It was quite an alarming series of headlines last week as news broke of a large scale analysis of the risks associated with the use of common over the counter anti-inflammatory medications. “Common painkillers linked to heart disease” reported The Australian, along with “The findings confirm that drugs such as Nurofen and Voltaren can significantly increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.”
Previous studies have examined these medications mostly on an individual basis, but this study tried to compare their relative risks, in short it asked the question “which NSAID is …

I recently read a review of “the adverse events” associated with manual therapy. That is to say, the bad things that can happen when you get a hands on treatment. An adverse event included both ‘minor’ events like feeling sore after a treatment, as well as ‘major’ side effects like nerve injury, paralysis, and stroke. I have listed the definitions at the bottom of this page.
Here is a summary of the data they collected:

The risk for adverse events after manual therapy were about the same as for doing exercise,
The risk …

A couple of articles have surfaced recently which raise more questions on the usefulness of medical scans. Now, don’t get me wrong, they are useful. What we’re talking about here is whether they are used too often (knowing the radiation risk), and whether the findings on scans are as important as they’re made out to be.
I’ve written on this before when I talked about
A couple of articles have surfaced recently which raise more questions on the usefulness of medical scans. Now, don’t get me wrong, they are useful. What we’re …

In this study the investigators tried to assess which characteristics are related to the risk of being hospitalised in “older adults”. It has been established that as people get older they lose strength, but it is unclear whether having less muscle tissue necessarily means you are weaker per se, and it has also previously been unclear whether there are better ways to assess whether someone is at risk of being hospitalised. This study has answered those questions.
The goal of this study was to look at the link between “strength, function, …

We’ve previously looked at the effects of exercise on reducing the risk of falls in the elderly (HYPERLINK), following on from that I’d like to look at a couple of studies that examine the role of weight/resistance training on improving the physical function of “older adults” and then a study which has shown that having good physical function will reduce the risk of an “older adult” being hospitalised (HYPERLINK).
First up, the article on the benefits of resistance training. This was a Cochrane Review (http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab002759.html), and for those who don’t know …

Now, this wasn’t the best designed study ever, for starters they only had 20 subjects, so it is hard for us to read too much into it. But the results do show a trend that is worth acknowledging. And the idea that we can minimise the risk of knee injury when running is worth investigating.
In this study they did a variety of tests, such as weights, height, strength, flexibility, and joint angle measurements, as well as questionnaires on running habits on runners to see which, if any, of these was …

I’m going to be commenting on a couple of articles related to a bit of a fight going on in the UK between the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) and, well, a lot of people who are keen to have a bit of a go at them. The BCA recently sued a journalist for libel after he described chiropractic treatment as “bogus” ( http://bit.ly/h1Ux3). Ever since there’s been a bit of to and fro between the BCA and various journalists and scientists.
Recently New Scientist ( http://bit.ly/unO7B) published an article which cited …

This is a systematic review of 44 previous trials (with a total of 9603 people) where they looked at:
1. whether exercise programs were able to prevent falls in older people; and
2. what sort of exercise is best for helping prevent falls.
The overwhelming result from these studies was that exercise can help prevent falls. Some studies found better results than others, and the best effects were found in programs that employed “challenging balance exercises” (”exercises conducted while standing in which people aimed to stand with their feet closer together or on …

Now, if you know me, you would know that I would have jumped at the chance to review an article like this, particularly when the findings were so positive. I must sound like a broken record at work giving out advice to do some warming up prior to exercising, and this kind of validation is so sweet.
A warm-up program was developed and taught to 1055 teenage soccer playing girls. The warm-up consisted of 8 minutes of slow jogging, stretching, and some strength and balance exercises, then 2 minutes of faster …

Or even just a little clumsy? Heck, we’ve all been a little “inelegant” when we’ve had one too many before, right? I wanted to summarise the information in an article I read recently (a systematic review of 44 previous trials with a total of 9603 people—that’s a lot!) where they looked at:
1. whether exercise programs were able to prevent falls in older people; and
2. what sort of exercise is best for helping prevent falls.
The overwhelming result from these studies was that exercise can help prevent falls.
Some studies found better results …