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…
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…
It’s Stoptober again – and you probably already know many reasons to quit tobacco and become a non-smoker. We hardly need tell you again about cancer, strokes and heart disease. But did you know that smoking affects the musculoskeletal system too? It increases the risk of developing conditions in joints and bones and makes recovery…
The term arthritis covers many joint conditions. The symptoms are usually stiffness, reduced mobility and often (but not always) pain. Arthritis often appears after a long period of dysfunction and it can be a result of injury, wear and tear, autoimmune disorders or genetic predisposition. Osteoarthritis is the commonest type of arthritis and is almost…
Cracking joints can feel satisfying. Most of us have done it! We’ve even talked about it before on this blog. That satisfying pop (cavitation) is quite harmless and is caused by gas being displaced within the joint cavity. It’s very common and almost everyone has experienced a painless cracking in their knuckles or other joints.…
Heel pain is equally common among the fit and the not-so-fit. It’s known as Plantar Fasciitis, arising from an overload of the long arch beneath the foot. The ligaments (Plantar Fascia) that run from the heel fan out into five bands to the base of your toes, and these can thicken, degenerate and become sharply…
