“Complex tasks such as juggling produce significant changes to the structure of the brain, according to scientists at Oxford University. In the journal, Nature Neuroscience, the scientists say they saw a 5% increase in white matter - the cabling network of the brain”.
There has been another study like this and it studied the brains of Taxi drivers. This showed that the corpus calosum (the neurological bundle that joins both hemispheres of the brain together) is better developed than in the rest of the population. The thought behind this is that there is a lot of integration between spatial awareness and knowledge and this leads to the over development of that connection between the two locations where these processes happen allowing the taxi driver to unconsciously access and integrate the information seamlessly.
The study didn’t elaborate on the overdevelopment of the part of the brain of taxi drivers that allows them to stop in stupid places to pick up passengers or do a u-turn or to provide insight into the part of the brain that is responsible for going south of the river on a Friday night. This part of the brain is clearly is absent in the majority of taxi drivers.
Back to juggling, the development of the brain through practice is similar to the historically know process ‘neuro plasticity’. It goes back as far as the ancient Greeks and Socrates. He believed that people could train their brains the way gymnasts train their bodies and way before the Nintendo DS was invented. Just like learning a language or in my sons case, learning his spellings and times tables. My son is learning to access theses specific areas and improve the neurological activity of these areas. Professor Cathy Price, of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, said: "It's extremely exciting to see evidence that training changes human white matter connections”.
The adaptive process that takes place through juggling is the same process that occurs during the rehabilitative phase of treatment. Most people have strong enough backs so rehabilitation is not about strength it is about improving neurological function through re-education. It takes time; the development of self-awareness of how your back moves and how you want your back to move takes time and regular practice.
We can all learn to juggle and we can all learn to make our backs work better but we have to commit to some serious practice!
Published today is a report into how widespread back pain and other musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) account for nearly half (49%) of all absences from work and 60% of permanent work incapacity in the European Union. These and other socio-economic consequences of suffering from poor health due to muscle and joint pain represent an estimated cost to society in Europe of up to €240 billion.
MSDs include back pain, arthritis and repetitive strain injuries. But a lot of people forget that the back also includes the neck and this is often the location or origins of headaches. With the cause of so much absenteeism back related and where the expertise of chiropractic lies, you can start to see how chiropractic can help the workforce stay healthy, improve productivity and save the economy a great deal of money.
I am not blowing my own or my professions trumpet but this is really what chiropractic is all about. Looking after and maintaining the spine and keeping the individual well, assessing ergonomics and posture, adjusting the spine to allow it to function as nature intended and implementing a rehabilitation programme to help maintain improvements. If you are an employer it means decreasing absenteeism and therefore making more money.
This report warns that both these numbers are set to rise as a result of an ageing workforce, the growth in obesity and the general decline in physical activity.
Incidentally. It has been brought to my attention that I like to use the saying hunter-gatherer to an excessive amount. Indeed I do use it a lot but it is very descriptive and accurate. Hunter gathering for most of us today means using a computer and sitting at a desk. A long way from what we were designed to do.
“Parents ignore trampoline safety” and “Children are exercising less” and my favourite “Gut worms protect against allergy” which explains a study in Vietnam that shows children that live in a less sanitised environment have parasitic gut worms and subsequently have less asthma and allergies. This page also has the most fabulous picture that I reckon you can use to scare the kids with if they misbehave! These are three of the headlines from the BBC website this morning.
So why have I mentioned these web pages? What I see patients presenting with regularly at the clinic are symptoms of our change in lifestyle. Lets not forget that we are essentially hunter gatherer’s, we have gut bacteria that helps us digest a multitude of food types, we have assorted styles of teeth that serve different functions and we have bodies that allow us to be successful at a number of different tasks.
If we move to a higher level we can go on to discus how flexible our brains are at processing information for spatial awareness and completing manual tasks, to cognition and perception, empathy and emotional regulation. If you sit down and think about what we can do and achieve as individuals it is amazing but if you see what we can do when we work together, just like any communal insect, think ants and bees, then it is mind blowing. Men on the moon, heart transplants the Internet and of course the Congestion Charge. All truly remarkable feat then. Well, almost all so spot the odd one out!
What am I getting at in my rambling way? We are hunter gatherers as I have said, kids on the whole seem to be getting less exercise and are getting fatter so we come up with creative and slightly dangerous ways to excite them into doing more exercise or be active, such as the trampoline.
My nephews have convinced their mum that a trampoline in the garden will be like an extra room for them. So why cant they use a bit of imagination and make a ‘den’ in the garden or over the park. They can run or cycle to the park crossing the roads and then they can hack down a few trees with their penknives and make a den, cook on a fire and undercook the food and get a hookworm. But of course having a parasitic worm is unhealthy and it is illegal having a penknife.
So what will I do when the batteries in my son’s Wii controller run out, head for my sisters and let my son play with his cousins on the trampoline and risk life and limb. I can see it is going to be a stressful week!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8268584.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8274886.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8273795.stm
My receptionist was spending a bit too much time on the www yesterday, I thought she was doing the accounts on the pc but no she was looking at other chiropractic websites so I suppose I have to give her the benefit of the doubt and label the behaviour as work. She emailed me a few quotes she found. Having read some of the quotes she sent me I am sure I have also come out with a few cheesy and incomprehensible analogies for my patients.
I feel that they are worth sharing with you as they are examples of my fellow professionals trying to change how their patients view their condition. I honestly believe that if there was a competition to find the best profession for coming up with analogies chiropractors would be at the top. The adjustment to the patient is only a small part of the job, trying to get the patient to see how changing their behaviour will change their health is the biggest.
“The principle of chiropractic is the same as brushing your teeth. If you have 10 cavities you brush your teeth. If you have no cavities you still brush your teeth.”
“Do you want me to fix your spine in one visit? That’s like brushing the stuffing out of your teeth and never having to brush the rest of your life.”
Apart from the preoccupation with teeth what is obvious is that I am not alone in having to persuade a percentage of my patients that wellness is what they should be aiming for and not the quick fix. Analogies are one way, reminding the patient of their history is another way. But like a lot of patients, once the pain has gone they forget what they wanted, until the next time that is. And for the majority there is always a next time and it is invariably worse.
To quote from the website of NICE (National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence), “NICE is an independent organisation responsible for providing national guidance on promoting good health and preventing and treating ill health.” If you check out their website www.nice.org.uk you can see very clearly that they are coming from a patient centered perspective based on current research.
The recommendations include manual therapy (chiropractic, osteopathy and specially trained physiotherapists), physical activity involving structured exercise programmes tailored to the patients needs and finally the more invasive acupuncture.
As I chiropractor who has an interest in rehabilitation, almost every patient gets a tailored rehab programme. I also use acupuncture needles on some of my patients and I am not alone with this method of practice. A vast number of my colleagues practice this way too. I also know a few osteopaths and they have a similar outlook on treatment plans.
For years there has been a lack of direction for both the general public and GP’s as to how to treat back pain so it is refreshing to hear something objective on the subject that can help to promote patient confidence on the subject and for a condition that will effect 90% of the population at some time or the other.
There was a recent article in the press discussing seating and what is the best type of seat to have, so here are my thoughts on the subject.
Firstly we aren’t designed to sit all day long. We are hunter-gatherers and therefore we should be very active and do a number of different tasks throughout the day and not sit at a computer. If we were supposed to sit for such long periods of time why do we have legs? We are supposed to be active and keep moving and as such we need a chair that will allow this to happen to some degree.
Having a very fancy and expensive designer chair is not the answer. Even if everything on them is adjustable you can’t get away from the fact that we aren’t supposed to be stuck in one position. We therefore need to fidget and require a chair with a level of instability designed into it.
There are a number of chairs that fulfil these criteria. The first is the simple Swiss Ball but there is a certain kindergarten feel to having them in an office even if you buy a seating frame for it so it doesn’t get used as a football.
My personal favourite and the one that I use and that is the Swapper. It has the instability of a Swiss Ball but looks more like a stool with a spring wrapped around the stand. Again it looks a little unconventional but that is because we have been conditioned into thinking a certain way about seating.
The secret of the success of these unstable chairs is that with a subtle change in the positioning of your feet you can create a new sitting position and therefore vary the position your back is in. if you keep fidgeting like this all day you will stop your back muscles fatiguing and help to prevent the onset of low back pain.
If you have read the previous blogs you may have found tucked away at the end of one of them the theme of a future blog. The appropriately titled Blog is ‘procrastination’.
The delay in writing this Blog is a joke that has worn a bit thin. Recently it has made me think about how procrastination can have serious problems for your health in the future.
The most common causes of back pain is poor posture and poor repetitive movements particularly associated with the everyday mundane tasks of life; sitting at a computer all day and using a mouse, or on a phone, bending over when caring for a baby.
All these activities if one offs are no problem but day in day out the repetition starts to cause the back problems and eventually may lead to the back failing. So addressing the issue now and ironing out all the little problems can prevent catastrophic problems later in life.
Second week back after New Year. So how are you doing?
It is still dark, it's cold. There's the end of the month credit card bill to pay and it is still three months to go before the clocks change. So how do you get through the next few months?
Concentrate on the things you like doing; the things that have historically made you feel good. A mixture of sports to shake off the seasonal over indulgence and for the more emotional side spending time with friends and family. It is simple to recharge yourself after Christmas but making a conscious effort to do it is crucial.
So, think about how you feel and about how you want to feel. Ask yourself - what was going on in your life when you were feeling that way? Then implement simple strategies to recreate that point in your life.
Good luck!
Most people I talk to make a New Year’s resolution, or at least they have ideas of what they may want to change in the New Year. But how many people actually achieve that goal ? Or if they do, how many actually sustain it? We always think about the obvious ones; stop smoking, lose weight, do more exercise and eat better.
But somewhere along the road, or maybe even by the end of January, that New Year's resolution becomes a weight around your neck. Excuses start to come out and eventually one or two weeks of good behaviour become a distant memory and it is back to the old habits.
One good thing to do is to look at what you want to achieve and then set some sensible goals. Don’t get too carried away - be realistic. If you've joined a gym don’t start off with too punishing a schedule because it will take time for your body and mind to adjust to the changes. Get your diary out, look at the next three or four months, and set your self a sensible pace.
Remember, if it is fun and manageable you are much more likely to stick to it.
Happy New Year, and good luck from everyone at the Angel Chiropractic Clinic.
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This has to be one of the most commonly asked questions when a new patient comes in for the first treatment. And I can't give a straightforward answer such as two weeks or five visits for example. It's impossible to say - the chiropractic equivalent of how long is a piece of string.
This ties in nicely with a new book I have started to read called 'Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell'. It asks why do some people achieve more success than others? "Can they lie so far outside the ordinary?" What is the secret of their success?
The simple answer, Gladwell says, is 10,000 hours. From Bill Gates to The Beatles, its the way you spend your time that will make you a success, and that amount of time is 10,000 hours. So back to the original question, how long before my back gets better? Well obviously 10,000 treatments is out of the question! obviously the answer! Most patients are pain-free within the month, maybe after two hours of treatment. But to make a success of your back and achieve wellness, then maybe 10,000 hours over your lifetime devoted to your health is just about right.
So getting you out of pain can be quick but getting you to a point where your back is working well may take a little longer. Which is okay with us as we are here for the long term and will help you to help your back.
The next Blog is about procrastination. Why it is so hard to change the habits of a lifetime? and why is prioritising your health so low on “the task list of life"!
Everyone knows the less time you need to spend in the office the better. Most of us are now used to carrying out laptops around with us to give us more freedom. But even the lightest laptop can be quite cumbersome and tiresome to haul around between the office and home. More and more patients are coming into Angel Chiropractic Clinic complaining of an aching neck and shoulder pain from carrying around their computers.
So, the question is what can you do ? You can minimixe the strain on your shoulders by using a wheeled case if you are travelling a long way with your laptop. If you can't do this then make sure you have a bag that hungs the body and has a wide, heavily padded shoulder strao to distribute the weight and reduce shoulder strain as much as possible.
When you are using the computer itself take regular breaks, roll your shoulders and neck around gently to release the build up of tension. Think about invest in a laptop stand which can offer relief by elevating the screen to your eye level.
Fed up with the doom and gloom that’s in the papers at the moment ? Feeling you might scream if you hear the words 'Credit Crunch' one more time? What about that dreaded ‘R’ word? RECESSION. We may not have any power over the economy but what we do have power over is our own lives.
Sometimes you need to take a long, hard look in the mirror. You need to look at who you are and how you act. What in your personality is stopping you moving forward? That takes personal reflection, insight and honesty.
We can, for example, take personal responsibility for our health. For some, the obvious things to do are to stop smoking or drinking and with Christmas and New Year on the horizon I am sure there will be plenty of opportunity for both! Others might want to take more exercise or to eat better. But for the majority of the patients I see, the biggest problems are more general ‘lifestyle’ problems and in particular issues associated with work.
Many of us spend a third of the day sitting at a desk. In an economic downturn, stress and pressure make everything that little bit harder so it’s more important than ever to look after yourself. My two top tips are to get your spine adjusted to keep yourself well (it only takes 10 minutes and you an even fit it in on your way to or from work) and to create some time and space to do the things in life that you really enjoy.
When it comes down to it you can only enjoy yourself if you are dealing with work and stress in a healthy way. Come and see us and find out how Angel Chiropractic Clinic can help you function better, help your body cope with stress and set you free to gain more from life.
No, this doesn’t refer to McCain’s mental state in having Sarah Palin as his running mate. I think if he knew as much about her then as he does now and he still chose her then he would clearly be one state short of a majority. This ‘is he or isn’t he’ refers to David Beckham signing for AC Milan after Christmas.
There have been lots of suggestions as to “why AC Milan?” such as “his missus will like the shopping”, “Posh likes pasta and pizza” – well, maybe individual lengths of spaghetti or a pizza the size of a canapé. Or maybe it could be because he will get to
play football with some of the world’s finest players and have his fitness managed by a chiropractor at the Milan Lab!
This period with Milan Lab’s chiropractor Dr Messerman will not do his value as a player any harm and I am sure it will keep the England manager and former manager of AC Milan happy. Maybe this spell will enable him to get to Bobby Moore’s number of caps and maybe this move will even help him prolong his career as a footballer. I am sure that the owners of LA Galaxy wont see it like this as they will prefer him to have a bit of a rest when their season finishes but they are Americans and what do they know about football, sorry, soccer?!
Beckham's move to AC Milan may help him no end, after all Beckham is a great athlete and has kept himself comparatively injury free in his career - there is a chance that he can emulate the other AC Milan pensioner Paolo Maldini who is 39 and contemplating another year on his contract. Maldini is a full six years older and still playing at a top level, albeit as a defender (okay, he has spent a good deal of his career laying on the pitch and rolling around feigning being fouled).
So what has AC Milan’s chiropractor got to offer and why is a chiropractor in charge of fitness and rehab? A complete approach to wellness and injury prevention without the shackles of conventional medicine’s paradigm of health. This complete approach to wellness is what we have here in Islington - an understanding that there is a lot more to health and fitness than treating illness and injuries. It is about making sure that the whole body is 
functioning as well as possible.
Here is quote from David Beckham’s chiropractor:
"Players are seen every day by the chiropractor," Meersseman explains. "This allows us to prevent numerous injuries, while maximising the player's performance. We apply chiropractic in a subluxation‑centered, wellness‑oriented perspective. We especially place a strong emphasis on the upper cervical area and applied kinesiology allows us integrate the biochemical and mental aspect of the triangle of health, as well as to respond to the specific needs of sports chiropractic."
The figures for Dr Meersseman are very good, he has improved injury recovery time, he has reduced the number of steroid injections the team has over a season and consequently this has allowed AC Milan to have a smaller squad that saves the finances and has kept Maldini going at 39.
All these are the benefits of chiropractic care for a professional footballer, but it doesn’t take a lot of thought to see how the population of Upper Street, Islington and the surrounding areas can also benefit form chiropractic care, especially in these grim economic times. If you are an employer you want the staff you have to work at their best, so looking after them is going to pay off. They will be off work less often and they will feel better at work.
I imagine that a lot of time at Milan Lab is spent looking at how the upper body and neck function in conjunction with the biomechanics of how the ankle, hips, knees and pelvis function when striking the ball. This is no different to looking at how the body is functioning at work sitting in front of a PC. We can assess how your body is functioning and make changes to how your spine functions in response to your working environment and prevent injury and fatigue at work.
So maybe David Beckham and Dr Meersseman are going to increase the public’s awareness of chiropractic? I will let you know when the first male patient comes in to the clinic wearing a sarong!
Read more about the Milan Lab here:
www.worldchiropracticalliance.org/tcj/2006/nov/k.htm and
Will my back pain get better if I spend £150 on MBT’s?
If spending £150 on a pair of MBT’s means that you are going to do a lot more walking then there is possibly a benefit from buying them. But will it cure your back pain? I doubt it.
There is a lot in their advertising about Masai warriors not getting back pain and how the shoes simulate the ground giving way under foot. Here are some of the claims:
• Improves posture and gait.
• Tones and shapes the body.
• Can help with back, hip, leg and foot problems
• Can help with joint, muscle, ligament and tendon injuries.
• Reduce strain on knee and hip joints.
• MBT activates the whole body.
I have no problems with people buying shoes or trainers to help with a physical activity. You only have to go into one of the big sport shoe shops to see the range of specialist shoes, dedicated running shoes for the aspiring marathon runner, running shoes for cross country running, tennis shoes that come in all sorts of different configurations for the different surfaces, cross training shoes that do a bit of everything and then the more ‘off-road’ type of shoes for running up and down mountains or in my case worn when walking the dog.
So there is clearly a shoe for everyone out there and of course they all purport to help cushion the foot, provide support, prevent fatigue in the foot muscles and of course they all claim to help protect against injury and aid performance. None of them until now claim to ‘activate the whole body’.
Can a shoe activate the whole body? Nothing that is laced to your feet, strapped to your arm playing music or stuck to your shoe to record how far and fast you have run can activate your body. The only thing that can activate the whole body is you and marketing a shoe as the panacea, and this is what it is in this way I feel is unhelpful.
There has been a lot of press coverage in the past about obesity and diet. In particular mentioning that children growing up now are going to be less fit than their parents and even having a predicted lifespan less than their parents. I have a child and this is indeed worrying so how do I address it at a family level? My little boy is keen on walking and having a dog we walk a lot. He enjoys running around with his cousins. We play tennis and throw a rugby ball about; I am getting off the point here. So what is it that I am going on about? It is our choice of lifestyle that causes the problems that we have and not our footwear.
I imagine that a Masai warrior has a very different lifestyle to us, I reckon that one of the reasons the Masai don’t get back pain is because they don’t spend a third of their day sitting at a computer staring at a screen, I imagine they are out and about hunting and gathering to a level that we over here haven’t done for centuries. We are all designed to be hunter-gatherers and actively seek out our food and have a diet of lean meat and fish, fruits and nuts, live an active life and die in middle age. I guess there isn’t much time for back pain.
So back to the original question. Can a shoe activate the whole body? No. Only you can activate the whole body, it is your choice to change your life and look at what you do and of course the effect your choices in life have on you and your health.
So maybe the Nike slogan is best ‘Just do it’.
Brian Bamberger
Read Article in Irish 'Independant' reviewing MBts
Did you know you could be getting more out of your gym workout by understanding your spine? We’re working with local gyms Sequinpark, Kinetic and Fitness First to help you develop a personal training plan which work for you . Done correctly you can use your gym workout as rehabilitation for past injuries or even to improve your posture.
Look out for us at Sequinpark, Kinetic and Fitness First this month – we have advice and free spinal screening stands on several forthcoming dates:
