Being a massive nerd, I found this article incredibly interesting. If you’re a sufferer of chronic pain you will find it interesting too. Chronic pain is a very complex situation. It’s a lot more involved than just the same pain you had for a minor injury hanging around for a long time. For example, there can be changes in the nervous system that involve types of nerve receptors that normally report on things like pressure morphing to become pain receptors. What this means is that when you feel pressure in …

I just found a great video on the New York Times website (so highbrow) that demonstrates a number of exercises for improving your ankle stability. This is particularly important for anyone who has ever sprained or injured their ankle ligaments, but I recommend these exercises for anyone participating in sports. Having good stability will help in a number of sports such as running, touch football, soccer, netball, aussie rules (go the mighty Swans!) etc etc etc. It may even come in handy when you’re wearing the wobbly boot after three …

My ongoing quest to become a professional sports star took me to the Dunc Gray Velodrome on Saturday. A few old mates of mine hired the Olympic Velodrome (wasn’t even that expensive) and we did a 1 hour session learning to ride around a cycling track. I could not believe how steep that banked curve is – 42degrees!
I was looking good to become a pro when the coach motioned to me to slow down. I assumed it was because he was worried that my bike was going to disintegrate due …

As you would all no doubt be aware (seeing as I have’t stopped talking about it for the last month or two) I spoke at a seminar in Tasmania last week. After a lot of hard work it went really well. It was a great experience and I learnt a lot, and really enjoyed teaming up with one of my oldest friends, Physiotherapist Toby Watson from North Curl Curl Physiotherapy (previously Brisbane Lions and Tour De France). We had fantastic feedback and have been asked to do a few more …

New research has come out questioning the effectiveness of spinal injections. Titled “Time to reconsider steroid injections in the spine?”, the article in the latest edition of the Medical Journal of Australia lists the following points, which I’ll post for your consideration:

The largest of these showed marginal short-term (2-week) improvement in the steroid and local anaesthetic group over the saline group for the primary outcome (leg pain), an effect that was not sustained by 4 weeks.
Short-term relief is a common finding in studies that use local anaesthetic in the active group.
We …