I’m really excited to be heading to India next month! After speaking at a conference earlier this year I was approached to go and do a short work/teaching placement at an elite Sports Medicine Hospital in Mumbai. I’ll be doing 10 days working in the clinic, which will involve a combination of treating patients (apparently it’s where the Indian Cricketers and Bollywood Starlets hang out), and running daily lectures/seminars on sports injury management.
I’ve never been to India so I’m really looking forward to being able to go someplace new and …

Pictured is the Astronaut Position, which is a great way to relieve back pain. In this post I’m going to discuss the results of a study which has found that when you suffer a back injury you are better off staying active than resting.
Now, it may not seem terribly important, I mean, how bad could a couple of days on the couch be? Well, here are the stats: “more than three quarters of individuals will have a recurrence of their symptoms within a year from the initial onset, and up …

For those of you who aren’t already aware, GP’s can refer you to see an Osteopath under a Medicare scheme covering allied health practitioners. It’s called the Enhanced Primary Care (EPC) Scheme and it covers up to 5 treatments per year and refunds you approximately $45-50 of the treatment cost. If you have a “chronic” condition, meaning you have had an injury for a couple of months or more, your GP can refer you under this scheme.
That’s your tax dollars hard at work people – take advantage of it!
If you …

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 …

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 …

A new study has come out saying that the best treatment for arthritis is exercise. This makes sense and is something I’ve long believed and I may even have posted about it once before with respect to knee arthritis and tai chi.
The pain associated with arthritis comes from things like the muscles tightening up around the joint (to try to stabilise it), the joint losing mobility and there being less fluid in the joint.
It would make sense then, that exercise would help. Exercise increase your flexibility, your balance, promotes blood flow …

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 …

Seasons Greetings! Many of you will no doubt still be under the pump at work, clocking long hours all the way up until Christmas. Hopefully you then get some time off with family and friends to recharge the batteries. I certainly get the impression when talking to patients that 2013 has been a long, hard year, so it’s important to use your break wisely. You don’t want to be starting 2014 still feeling the hangover of this year. Aim to look after yourself, enjoy yourself, and get the right mix …

I just read this article on The New York Times website which talked about the rate of misdiagnosis in the medical fraternity. This follows on from a number of earlier articles questioning the necessity of many surgeries. If your condition is not life threatening and especially if it involves your musculoskeletal system don’t be afraid to seek a second opinion before agreeing to surgery or injections.
I’ll leave you with this quote: “In the United States and Canada it is estimated that 50,000 hospital deaths each year could have been prevented …

I just read a great article that ran with the title “The truth about back pain“. It was a breakdown of the success (or otherwise) of various treatment approaches for low back pain, and it’s well worth a read. It outlines the risks associated with injections, painkillers, unnecessary medical scans and surgery. But if you’re short on time, here are a few choice quotes:
“In 2012, an outbreak of fungal meningitis in the US was traced to contaminated epidural steroid injections administered for back pain – more than 700 people had …