Are you tired of headaches holding you back?
Tired of being held back by headaches?
Spinal Health Week 2023 was 22-28 May and it is here to help!
It's a national campaign by the Australian Chiropractors Association (ACA) that focuses on improving spinal health for all Australians.
This year, Spinal Health Week highlighted the impact of headaches and providing solutions to relieve your pain. Did you know that over 7 million Australians suffer from tension headaches and more than 4.9 million have chronic migraines?
The cost to the country is a whopping $35.7 billion every year. But the real cost is immeasurable—headaches affect 46% of Australians daily, causing pain, disrupting work and study, and stealing quality time with loved ones.
Headaches come in different types and have various triggers. Some are mild inconveniences, while others can be severe and chronic, severely impacting daily life. Research shows that spinal health, especially in the neck, is closely connected to headaches. That's why it's important for headache sufferers to have their spines checked and consider drug-free chiropractic care. Along with some simple lifestyle changes, this approach can go a long way in reducing pain, preventing headaches, and helping you regain control of your life.
Studies have shown that chiropractic care is effective for the most common headaches: tension headaches, cervicogenic headaches (neck-related), and migraines. In fact, chiropractic adjustments have been shown to reduce migraines in 72% of people surveyed, decreasing their duration and severity. While pain medications may provide temporary relief, they only treat the symptoms and not the underlying cause. Lifestyle factors, like diet and sedentary habits, can also contribute to headaches. Chiropractors can identify these factors and help you make changes to manage or even avoid headaches, improving your overall well-being.
At Align Chiropractic, our team of ACA-accredited chiropractors are trained to find the causes of headaches and provide safe, drug-free care for people of all ages. If you or someone you know is among the 11.9 million Australians suffering from headaches or migraines, it's time to take action.
Contact us today at 03 9696 1057 or book online at alignchiropractic.com.au to schedule an appointment and regain control of your life.
For more information on the importance of spinal health and how it affects you and your family, visit spinalhealthweek.org.au. Join the #SpinalHealthWeek movement and say goodbye to headaches holding you back!
#SpinalHealthWeek #ConsultAChiro #Headache #HeadacheConsultAChiro #southmelbourne #albertpark
Our 3 tips for keeping a Healthy change going
If you’re looking for some pointers to keep up your new years resolutions, then this post is for you.
No need for a massive post this time, the best and longest lasting changes are almost always small, its doing them for the long haul that makes them worthwhile!
Our 3 tips for keeping a healthy change on track are:
1. Avoid all or nothing!
Lots of people start with the intention of achieving 100% of their goals - no sugar ever, exercising every day, or meditating every morning etc.
The problem with committing to 100% is that life doesn’t always allow for 100%. So often it feels like once you have gone off track then there is no point getting back on!
You tell yourself that it will never work and you fail back into your pre-resolution pattern. Getting off track is normal! The secret is to accept that it’s going to happen and get straight back on.
After a tiring day at work it’s easy to feel the urge to skip your exercise. Exercising before work means that you have prioritised the important (your long term health) over the urgent.
2. If exercise is your resolution, consider doing it in the morning.
If you're one of the people heading back to work this week, you probably already know that it’s harder to fit a workout in when work takes up so much of the day.
After a tiring day at work it’s easy to feel the urge to skip your exercise. Exercising before work means that you have prioritised the important (your long term health) over the urgent.
3. Listen to your body.
Changing can be tough on your body. If regular exercise is new to you, taking a rest day is super important and can help you avoid an injury.
Getting a checkup to see if everything is working the way it should is also a great idea.
As always, we wish you the best of luck with your new goals, please let us know if there is anything we can do to help you achieve them!
A quick way to move and soothe your neck
This post is for anyone missing their normal routine and would like some tips on getting rid of the tension and restriction they are starting to feel in their neck, upper back and shoulders, but don’t have the time to watch or go through the whole sequence as described by Martin in an earlier video.
As most of you are aware, during the stage 4 restrictions in Melbourne allied health are only allowed to practice on a more urgent basis, meaning that a lot of our regular clients are missing out on getting their regular adjustments as well as maintaining themselves while living in lock down.
Never fear however as Martin and I are still in practice!
If you have a specific issue please do not hesitate to contact the practice so we can see how we can keep you going.
Below is the next instalment of our “Move and Soothe” series of posts.
Many of you expressed that although the original video was very helpful, it was a fairly long run time, so…you asked for it and we have delivered!
Martin has whipped together a quick video about how to keep yourself moving at home, helping your neck keep moving, free up a lot of the tension you have felt building, especially over the last few weeks of stage 4 lock downs.
As usual with our videos, the transcript is available below.
Enjoy!
0:00- intro
Hi, Martin here from Align Chiropractic. This is another follow along, move and soothe video. This one is designed to be a quick routine that you can do maybe in the middle of the day, or when you don’t have as much time. It’s really oriented at releasing tension, improving movement through your neck, and then extending out into the shoulder area.
So the idea here is that we use a sequence that we would use when we’re providing chiropractic care to deal with problems, which is we’ve got to create movement in the system first before we can then change alignment. Improving movement and alignment are the key to then creating changes in the way all the soft tissues work, so releasing tension, allowing nerves to function better. The nerves functioning better is what then translates into muscles functioning better because nerves control muscles, then that’s what creates an environment where you can create a spine that’s both more balances and more stable. So we look at is as movement, alignment, and then balance and stability come as a result of that. If we try and create stability without having movement and alignment- much less effective.
1:17- description
So let’s get into it. With this one you can do it either sitting at your desk, so if you’ve been spending hours doing this and you’re starting to notice that tension building up, or you can do it standing.
The first thing we are going to do is we’re going to double up and do our move and soothe together. So, we’re going to be moving our spine through ranges of motion, getting it to that end range of motion to encourage full range of motion in our neck, And we’re going to be applying a little bit of a release to the muscles that most commonly tighten up as a result of stress, or as a result of postural stress. With this one, you don’t need any equipment- in some of the other move and soothes will use a spiky ball, a tennis ball, or a lacrosse ball, but for today we are just going to be using our hands so that it’s super easy to do wherever you are
2:11- breathing
I’m going to be incorporating the physiological ‘sigh’ breathing that you might have seen on other videos. It’s an approach that I came across through the research of a neuroscientist called Dr Andrew Hubermann. I won’t go into a whole lot of detail, but basically it is where you take a deep breath in through your nose, and then when you get to that point where it’s tight, you just take a little breath over the top- so it’s a double breath. And then relax.
2:47- Lateral Flexion
So, to start off we’re going to be doing lateral flexion- probably the most important movement for us to have. To incorporate a soothe, what I’m going to get you to do is just reach across with the opposite hand and apply some pressure to this muscle up here and apply some pressure to this muscle up here in your upper trapezius or levator scap muscle. So just feel in there and find a point that’s feeling a bit tight- it’s right there for me, and then we are going to incorporate breathing in through our nose. Then we’re going to the other side, and then we’re going to breathe back over this side. Just letting that relax. I’m going to go one more time- breathing over to this side. Now just swap hands, and one more. That’s it, now we go to rotation
Rotation 4:20
So, hand across and this time, we’re going to be focusing on rotation away from the side that our hand is. So, breathing in. Swapping over. Breathing in, breathing in. Last one. Shrug your shoulders up and let them relax.
Conclusion: 5:38
There we have it. Just a quick follow along to help you release some tension, improve the movement, and have a much healthier, happier spine.
The top 11 tips for improving your sleep - how to sleep your way through lockdown
Supporting your sleep cycle.
This article is for anyone who needs to address how they are sleeping, want’s to feel more rested or are looking for the best thing they can do for themselves to make the most of our new lockdown.
I have written about sleep on this blog before but when I was asked to speak about this topic in a webinar last week I realised that this topic is too important to leave further down the list of blog posts we have accumulated thus far. Also, for reasons that will become clear shortly, this is actually a perfect time for all of us (especially Melburnians) to be assessing their sleep habits.
I wish I were writing this under better circumstances, but unfortunately we have all found ourselves back were we were several months ago.
Lockdown 2.0 - This time it's frustrating.
Obviously Victoria’s current situation is less than ideal but it has actually highlighted to me the importance of today’s topic.
This could not be coming at a better time for us all, who among you reading this found during the lock down that days just rolled together and that it was hard to find any real rhythm?
I want to set a challenge to all of you during this lock down period, and that is, I want you to genuinely and honestly re-appraise your sleep habits and find ways that you could improve them, then set yourself the goal to make the most of your lock down by creating new habits that WILL change your life.
I don’t often use this term, but in terms of habits or activities you undertake to improve your health and your life, sleep is like a magic bullet.
It has probably the largest impact of any one activity you can undertake.
Speaking of undertakings, the research indicates that it takes just 3 weeks to set a new habit. People in Melbourne have been given 2 rounds of that time to set new habits up and really hone them before hopefully getting to enter the world a little more normally again. Make the most of it!
So now, having said all that, I want to come clean to you.
I come from a bit of a weird back ground with sleep.
If I am really honest, I was always known amongst my friends as someone who just flat out doesn’t sleep. This was until just over 2 years ago Martin the other chiropractor that I work with exposed me to some information that TERRIFIED ME.
The information was an interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast with Professor Matthew walker who is the author of a book called “Why we sleep”.
Now academically, I was already aware that sleep was good for me, I was convinced that I was just one of those people who didn't need as much sleep as everyone else. I just genuinely believed that lack of sleep obviously didn't affect me as much as it seemed to affect everyone else.
The reason we became interested in sleep in our practice is that we take care of a lot of people with stress related issues. As I am sure many of you are aware and especially if you have ever read my blog posts or spoken with me in the practice, stress is perhaps the leading cause of illness in Australia and as it turns out, poor sleep and lack of sleep is one of the leading causes of increased daily stress.
Reducing stress is actually soo important to spinal health that in our practice we have a special interest in stress management.
Martin and I have completed courses on adjusting and management techniques aimed specifically at stress reduction and sleep promotion.
So today, I wanted to break down for you, what exactly IS sleep? How much do we need? I want to discuss what happens to us when we don’t get it sleep and finally, my 11 best tips to improve your sleep.
The Background
It has taken millions of years to develop into homo sapiens. We came into anatomical being at least 315,000 years ago, with our modern behavioural and mental capacities being at least 60-80 thousand years old.
We have only had a reliable and controllable ability to erase the night using electric light for - give or take - 150 years. Since that time, humans have become the first and only known species that actively and persistently forgo sleep.
Think about that, no other species will choose any activity over sleep outside of a survival situation.
For us, far from being a survival situation, it means, to stay up and watch Netflix, scroll Instagram, or generally to just get a few jobs done without anyone interrupting us.
Think about that...why is it that WE choose to avoid rest, when no other mammal will do this naturally?
And apparently this is incredibly common, according to Matthew Walker, 1 out of every 2 people are sleep deprived, and almost 1/3 of those people are sleep deprived on 6 hours sleep or less. But let’s face it, have you ever heard any person say to you “you know what, I am just getting soo much good sleep at the moment!”
SO the first thing to ask ourselves is;
HOW MUCH SLEEP ARE WE MEANT TO GET?
As humans we need between 7 and 9 hours of good QUALITY sleep for our body to operate the way it is intended to.
Thats not just physical time in bed,
Quality in this sense refers to our biological imperative to get through all of the stages of sleep for an appropriate amount of time, in order for our brain to recharge.
What are the 4 stages of quality sleep?
stage of sleep:
1. Awake,
2. light sleep,
3. deep sleep,
4. REM (Rapid Eye Movement), and repeat.
Awake time is the time spent in bed before and after falling asleep. It also includes brief awakenings during the night.
As I said earlier, quality sleep contains appropriate time spent in each of 4 stages of sleep.
Although all 4 stages of sleep are essential to the quality of your sleep, I wont get into the nitty gritty of how sleep works specifically, it can be more complicated than my level of specific understanding and that would involve MANY blogs about that topic alone, so just to hit the high notes here today, I am going to GROSSLY oversimplify everything.
Stages 1 and 2 are your “set up” stages of sleep, they are the period where your body begins to turn off your monitoring systems and relax the “awake” portion of sleep, changing your heart rate and breathing to eventually get into stage 2 and eventually into deeper levels. This is also the stage where you can have a power nap as long as you don't doze for more than 20 minutes.
Stages 3 and 4 are where you get down into deeper levels of sleep.
In Stage 3, your brain waves become very long and slow and become much less responsive and harder to wake up, while your brain “paralyzes” your body in a type of muscular incarceration so that during stage 4, otherwise known as REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, you don't get up and start acting out your dreams…it sounds scary but its a handy survival mechanism. You have probably experienced this lock down first hand if you have ever suddenly felt awake at night time but been unable to move your body.
Stages 3 and 4 are where most body replenishment occurs. This type of sleep is excellent for cardiovascular health, metabolism, and most importantly, removal of waste products that accumulate in your brain throughout the day.
SO...WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DON'T GET ENOUGH SLEEP?
Think honestly about how many hours you spend sleeping and if you are honest, what sort of quality do you believe you actually achieve?
When we sleep for fewer than 7 hours, our performance, both physically and mentally dimities by 10%.
When the hours we sleep are fewer than 6, our performance is decreased by 30%.
30%.
That means if you average fewer hours than that, like I did over a 15 year period from year 11 onwards, my ability to work, to remember, to drive, to study or even enjoy downtime with my friends and family was down by 10-30%.
Equally as scary, the research suggests that people who are sleep deprived are actually incapable of measuring the negative effects of lack of sleep on themselves. It's like knowing your exact blood alcohol while drinking (a comparison that will become more relevant in Part 2 of this post). We know we have been drinking but have no actual way to know if we are .05 or not until its measured externally.
Imagine the compound interest of life lost over 15 years of being 30% less of yourself. I am certain I would likely still be at Align, and I know I would still be a chiropractor, but who knows how much further I would be in my career, how much more I could have given to my clients or how much more I could have enjoyed those years?
WHAT HEALTH ISSUES DOES IT CAUSE?
Short answer? Heaps. Almost everything in fact.
According to more recent research, the shorter you sleep, the shorter your life.
Fewer hours of sleep predicts all cause mortality. Put simply, you’ll be dead sooner and the quality of your life will be worse.
Fewer than 6 hours of sleep leads to a decrease of physical endurance and function of 30% due to lactic acid build up as well as the bodies ability to expire our breath, but anything below 7 hours has been shown to impair us, with decreases in our peak muscle strength, peak running speed and our vertical jump.
Coupled with this fact is that it has been shown that sleep and frequency of injury has a linear relationship, stating that 9 hours of sleep Vs 5 hours of sleep leads to a 60% increase in the probability of injury.
Another more functional element to sleep is that it has been shown to improve learning performance (in rats at least) by 20-30% as it is thought to be the time when our brain strengthens its connections when learning something new.
Have you ever been trying to learn something new or studying and come to a point where you are just stuck so you give up for the night?
If your anything like me, I know that you found that the next morning it just clicked. Things you were struggling to learn just came to you, or you could remember the whole piece of information correctly.
It appears that while we sleep the brain literally prunes away the unnecessary elements of the pathways and streamlines your new skill.
Another health issue lack of sleep causes, is weight gain. Sleep doesn't just help you lose weight, it actually helps you keep it away!
Lack of sleep decreases the body’s levels of a hormone called Leptin, who causes the sensation of satiation (aka - feeling full). At the same time, the hormone ghrelin (the guy responsible for NOT feeling full, and making you hungry), is ramped up.
It has been shown that people who sleep between 5-6 hours a night will eat 200-300 MORE calories a day, equalling roughly 70,000 calories a year, leading to 10-15 pounds (or 4.5-6.8kgs) of obese mass a year.
Worse, you eat more of the WRONG THINGS, going for heavy hitting carbs and heavy processed food, while simultaneously staying away from leafy greens etc.
So just to clarify…on average, if you slept more than 7 hours a night, you would eat fewer calories, crave better quality food and with no extra effort or will power necissary, you would have to manage up to 7kgs of fat FEWER, each year.
Do you know any other “magic” weight loss solution that can offer all that with zero negative side effects and at zero cost?
More importantly, insufficient sleep according to the podcast, degrades our DNA.
Specifically it has a negative effect on immune response genes, decreasing their reproduction. At the same time, we get increased chronic inflammation, increased stress response leading to cardiovascular disease and an increase in the expression of genes related to the promotion of tumour growth.
Apparently this is most exemplified by people who do shift work. Night shift workers suffer from higher rates of obesity, diabetes and cancers, most notably bowel, prostate and breast cancer.
This is apparently so prevalent Matthew Walker states, that the World Health Organisation now classifies night shift work as possible carcinogen in and of itself as 4 hours of sleep even for just one night, causes a remarkable state of immune deficiency, a significant drop in anti cancer cells in our immune system.
Sleep deprivation affects your sex hormones too, in fact, Men who sleep 5-6 hours a night will have testosterone levels 10 years their senior, a critical element of health, strength, muscular performance etc, in short, it ages you a DECADE (apologies for not having the data for women too but you can safely assume similar effects can be found).
Consider how you are when you're deprived of sleep; reduced alertness, impulsive, lack of ability to concentrate, difficulties with learning and memory.
What do you think happens to your brain when you are like this for weeks, months or even YEARS on end?
While we are awake our brain builds up toxicity, especially a protein called ‘Beta Amyloid’. You may have hear of this protein before as it is the main mechanism in the development of Alzheimer’s Disease. When we sleep properly, the process of sleep wipes our brain, reducing build up of Beta Amyloid.
Insufficient sleep across lifespan now appears to be one of THE most significant lifestyle factors in determining whether or not you will develop Alzheimer’s disease.
Simply put: wakefulness causes low level brain damage and sleep offers reparatory function.
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan have arguably had a huge effect on our world today. They were both known as having strong wills with sharp minds. They were both also famous for getting around 4-5 hours of sleep a night. They both died with Alzheimer’s.
This anecdotal evidence is hardly proof of the research but it raises a few questions about the concept, two people with very active minds and social lives (two factors previously thought to be predictive of the disease) got it anyway.
Now you might be saying to yourself:
“I’M ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO DOESN’T NEED THAT MUCH SLEEP…SO I’M ALL GOOD RIGHT?”
Wrong.
Well…at least its a safe bet that you're wrong anyway.
You’ll remember that Matthew’s research has shown that people are completely incapable of determining how much they are affected by sleep deprivation.
I was convinced of my own ability to get things done when I was working off lower levels of sleep, but it turns out, like you, I am completely unqualified to make that assessment.
Negative effects of your lack of sleep can ONLY be assessed by external sources and measurements.
Although studies show us that there is a population of humans that can function as normal from just 5 hours of sleep, but those same genetic studies show that is a group of less than 1% of the population.
In fact, you're MORE likely to be struck by lightening in your life time than to be one of those people, so you should probably assume that you aren't one of them.
SO…WHAT CAN I DO THEN?
Get to sleep. Seriously, its as simple and as difficult as that.
The minimum you should aim for is 7 hours! 7-9 hours appears to be our sweet spot as humans.
11. WAYS TO IMPROVE SLEEP:
Consciously think about sleep hygiene. Make it something you factor into your health routine like you do exercise.
Regularity; try go to bed at same time.
Decrease light; Try away from screens for at least an hour before bed or at LEAST have your screens on night mode. Think of circadian rhythm, no blue light, black out curtains, eye masks.
Halve the number of lights on in your home in an evening. Apparently, if you are in an environment with no lights at all, we fall asleep 2 hours earlier.
Keep it cool, brain decreases temp by 2-3 deg fahrenheit to initiate sleep. always easier to sleep in a room thats too cold rather than too hot. We fall asleep faster and deeper in cold.
Wear fewer clothes to bed. Again, its a heat thing.
Try to have warm feet and hands. It helps keep your brain cool as it stakes blood away from your core. You could also try having a hot bath or shower before bed, it brings blood to the surface then your core body temp plummets when you get out of the water and you're more ready to sleep. The reverse is true for waking up, studies have shown that its the rise in temperature in the morning not just the light that wakes you.
Time your exercise, try to exercise earlier in the day, hormonally exercising earlier sets you up to sleep whereas later in the day it can wake you up.
Eat earlier and go for a short walk, help your body digest so it isn’t working soo hard when you are trying to settle down to rest.
Decrease stress in other areas of your life, meditate, work on your posture, breathing exercise, plan opening your emails etc, decreasing stress chemicals will allow your body to relax faster and more fully, letting you get to sleep.
Watch the Joe Rogan podcast I talked about a lot of my information coming from here. It goes into a lot more detail if you are that way inclined, but it is worth the watch. It is also available as a traditional podcast.
AND REMEMBER
Sedation is NOT the same as normal sleep, pills and alcohol might help you nod off but they do not allow you to go through the full normal stages of sleep and so you will miss out on a lot of it’s benefits. Be sure to discuss your inability to sleep with a health practitioner about improving your sleep hygiene as Matthew Walker states in the podcast that sedatives are an absolute last resort.
Sleep is NOT like a bank, you cant accumulate debt during the week and then make it up on the weekend.
Lastly NO ONE tells you to stay awake on a problem. “Sleep on it” so that you can have a fresh perspective is a suggestion with no cultural boundaries.
Accumulated wisdom for centuries has promoted sleep as a way of better tackling your problems, getting things done and improving your life.
Jaw Pain Part 2: How do we approach TMD?
If you or someone you know has jaw issues or TMD, then this post is definitely for you. In the video below, Martin outlines how we typically approach assessing and managing TMD when someone presents to our practice with it.
As you can see, due to how frequently we deal with clients with TMD, we had to develop an assessment protocol to determine first of all, are we the right people to address your issue? If so, what exactly is wrong and what is the most efficient way to get this person on track?
If you’re still unclear exactly what TMD is, please feel free to watch the first video in this series where Martin answers “What is TMD?”
As always, the video has been transcribed below for those of you who like blogs in a more old school format.
Hi, Martin here from Align Chiropractic what I wanted to talk to you about today was our approach in dealing with people who have TMD or temporomandibular disfunction.
TMD is a really common condition, very commonly, in fact it's four times more likely and women and it's typically more common in people who are in that age group about 20 to 40, It is often painful, the jaw is often clicking and it can affect overall ability to open or even close the jaw properly.
When you have TMD, it often has wide-ranging effects because it effects eating, speaking, sleeping and exercising, so basically, lots of things that affect all aspects of our life; Our social life, our work life, our hobbies and really any activities that we love to do.
So it’s something that you really want to get handled!
Our approach is to take quite a comprehensive view. We certainly have a look at the jaw itself and we'll be measuring your ability to open your jaw, and you should be able to open your jaw around about 40 millimetres.
We also assess a thing called lateral glide which is essentially your ability to move your jaw one way and then the other, and that should be equal left and right. We're also measuring it with special callipers to just see that it should be about 10 millimetres.
The jaw doesn’t work in isolation though, so we'll also be looking at your overall posture. There's a really common association with forward movement of the head increasing the likelihood or has a strong association with jaw issues. Also the way that the neck joints work can have an interplay with the way the jaw works and so we also make sure that we do an assessment of the way that your jaw is working.
As well, we’ll do some palpation, some hands on feeling of the muscles around your jaw which actually extend all the way up into the temporal area and extend down into the upper neck of the front.
Then if we feel like we can help you, we will formulate a plan to get you back on track in terms of how your jaw is working and get you back to doing the things that you love to do, or that you have to do that the jaw is making it harder for you to do.
Now, typically in terms of that hands-on care like all problems it's a 50/50 process there's certainly some hands-on things that we'll be doing to gently encourage more movement and less tension in the jaw, but we'll also be having exercises and home care that you can do to make sure that you get the best results as quickly as possible.
So if you're having trouble with jaw issues, whether it's popping clicking pain or just feeling out of balance, then please give us a call and let's get you back on track as quickly as possible.