Sometimes you’re just doing a simple, everyday movement – and zap! Your back goes into spasm. The pain is suddenly excruciating, you’re frightened to move and have no idea what’s happening to you. This kind of situation feels like an emergency because the signals your brain is receiving are alerting you to potentially serious tissue…
Have you noticed how low mood and low back pain seem to go together? Research into how exactly the two are linked has been going on for years. Studies have looked at whether depression itself increases the risk of low back pain or if low back pain increases the risk of depression. Now breakthrough new…
After an injury or an illness, the body needs to get itself back into ideal balance, called homeostasis, as quickly as possible. Your immune system sends out white blood cells and other immune cells to the injured area to mop up infections. Swelling occurs to contain any toxins. If you’ve cut your knee for example,…
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,…
Are you planning to set yourself some health goals for 2023? There’s an ominous statistic suggesting that only 12% of people who make resolutions successfully achieve their aims. We wondered why, so we did some research to find out what actually helps people to stick to their plans. We want you to feel healthier, happier…
Did you know your biological age isn’t the same as your chronological age? We all age at a different rate. Although you might have the same birth date as a friend, they may well be biologically ‘older’ or ‘younger’ than you. This is because our daily habits really do stack up over the years to…
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…
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…
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…
Fibromyalgia turns a whisper of pain into a scream. It is a condition caused by the amplification of pain by the nervous system. Light stimuli become painful and average levels of pain are experienced as much more severe. The brain’s normal processing of pain becomes impaired, leading to intense discomfort, fatigue, anxiety and many associated…
