Shoulder flexibility exercises

There is scientific evidence these exercises help reduce Neck & Shoulder pain when combined with strenghtening and core exercises.

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  • Is Reiki a Placebo? – Part 1

    By nature Reiki is very intangible.   So in a series of blog articles I will try to explore how Reiki works and what the scientific research says. For me Reiki is merely a modern name for an ancient healing practice.  Which is administered by "laying on hands" and is based on the idea that an unseen "life force energy" flows through us and is what causes us to be alive. If one's "life force energy" is low, we are run down and then we are more likely to get sick or feel stress, and if it is high, we are more capable of being happy and healthy. The benefits of Reiki

    • Help some people to feel deeply relaxed
    • Help people cope with difficult situations
    • Relieve emotional stress and tension
    • Help to improve overall wellbeing
    • Help alleviate pain & anxiety
    My personal belief about how Reiki works, is that I act as a channel for Reiki energy and the client must be open to receiving it as the Reiki energy cannot “force” itself on to anyone.  As humans have free-will this means a client can block it if they consciously choose too.  The Reiki energy is then a resource that the human body can use to heal itself. So is Reiki just Placebo? A placebo is anything that seems to be a "real" medical treatment -- but isn't i.e. it is fake. The judgement is based on the availability of scientific evidence.  Dame Carol Black (– a former President of the Royal College of Physicians and of the Academy of Royal Colleges) and a group of distinguished doctors and scientists at the Kings Fund has concluded that current assumptions about what constitutes good scientific evidence for complementary therapies are too narrow. Professor Stephen Holgate who is also a member of the Kings Fund said: "As scientists, we have often sneered at the placebo effect. But as doctors, we know it can have a real impact on the outcomes of treatment for our patients. What is it, after all, but a trigger to the body's natural ability to heal itself?  That is something worth encouraging." I am a firm believer in the body's ability to heal itself.  As the aim of all complementary therapies is to stimulate the body to heal itself, they could all be considered placebo.  This is probably especially true of Reiki due to the fact that it has not been well studied scientifically.   The limited studies have not gathered enough evidence to “prove” Reiki energy exists, but this is not the same as proving it doesn’t exist. For me, it makes more sense to assess the impact of Reiki and Reiki energy.  After all if you can assess the impact of the energy then it must exist.  And as to, is it a placebo?  If the Reiki energy has an impact, it must exist, and it can’t be a placebo because its having an impact. So in my next blog I will at the scientific evidence on the impact of Reiki.

  • Is Reiki a Placebo? – Part 3

    While in Part 2 we looked at the impact of healing (Reiki) energy on cells, yeast & animals, that is not the same as on human beings.  So in this post I want to share with you some of the research done on humans.  So I want to start with looking at physical factors... Krieger (1975) carried out four experiments with the intention of raising blood haemoglobin levels in patients. The technique of Therapeutic Touch (similar to Reiki) was used, with Oscar Estebany being the healer in the first three experiments and nurses trained in the method in the fourth. Significant differences in blood haemoglobin levels were obtained in:

    • 43 healed patients as against 33 controls
    • 46 healed patients as compared to 33 controls, where the groups were more carefully matched
    Miller (1982) undertook a double-blind study on 96 hypertension patients divided equally into experimental and control groups. The experimental patients received distant healing from eight healers, together with their normal medical treatment; the controls received no healing. The results showed a significant improvement  in the systolic blood pressure of the healed group, as compared to the controls, but no significant changes in the diastolic blood pressure. So there is clear scientific evidence that Reiki does have a desirable impact on the human body. Full References Krieger, Dolores (1975). Therapeutic touch: The imprimatur of nursing. Am. J. Nursing, 7, 784-787. Miller, R. N. (1982). Study on the effectiveness of remote mental healing. Med. Hypoth., 8, 481-490.

  • Can you prevent rheumatoid arthritis?

    People in the UK are low in vitamin D because of the weakness of the sunlight and the short summers.  In addition there is greater concern in the UK about getting skin cancer from sunbathing or being out in the sun.  Almost every rheumatoid arthritis sufferer has low levels of vitamin D and this is likely to be true for people with other inflammatory diseases too. Sunshine isn't the only source of vitamin D.  Some foods such as eggs, oily fish such as sardines and salmon are rich in vitamin D too.  Reserachers from the university of brimingham are the lastest to report in the importance of vitamin D.  In a series of tests, they discovered that the immune cells of rheumatoid arthritis pateients could still respond normally to vitamin D by supressing inflammatory signalling - if those cells were circulating in the blood,  but the same cell type when localisec to the fluid around the arthricitc joints, showned no anti-inflamatory reaction to vitamin D.  This is because arthritis leads to vitamin D insensitivity which means that cells no longer respond to it. The research suggest that vitmain D therapy could still work on patients if they are given very high doeses, although standard suplements amy not.  Prof Martin Hewison says that "almost everyone in the Uk has vitamin D deficiency".  High levels of vitamin D can help prevent inflamatory diseases including rheumatiod arthritis. Reference https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896841117304201