It’s not unusual to feel tired and sore in January. This time of year, we tend to get less exercise and less sunshine, as well as there being an increased incidence of colds and flu. When our mental health isn’t as good as we’d like it to be, back and joint pain often feels worse…
It’s been nippy lately. Have you noticed that your aches and pains feel worse? It’s not your imagination. Cold weather causes muscles and ligaments to tighten up, stressing the nerves, while changes in barometric pressure can cause swelling and make the pain feel worse. Cold weather also affects blood circulation. As your body heat drops,…
What can you do to protect your lower back when every day you have to push a heavy pram in front of you? It could be a buggy loaded with a newborn baby, or a double buggy with a baby, toddler and a whole week’s shopping. Whatever you’re pushing, you’ll know how straining it can…
In exercise, we hear a lot about engaging our core. Most people think this means the abdominal area, but it also refers to the muscles in your hips, lower back and pelvis, all of which help you to support your spine. You may worry that back pain is caused, at least partially, by a weak…
As the Christmas holidays are almost here, it’s time to look forward to staying at home in the warm, sitting down for longer than usual and (quite possibly) eating rather a lot of nice food. The build-up to Christmas can be frenetic and the stress certainly takes its toll . At Sundial we often notice…
Easing pain using your brain is easier than you think. Here’s how… Nerves are really efficient at delivering pain messages to the brain and telling us what we need to pay attention to. But can we turn off the nerves once we’ve listened to the message? No, not entirely, but we can turn down the…
For most people, chiropractic treatment makes their pain improve almost immediately. But this isn’t guaranteed to be the case. There’s nothing more frustrating than making the first steps towards improving your back pain, and then finding you feel worse after your first treatment. This is an understandable cause of concern for chiropractic patients, but we’re…
Pain and sleep don’t mix. Pain makes it more difficult to sleep, and poor sleep makes it more likely you’ll focus on pain. So what can you do if you are getting back pain during the night? Studies show that sleep impairments are likely to contribute to pain rather than pain contributing to sleep impairments…
The clocks are going back an hour on the 30th of October, which means less daylight. Sunshine makes vitamin D in your skin. Vitamin D is essential for bone health, and it’s harder to come by during the darker winter months due to fewer hours of sunshine. The British Nutrition Foundation estimates that 49% of…
Where two or more bones meet, you have a joint. These crucial bony meeting points around the body hold us upright and protect nerves and blood vessels. The spine has 33 pairs of nerves which, in the average adult, are protected by 24 vertebrae (we’re born with 33, but the ones at the base of…
