As an Osteopath, I always know that my phone will ring on the Monday morning after the first good weekend in the year, when all the keen gardeners have been out tidying up their gardens, forgetting they have been more sedentary over the winter, losing some of their fitness. The purpose of this article is to give you some advice on how you might avoid straining your back in the garden.
I thought this would be a good time to encourage everyone to take some exercise and look at how to walk. As an Osteopath, I am often watching people’s walking style, feeling that I would like to give them some advice. Walking is one of the earliest skills we develop but from about the age of 8 children start copying the way their parents walk, usually picking up bad habits!
Stretching is a natural activity that often occurs instinctively, e.g. when we first wake up in the morning or after a long period of inactivity. We’ve all heard about the importance of stretching before and after exercise, to avoid injury. However, with the increasingly sedentary lifestyles we lead, I believe stretching has a place in everyday life to try and avoid the build up of muscle knots or trigger points.
I was delighted to see that BackCare, The Charity for Back and Neck Pain, chose to publicise one of my pet subjects for their Awareness Week this year – the sedentary lifestyle of office workers and the damaging health issues relating to this.
With our busy modern lives and overflowing schedules, sleep never seems to appear on the ‘to do’ list but rejuvenating sleep is essential for our health and wellbeing. Our bodies and minds need the time to relax and repair tissues, process the day, calm our mood, balance hormones and boost our immune system. Without it we are far more vulnerable to developing physical or mental illnesses.