The Health Benefits of Easter Chocolate

It’s the month of Easter. What better way to celebrate than to talk about chocolate’s warm, milky goodness? Everyone has a favourite, but if you want our opinion (or read up on the latest health research, which we do a lot – something of an occupational hazard for osteopaths) the darker the chocolate the better it is for you. But that doesn’t mean we recommend you demand dark chocolate and nothing but dark chocolate from the Easter Bunny. Why? Read on to find out.

Dark chocolate is generally considered better for you than other varieties because it contains a higher percentage of cocoa solids. Cocoa solids contain antioxidants called flavonoids, which research has associated with several health benefits, including:

•   Improved heart health: Flavonoids can help lower blood pressure, improve blood flow, and reduce the risk of heart disease.

•   Better brain function: Studies suggest that the flavonoids in dark chocolate can improve cognitive function and reduce the risk of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.

•   Reduced inflammation: Antioxidants help reduce inflammation in the body, which has been linked to several chronic health conditions.

By its nature, dark chocolate contains less sugar than the hyper-sweet stuff. Plus, we know sugar can increase inflammation in the body, be addictive, trigger bizarre insulin reactions, and contains nutritionally useless calories (oh, and it’s a nightmare for your oral hygiene too). But it’s important to remember that it still contains some sugar and fat so you should enjoy it in moderation! But what if you don’t enjoy it? That’s OK – you can get flavonoids from tea, fruit and vegetables. It’s not an essential part of your diet – after all if your ancestry is European, Australasian, African, Asian, or North American (anywhere but South America) your ancestors survived without it for tens of thousands of years! 

So, I Should ONLY Eat Dark Chocolate, Right?

But with all those health benefits why would we suggest you shouldn’t celebrate Easter with a dark chocolate frenzy? As osteopaths, psychology isn’t our main thing, but we do know our patients. We know that the exercises we prescribe need to be more than “good for you” they need to be achievable for where you are right now - and maybe even a little bit fun.  With that in mind we suggest that the healthiest chocolate is one you enjoy: one you can take a bite or two of and feel satisfied. If you don’t like dark chocolate you’ll eat it, and then probably eat some more because you feel a bit deprived and disappointed and then you’ll raid the kids’ dairy milk stash because that’s what you wanted in the first place. 

So, we suggest you ask the Easter Bunny to bring fewer, better-quality Easter Eggs with some dark chocolate and some of whatever you and your family like. And while Easter is a time for chocolate it’s also a time for family and, for many, for faith. You’ll enjoy your Easter Eggs more if you don’t fixate on them and enjoy a range of Easter foods and Easter activities instead. How about boiling eggs in water with food colouring added for old-fashioned family fun? Or perhaps the Easter Bunny could bring some craft activities for some family craft time.

Whatever you do to celebrate we hope you enjoy it. We look forward to seeing our patients again soon after the few days off to rest and reset. We’re always to here to help with your health goals. Call us on 0439379847 to make an appointment with the osteopaths at Holistic Hands Osteopathy for support in living your healthiest life. Have a great Easter everyone.

Stiff and painful neck? Facet joint injury explained

Treating stiff and sore necks has to be up there as one of the most common areas of the body we Osteo’s see on a day-to-day basis. The causes for neck pain are numerous, with some of the common causes including muscle strain, joint restriction and degeneration, and disc-related injuries. Out of those, we regularly see injuries relating to the facet joints of the neck, which are small joints formed by two vertebrae in the spine.

What are facet joints there for?

In a nutshell, there is a facet joint on either side of the spine at each level. Depending on their position, they restrict and allow certain movements, based on how the joint surfaces are orientated. In the neck, the joints are orientated in such a way that allows for relatively large amounts of movement through forward and backward bending (flexion and extension), side-to-side bending (lateral flexion), and some twisting (rotation) too. If you move your head around, you will notice your neck is the most mobile part of your spine. This can leave it a little susceptible to injury.

How do these joints get injured?

It could be something as silly as a quick glance over the shoulder like checking your blind spot in the car, or spending an extended period looking up like when having to paint a ceiling in a house. There are usually some underlying movement issues that lead you to this point. For example, joint restrictions higher up in the neck or in the mid-back. That quick glance over the shoulder could be enough to sprain the soft tissue capsule of the joint that holds it together, or the long period spent looking up could over-compress the joint surfaces and lead them to become inflamed and lock up. Mums who spend hours looking down at their bubbas can also put these joints under strain and end up with a very stiff and painful neck.

 Can an Osteopath help?

Of course! We can help, and in many ways other than just using our hands. When you come into Holistic Hands Osteopathy we will take you through some questions to get an in-depth look into your life and the issue you’re currently experiencing. There are likely to be many things in your life that have led you to this stiff and painful neck and we want to make sure we tick off and address all of those risk factors. We’ll look into your personal and work life, hobbies and sports and even how you spend your time relaxing and sleeping. These are all areas that can play a part.

We will of course assess you physically. You may have a neck issue, but we will take a keen interest in what your shoulders, mid and low back are doing, as well as the pelvis and beyond into the legs. Once we can see how your body is working as a unit, we will discuss the treatment plan with you and get to work. Initially we will focus our attention on relieving your pain. We’ll use our hands to massage the muscles, mobilise the joints and we may use manipulation to achieve optimal joint motion and muscle relaxation. We’ll then give you some pointers on exercise and lifestyle advice so you can leave knowing how to manage the problem and continue to improve further at home.

A locked facet joint will typically take a few days to calm down following injury. Once the initial inflammation reduces, the pain decreases, movement improves and you should start to feel normal again. Within a few treatments, we’ll have you pain free and moving better than you have in a long time - this is where our work on the rest of the body comes in to play. It’s never JUST a neck issue!

Stiff neck anyone? Call us today and we’ll get you on the mend :)

Introducing chronic pain and how to treat it

Hello everyone, and welcome to our July blog! This month we are going to be talking about pain. We can’t believe it’s already halfway through the year. Time certainly does fly! But for the 3.24 million Australians living with chronic pain, it’s just more time spent battling the daily hurdles - getting out of bed, working, socialising, being a parent, everything really! Being in pain for a long time can be debilitating and have a huge impact on a person’s life.

Taking into account running healthcare costs, time and money lost at work, as well as decreased quality of life, the total cost of chronic pain in Australia in 2018 totaled $139.3 billion! It’s a growing problem with a prediction that over 5 million Australians will be affected by chronic pain by the year 2050. As Osteopaths, we work with and treat people who experience chronic pain day in and day out. It’s a complex topic, so we have devised a little introduction to break it down so you can understand more on chronic pain - all in the name of National Pain Week which is due to take place at the end of this month.

What exactly is pain?

Pain is an unpleasant experience. Ask 100 random people in the street if they like to experience pain, and there is a good chance 100% of those people will say “no”. However as unpleasant as it is, pain is an essential part of life. It is our protection mechanism. When we injure ourselves, we feel pain. Sometimes before we even get to the injury stage, we can feel pain… Pain will also stick around for a bit following an injury to remind us that healing needs to take place and that we need to protect the injured area from further damage. It’s a sophisticated alarm system and you have your brain to thank for all of this. Pretty cool huh?

Interestingly, there are people on this earth who cannot and have never felt any pain at all. These people may have a very rare condition called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain (CIP). They are basically born with the inability to feel pain. You might think this could be pretty beneficial - going your whole life without pain. How awesome would that be?! In reality, this is a very serious condition, and many who are born with it have a drastically shortened life. Mainly because injuries and illnesses can go unnoticed, potentially putting their life in danger. For example, cuts and burns will go missed, because they lack the important alarm system we were talking about above. Pain is a lifesaver.

Acute vs chronic pain

Pain can be very simply divided into two types, acute and chronic. Acute pain is the pain felt when we fall or cut ourselves, strain a muscle or sprain a ligament. When injury occurs, special sensors in the vicinity of the injury detect that something is wrong, send a message along nerves to the spinal cord and up into the brain. Your brain will process this information (very quickly) and will send a message back as a pain signal. You say “ouch”. Over the coming days and weeks, the injury heals and the pain disappears. During this process, your brain will have formed a memory of the event, and this helps you to steer clear of similar dangerous situations in the future. Protection at its best! For purposes of time, acute pain is pain that is felt for any time up to six weeks. Sub-acute pain (a sub-set of acute pain) is pain felt anywhere between six weeks and three months.

Chronic pain

Chronic pain, also known as persistent pain, is essentially pain that has lasted longer than three months and is a very different kettle of fish to acute pain. In many instances, it is pain that is felt way beyond tissue healing times and is extremely complex in nature due to the involvement of different body systems. And, most importantly, the persons belief about what pain is. The initial cause may be from a fall or car accident, just like with any acute injury. It may also be caused by diseases such as arthritis, cancer or migraines (as well as many others).

Why chronic pain develops is a complicated process. In a nutshell, generally tissues have healed, yet the brain is still perceiving a threat. This is due to changes in the nerves carrying signals to the spinal cord (the peripheral nerves) and changes in the spinal cord itself. Essentially, these nerve tissues become highly sensitised and end up sending faulty or misleading information to the brain. The brain perceives this information as still threatening, and the result is ongoing pain. It is much more complicated than that, but this gives you the gist of what is going on.

It is important to understand that when someone is in pain for long periods of time, they can start to become affected in other ways. Depression and anxiety regarding pain is commonplace. A person’s beliefs about pain will also begin to affect their behaviour. For example, they will start to avoid certain movements due to fear of injuring themselves further (which can cause other musculoskeletal issues). In psychological terms, this is known as exhibiting fear avoidance behaviours.

Treating chronic pain

The longer the cycle of chronic pain persists, the harder it is to treat. Unfortunately, treatment is not as simple as applying first aid principles like rest, ice and compression, followed by massage, mobilisation and rehabilitative exercise programs. It is still important to treat the person’s movement dysfunctions of course, but treating the depression and anxiety whilst educating the person on what is actually happening is just as important, if not more so. Until all facets of a person’s pain experience are dealt with in some way, it is unlikely the cycle will be broken. Therefore, treating chronic pain rarely comes down to just one profession. It requires what we call a multi-disciplinary approach to treatment. So yes, an Osteopath may well be part of the team, but it is likely a person will also require the services of a Psychologist and their GP too. It may be that pain medication will need to be prescribed (although the debate is still out on how effective strong pain medications are in the instances of chronic pain).

Your Osteopath will help to treat you by ensuring your body is moving in the best way possible, and that your tissues are at their optimum health. They may also advise you on how to improve your sleep patterns and diet, to ensure your body is getting the rest and nourishment it requires. They will advise you on the forms of exercise which may be beneficial and may even be able to give advice on relaxation and breathing techniques. Most importantly, they will spend time with you, educating you on what exactly is going on with your body so that you can begin to understand it yourself— and begin breaking the cycle of chronic pain. It will be a team effort, and they will be with you every step of the way!

We hope you found this blog interesting and educational. If you would like to know more about National Pain Week and further information on chronic pain, please visit http://www.nationalpainweek.org.au.