One for all you amateur athletes
In my lifetime I have seen more and more people become what a friend insightfully called amateur athletes. This is due to the impact of the public health campaign to get to us to recognise the importance of regular exercise to keep us healthy. This has led to more people going to the gym regularly taking part in all forms of sporting competitions.
I appreciate I am older than most of the clients who visit out clinic. But when I was growing up it was quite rare for people to go the gym or for adults to take part in sports-based competitions who were not professional athletes.
A recent review published by the British Journal of Sports Medicine concludes that sleep is an important determinant of health, wellbeing and performance in collegiate athletes, it is not always a priority for them. In addition sleep allows the body to repair itself which is crutial if you are working towards a fitness goal e.g. a triathalon or marathon or big hockey game etc
This made me wonder about the clients we see at the clinic, who are juggling demanding careers, personal fitness goals, busy social lives, families and sometimes living in environments that are not conducive to restorative sleep.
So, I wanted to leave you with a question, how much of a priority is sleep in your life?
Here is a reminder of some Sleep tips
Reference
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More of what can assist you with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome?
Following on from my previous tips, here are a few more:
- ICE - If your wrist feels inflammed (red, hot and swollen) then icing the area may assist you.
- Cupping - which is part of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). In a trail of cupping therapy, whereby heated glass cups are applied to the skin to create suction and encourage energy flow in the body, the cupping group experienced a significant reduction in pain and other symptoms compared to the control group.
- Myofasical Release - Its a hands on therapy which uses manual pressure and stretching to release the faction to assist the carpal tunnel. In a study of four patients with carpal tunnel syndrome, all saw an improvement in both their symptoms and MRI scans after myofasical release treatment. Amanda Oswald, a leading myofascial therapsits has written a book with self-help fascial stretches for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Living Pain Free (published by Lotus Publishing in 2017).
This one if for my fellow women – sorry guys! Part 1
Around half of all women will get cystitis or some other unirary tract infection (UTI) at somepoint in their life. The female anatomy makes women more susceptible. Having had cystitis many years ago I can vouch for the pain. As some women are prone to suffer multiple episodes, I wanted to share some natural options to help them stop coming back. Cranberry Juice 300-500ml of unsweetened cranberry juice or 400mg of concentrated cranberry extract twice a day appears to be sucessful is preventing or reducing the number of urinary tract infections (UTI). However, there is limited evidence that cranberry can stop a UTI once you have it. Acupuncture Acupuncture was put to the test against sham acupuncture (the needles go into the wrong place or inserted in the wrong way) or no treatment for UTI prevention. After six months 85% of those who had genuine acupuncture sufferend no UTIs compared with 58% of those of the sham group and 36% of the untreated group. In another study UTI-prone women receiving acupuncture twice a week had half the rate of infections compared to those receiving no treatment. References https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27251185 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9612877 https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/12721123
