Gardening has so many health benefits and it’s an activity many people fall in love with. It gets you outdoors in the fresh air, exposes you to vitamin D, it’s meditative, helps to improve hand-eye coordination, and it’s great exercise. But one thing it’s not always great for is your back. If you love gardening – but cringing about what it might do to your back this Spring...
5 Reasons Exercise is Hurting Your Back The research continues to show that the best “treatment” for back pain is exercise. But what do you do when exercising hurts your back instead of helps? This is one of the most common frustrations I hear from my clients. The doctor looks at their back and takes an X-ray. He or she only sees something like arthritis or degenerative disc...
Your Pain’s Location May Not Be Its Source Pain is a confusing topic. And there’s lots of advice out there on what to do about it. Should you rest? Should you exercise? Apply heat or ice? Do you see a doctor? Or let it go away on its own? Before you can even think about a solution to your pain, you must first accurately determine where it’s coming...
Is Rest or Movement best for Back Pain? When you’re in pain – especially if it’s back pain – your first inclination may be to lay off all activity and rest. But is this really the best thing to do? When it comes to back pain – my answer is usually “No”. But I understand why this advice might sound strange or counter-intuitive. It’s scary to move when...
Morning Back Pain? Things you can do. One of the most common complaints from chronic back pain sufferers is back pain first thing in the morning. For some folks it rears its ugly head on occasion and appears out of nowhere – as if they’ve thrown their back out. For others it’s like ground-hog-day – they go to bed feeling great but wake up every morning feeling stiff...
As you probably already know, we specialize in back pain and core strengthening via Pilates… So why on earth then – would we be writing about how strengthening your core could actually be hurting your back instead of helping? One of the number one reasons people come to see us is because they want to strengthen their core – in hopes that it will put an end to...
Now is the time when people shift their focus to the New Year and start thinking about new and exciting goals for themselves. But ignoring back pain could ruin your New Year’s resolutions. According to statista.com – the three most popular New Year’s goals are: 1) Doing more exercise and improving their fitness 2) Losing weight 3) Saving money. Would you be surprised to know that if you...
Are you traveling for the Holidays? Unlike last year, there’s a lot more people getting out of town to see friends and family they didn’t get to see last year. Personally, I love to travel. But what I don’t love is the back and neck pain that often comes with it. The good news is you can prevent – or significantly minimize it – with tips to ease...
Three Easy Tips to Keep your Back from “Going Out” Most people – four out of five to be exact! – will experience a debilitating back pain episode at one point during their lives, and typically we put more effort into caring for our backs during those times than when we’re feeling good. But it’s critical that we take good care of our backs all the time, not just when we’re...
Failed Back Surgery Syndrome. What you need to know. I was recently doing some research on how often back surgery fails – and I came across more than one research paper talking about “Failed Back Surgery Syndrome”. Say what? I knew that approximately 50% of back surgeries were unsuccessful, but I didn’t know it was common enough that they had actually coined the term! Failed Back Surgery Syndrome refers to patients with...
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Portsmouth, NH’s people-first physical therapy studio. We help active adults 40+ find the root cause of their pain and build a long-term plan to fix it, so they can get back to doing what they love most.
