitization.”
There’s a mountain of research on low back pain. (Entering the term in the PubMed search engine turned up more than 31,000 results.) So I zeroed in on the highest-quality evidence: systematic reviews. These are syntheses of the research evidence that bring together all the highest-quality studies to come to more fully supported conclusions.
I found the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), a federal agency that crunches the best available data on the effectiveness of health care interventions and had recently (February 2016) published a comprehensive 800-page systematic review of research on noninvasive treatments for low back pain. The AHRQ review covered 156 of the best back pain studies from 2008 to April 2015. I then searched for low back pain–related systematic reviews on PubMed Health, the government search engine that specializes in systematic reviews and meta-analyses, to cover the recent period left out of the AHRQ review (from May 2015 to the present, July 2017).
To make sure I wasn’t missing anything, I consulted the chronic and acute low back pain articles on UpToDate, (a service that synthesizes the best available research for clinicians), the Cochrane Library of systematic reviews, and guidelines.gov, and sometimes followed the footnotes in these reviews to other studies. Ramin’s book Crooked was also an excellent source for thinking on back pain. Finally, I conducted interviews with nine back pain doctors and researchers, including authors of many of the systematic reviews referenced here.
Editor: Eliza Barclay
Graphics: Javier Zarracina
Copy editor: Tanya Pai
Project manager: Susannah Locke
Special thanks: Mohsin Ali for research assistance and Hilda Bastian for advice on searching the medical literature.
WASHINGTON, DC (PRWEB) MAY 03, 2018
Naturopathic doctors (NDs) help women address perimenopause symptoms and practice prevention to optimize health as the body ages. Using a whole-body approach and natural therapies whenever possible, NDs can help women thrive through the transition to non-reproductive years. This is according to the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP), which today released a new FAQ in partnership with the Institute for Natural Medicine (INM).
An estimated two million U.S. women reach menopause every year. But many begin to experience an array of physical, mental, and emotional symptoms long before the change. Unique for every woman, perimenopause symptoms such as hot flashes, fatigue, irritability, decreased sex drive, depression, and more can interfere with quality life. Whole-body health evaluation and care during this transition is vital, both to manage troubling symptoms, and to proactively address changes that can impact heart, bone, and brain health.
“As a woman approaches menopause, symptoms can be varied, unpredictable, and often go unrecognized as perimenopause. Naturopathic doctors provide a high level of emotional and educational support,” said Michelle Simon, PhD, ND and Chair of the INM Board of Directors. “NDs apply their rigorous training in clinical nutrition, lifestyle counseling, botanical medicine, and other treatment modalities both to alleviate symptoms and to help optimize health as the body ages.”
The complete FAQ “How do naturopathic doctors help women in perimenopause?” can be found at https://www.naturopathic.org/natfaqs.
About the Institute for Natural Medicine
The Institute for Natural Medicine (INM) is a national not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization that provides public education about naturopathic medicine and increases consumer access to naturopathic doctors. As a close partner to the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, the INM strives to increase consumer and physician choice in safe, effective healthcare that improves patient outcomes and lowers costs. For more information visit http://www.naturemed.org or call 855-799-4490.
About the AANP
The American Association of Naturopathic Physicians is the professional association that represents licensed naturopathic physicians. The AANP strives to make naturopathic medicine available to every American, and to increase recognition of naturopathic physicians as the identified authorities on natural medicine. Learn more at http://www.naturopathic.org.
In our busy lives, we demand a lot from our bodies, it is easy to sometimes neglect and/or even take our health and wellbeing for granted until it’s too late.
Regular myotherapy and remedial massage treatments will help you get back on the track to feeling good.
Myotherapy is designed to help clients presenting with debilitating pain within their musculoskeletal system, restricting the movement of their joints and in some causes presenting with nerve pain/tension.
While myotherapy mainly focuses on treating the cause of the muscular dysfunction, you will experience benefits beyond pain relief, reducing stress and improving yours and the community’s wellbeing.
A lot of the time your first instinct to terminate pain is surgery without the thought of alternative therapies, surgery should be the ultimate last option for you.
Myotherapy can help to relieve your pain naturally and regular treatments could potentially get you to the point where no surgery is needed.
Regular treatments will also help to aid your productivity and aids to performance, increasing your levels of mental alertness and clarity, leaving you with more positive thoughts without the interruption of chronic aches affecting the way you see life, making you a better person.
A better view on life means we are left with less stress, letting us get a better sleeping routine without the constant roll overs and discomfort caused by muscle aches.
If you need to get ahead on your body and mind or want to stay on top of your health and wellbeing, we can help you get back on track and feeling on top of the world!
Throw together Andrew McCullough's secret cave, a few stockings and a magic home-spun remedy and you have the ingredients for a miracle cure that had the Brisbane hooker back on the field a month ahead of schedule.
McCullough waltzed through a typically dynamic 80-minute display against the Bulldogs two weeks after an elbow ligament injury had him scheduled to miss up to six weeks of action.
The 28-year-old resorted to an unconventional combination of new and old style therapies.
''I went to a place called City Cave where I got in a magnesium float tank and an infrared sauna and did a bit of yoga,'' McCullough told NRL.com.
''It is something a bit different and made me feel good. I am open minded and if I feel like it is going to work in my head, that is all that matters.''
The infrared sauna heats the body by penetrating the joints and provided McCullough with pain relief and sped up his metabolism.
According to City Cave, the epsom salt float tank allows participants to "switch off, deprive your senses and focus your energy.''
''Mentally if you think it is doing something for you then sometimes that is all that matters,'' McCullough said.
Brisbane hooker Andrew McCullough after his injury.©Scott Davis/NRL Photos
''If you think you are going alright, then you are.''
For several nights McCullough also applied himself to an old fashioned cure-all.
''I got some soda crystals, put them in a stocking and wrapped it up, and then slept with it for a few nights,'' he said.
''A guy in Sydney I know is a masseuse and he helped me out with that. It is an old school remedy that brings out the fluid ... and old school sometimes works.''
McCullough said he raised a few eyebrows when he drove to a pharmacy in Brisbane to get his crystals.
''I had to buy some stockings there as well and the bloke was looking at me a bit strange,'' he said.
The Broncos rake also went to see a masseuse in Sydney and received deep tissue massages, but revealed he had other motivations for making the trip.
''Last year I kind of regretted taking myself away from the team when I was injured with my knee,'' he said.
''I hadn't dealt with an injury like that but it was probably a bit selfish of me as a senior player and that is something I've learned from.
''I know it is not the same injury this time but I wanted to be there to help the guys out. What I have learned is that when you give back it gives yourself a boost, and the boys certainly gave me a boost.''
McCullough's early return against Canterbury was certainly a boost to his teammates and now he has the Sea Eagles in his sights.
''I'm pretty proud of myself to get back,'' he said.
''I just want to play footy. I hate watching. I got through the game pretty well and got a lot of confidence from that.
''I've got nine days to recover now which I am looking forward to. I tell myself regularly that I get to do something I love for a living and not many people get to do that. Any opportunity I have to get back playing early is something that I cherish.''
ON MAY 8, 2018 BY TARYN DAVIES
Being healthier doesn’t require a drastic lifestyle change, in fact, there are plenty of small habits you can adopt that will provide a big benefit to your overall health and wellbeing.
If you want to make your life a little healthier, these are the small changes that can make a big difference.
Table of Contents
It’s important that you consider your posture on a daily basis, slouching not only looks bad because it leads to a bulging stomach and round shoulders, but it can also have affect on your spine and breathing. When you slouch you put unnecessary pressure on the spring, and this reduce how efficient your breathing is.
It’s important that you sit, stand and walk tall, lengthening through the crown of your head, you’ll not only benefit the body but you’ll appear slimmer and taller too.
It’s not just our phones that we need to take regular breaks from, it’s pretty much all technology as they can cause electrical sensitivity which leaves to headaches, fatigue, sleeplessness and dizziness.
Electrical sensitivity can interfere with your body’s natural rhythm, so it’s important that you take breaks from it. Things that you might be surprised to learn can affect them include using the hairdryer for more than ten minutes, having a digital clock by the bed and sitting for too long and too close to the computer screen.
It’s important that we take time to chew our food properly, a minimum of 30 times for each mouthful is recommended. Chewing helps to helps to stimulate the enzymes that are needed to ensure proper digestion. Chewing this many times also guarantees that the food you’re eating is mixed with saliva and isn’t swallowed with too much gas.
If you don’t break down your food properly, it can lead to many different gut problems, things like gas and bloating.
You’ve definitely heard this one before, but it’s a good one that should definitely be introduced into your daily routine. Lemons are great for helping to support your digestion, which is a great way to start the day. The fruit can wear down enamel, so it could be best to drink it through a straw, but the fact they help with fat digestion can help your body to absorb certain nutrients better too.
Getting enough sleep is imperative for good health, plus it makes you feel and look better too. Not only that but quality sleep can also boost your metabolism and memory, reduce the feelings of stress, and decrease your risk of cardiovascular disease.
If you need an extra hand getting some better sleep, a magnesium supplement could help. If you’re deficient in magnesium it could help with your quality of sleep as it can relax your muscles and nerves.
Instead of reaching for crisps or chocolate when hunger strikes, keep almonds handy because they’re a great healthier snack option. Not only are the packed with protein, but they also have linoleic acid which is an essential fatty acid, are an excellent source of magnesium, zinc, iron, calcium, copper and phosphorus.
As well as getting you to stretch your legs, going for a walk on lunch, for around 15 minutes should be enough to get the vitamin D you need from sun exposure. Ensuring you get enough vitamin D is important as it can help with symptoms associated with mild depression and Seasonal Affective Disorder. Plus, it also helps with the absorption of calcium, which is vital for good bone health, as well as helping to boost your immunity too.
Having sex regularly can make you a happier and more confident person, all thanks to the love hormone, oxytocin, that is released during sexual activity.
Want to cut back on the amount of starchy carbohydrates you eat? Look for fun alternatives to try and make sure you’re not missing out on the foods you love. Portobello mushrooms make great alternatives for burger buns, or to replace the burger itself. Use sturdy greens like romaine lettuce in place of tortilla wraps when having fajitas, and swap out rice for grated cauliflower. These are all great ways of ensuring that you eat plenty of vegetables through the day too.
A healthy gut can make a big difference to your overall health, and unless you’re eating plenty of foods to support your gut the best thing you can do is take a quality probiotic. These probiotics help to balance the good and bad levels of bacteria in our gut, and help to ensure that we absorb the nutrients we need and work to fight the bad bacteria.
We’ve been stressed since we were young the importance of eating our greens, and it still reigns true. If you’re eating plenty of spinach, broccoli, cabbage, sprouts and more, you could try adding in some greens from the sea as well. Try adding in some Chlorella or Spirulina powder into smoothies for an extra dose of vitamin C to help boost your immune system.
Dry brush your body on a regular basis to help stimulate the circulation, as well aiding lymphatic drainage. Spend five minutes dry brushing your body before you hop in the shower or bath, and always brush towards your heart.
Eat more purple foods like plums, red cabbage, aubergine, blueberries, beetroot etc because they’re an excellent source of anthocyanins which are a potent antioxidant. Antioxidants are essential for fighting the free radical damage that we come into contact with on a daily basis, so eating these foods will help to fight the signs of ageing from the inside.
Massage for lymphatic drainage is given to patients that have undergone surgery to help regenerate frayed tissues and nerves that have undergone surgical incisions. Also referred to as Manual Lymphatic Drainage, this is a reflexology massage technique which uses gentle movements over the body to enable drainage of lymph liquid which is made up of white blood cells and other essential chemicals. This massage may be given for lymph drainage but it also helps in boosting immune system by moving antigens into lymph nodes to relieve symptoms of chest congestion diseases like tonsillitis, bronchitis and sinusitis. This lymphatic drainage massage also works as a pain reliever for people suffering from fibromyalgia as it helps in removal of stagnant fluid. It should always be done at least a couple of months after surgery after seeking doctor’s permission as they know if a particular wound has healed from inside or not.
Benefits of this massage
Tissue regeneration – The massage helps in regeneration of cells and tissues around the affected area and around it so should be done very gently with delicate hand movements. As it promotes tissue regeneration it can eliminate marks on the body due to surgical incisions scars wrinkles etc.
Enables breastfeeding
Sometimes lactating mothers have complications during breastfeeding their infants like engorgement, sore nipples, plugged ducts etc., that is painful and discourages some of them to quit the practice altogether. Experts state that this problem can be reduced by lymph drainage massage as it helps to relieve swelling and reopen plugged ducts. Once these two problems are taken care of it becomes easy for the mother to breastfeed her baby.
Strong immune system and relaxed body
Our body requires steady flow of lymphatic fluids to function properly and stay immune to germs and bacteria in the environment. Lymph drainage helps to boost immunity by increasing production of antigens.
Monday: 06:00 – 20:00
Tuesday: 06:00 – 20:00
Wednesday: 06:00 – 20:00
Thursday: 06:00 – 20:00
Friday: 06:00 – 20:00
Saturday: 08:00 – 04:00
Sunday: 08:00 – 04:00
Health Connection
Shop 3GC on Yarra Lane, 15 – 19 Claremont Street, South Yarra, VIC 3141
T: +61 (0)413297801
E: healthconnectionsy@gmail.com
Health Connection SY
Shop 3GC on Yarra Lane, 15 – 19 Claremont Street
South Yarra, VIC 3141, AUSTRALIA
