I’ve been talking about this a lot over the last few months with people and so many of you seem to be interested that I thought I would write a little article on it.
Late last year I was feeling a bit ordinary so I went to see one of the great practitioners of the Eastern Suburbs, Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioner Shona Barker (Gould St Bondi Beach, 0405 620 493). She and I had worked together at the Wholistic Medical Centre in Surry Hills for a few years and she’s someone …

The latest headlines fresh from the internet:
Headline: “Brain training for tinnitus reverses ringing in ears“
Story: Rats with tinnitus were played tones at a variety of frequencies at the same time that one of their cranial nerves was stimulated and they showed a “significant reduction in tinnitus-related behaviour”. This will be huge news for anyone who suffers this debilitating condition.
Headline: “Take up Tai Chi to avoid falls, elderly told”
Story: Given their frequency and consequences, falls are as serious a health problem for older persons as heart attacks and strokes. Exercise has …

Alexander Lowen was an American PsychoTherapist with an interest in the link between the mind and the body. I read this very interesting quote from one of his books recently, I’m sure plenty of you can associate with the concept of emotions manifesting as muscular tension…
“While the repression of a memory is a psychological process, the suppression of feeling is accomplished by deadening a part of the body or reducing its motility so that feeling is diminished. The repression of the memory is dependent upon and related to the suppression …

2 questions I am routinely asked are whether the fundamental principles of Osteopathy have ever been proven scientifically (ok, I made that up) , and whether I can do a treatment that will help people lose weight (I didn’t make that one up, I work in the Eastern Suburbs after all). A new article in Scientific American will help answer both.
“Osteopathy, that’s all about bones, right?”. Well, kind of. Yes, the prefix “osteo-” pertains to bones. And the suffix “-pathy” pertains to disease. The founder of Osteopathy, Andrew Taylor Still …

If you’ve read more than one or two of my posts then you’ve probably noticed certain subjects seem to come up repeatedly, and the benefits of a good night’s sleep would be one of them. Kind of contradicts all the posts I do about having coffee now that I think about it….
This article looks at the relationship between poor sleep and mental illness – in a nutshell the relationship is that people with mental illness are poor sleepers. It has been thought that the poor sleep is due to the …

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 …

The documentary “Stress: Portrait of a Killer” was on ABC on Thursday night, here is a link to it from the ABC website, not sure how long it will continue to be available for on the site so check it out now. It was a really interesting program outlining the dramatic physical effects prolonged stress can have on your body. My rating – 4 stars
Never underestimate the effects of stress, a new study has shown that the hormones related to stress make it easier for malignant tumours to grow and …

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 …

There has been a spate of articles lately, all on various health-related topics, but all with the same theme; prolonged sitting is bad for you. I’ll outline the take home points of a few of them in the hope that I can convince you to get up from your seat every now and then, or, if you work at Mac Bank, that your boss will let you up from your seat every now and then…
I have spoken about this in a general postural sense before when I mentioned that as …

Season’s Greetings! I thought I’d put out a quick piece on the kinds of things you want to keep an eye on this summer to keep yourselves in good health. Hope you all get some time off with loved ones to catch up and de-stress (studies have shown that time off is needed to reverse the effects of long term stress).
Xmas Hours – If you need to see me about anything I will be working right up until Christmas but then taking the next week off, and returning Monday January …