We're all acutely aware that we lead a busy lifestyle, and often we tend to cut corners to "fit everything in" through the day. One of the easiest areas to skip is eating a healthy diet. Here's some quick and simple tips that aren't time consuming but will help you stay healthy...Keep a water bottle with you:Staying hydrated throughout your day is important help keep your tissues in tip top condition. Opt for the more durable glass or steel water bottles, rather than those made of plastic. If it has to be plastic, opt for BPA free ones. Eat at home more often and plan your leftovers:Home cooked food can be far healthier than ready made dishes. By cooking at home we can avoid consuming hidden salt, fat and sugar and when working out cost per portion it's often cheaper. The best bit is, if you cook a little too much, you can use left-over's for another meal!Maintain regular veggie intake by drinking green juice:Veggies are just as important as fruit is, and although we might no...

When people come into clinic with body pain and mention they spend a long time in front of a computer screen, either for work, leisure or both, we always ask about how their desk is set up. A correctly set up desktop can be posture friendly, but with so many people tending to use laptops and tablets, we thought we'd take a look at some things you can do to make them user friendly. Why are laptops bad for our posture?When we use a laptop, we generally position our head so that our eyes are in the best position to see the screen clearly. If the screen is lower than our head height when we're sitting at the device, we will poke our chins forwards and drop our head down to lower our gaze and look at the screen… I see you correcting your posture whilst you're reading this! This hunched posture leads to tight and overstrained muscles around the neck and shoulder area and alters the natural curves of our spines. Of course, the opposite posture can be just as pain inducing, when we crane our n...

It's no secret that we all need sleep for our tissues to heal, we've known about that for a while. Australian scientists and pain specialists Lorimer and Moseley suggest that sleeplessness may contribute to ill health and also to increased sensitivity of tissues. They also say that if we don't get enough sleep the body doesn't get a good enough chance to repair itself. There is a fascinating book by Matthew Walker, entitled Why We Sleep, that if you're interested in the topic is well worth a read. Matthew is a professor of psychology and neuroscience who has been researching what the role of sleep in health and disease is at the University of California for many years. Evidence now suggests that sleep deprivation is linked to heart disease and is even pointing to an increase risk of diabetes and Alzheimer's. We have 4 stages to our sleep that occur each night. One stage is REM, or Rapid Eye Movement sleep. This stage of sleep is a deep sleep where we experience dreaming and is said to ...

When life is busy it's easy to forget that taking time out for yourself is vital for your health and well-being. In a society where we all rush around at full speed it can be easy to get caught up in the fast living rollercoaster but what happens when it all gets a little too much?  Our body reacts to stress whether you want it to or not. We have 2 components to the autonomic nervous system which controls our bodies; the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system.Put in simple terms, the parasympathetic element controls the things we do without thinking, such as our heartbeat, breathing and digestion. On the flip side, the autonomic nervous system controls our 'fight or flight' response which kicks in when we are stressed, making our heart rate and breathing rate increase. This response also makes our blood pressure increase and directs blood to the muscles to prepare them to react quickly if needed.Used short term, the fight or flight response can be useful, for instance if y...

Foam rolling is now a well know, popular method of self-massage and you will find them in most gyms and sports enthusiast's homes, but there are dangers to haphazardly rolling your muscles! So far, the few studies that have been done show that foam rolling does not improve performance but may improve muscle tone and reduce some post exercise fatigue. It is important to be clear what your objective is when setting out with your roller. Here's some advice on how to get the best from your foam roller and avoid injury: Choosing a roller; Get yourself a good roller: if you buy cheap you generally get cheap. Cheap rollers will often squash and give after just a few uses and become ineffective.Go for smooth foam, and avoid hard pipes, rollers with extreme spikes or knobbles. When should you roll? Try foam rolling after a warmup to promote flexibility of tissues. They can be used post-workout to help reduce aches and pains.Before bed may help to relieve tension in muscles and promote a go...

 It's that time of year where everyone you meet has a cold, and people sneeze and cough and splutter spreading germs in your direction! Sadly, nothing can be done about that, but you can do a lot of simple things to help support your immune system through the cold winter months. Hopefully the information below will give you some ideas to get started... Your Immune SystemThe immune system is the body's natural defence against infections and illnesses that lurk in our environment. Whilst immune function is robust, it is a delicate system that can be quickly tipped off balance by many factors, including stress, poor diet, low mood, tiredness and many other things. Your blood contains White Blood Cells which help form part of the body's immune system by fighting invading organisms within the body and destroying them. Increased alcohol consumption and a diet too rich in sugar can depress the action of these cells, weakening the action of the immune system. Obviously, this is not a good...

Arthritis is seen by some people as a scary prospect, but it shouldn't have to be. There are many self care things you can do to help tackle your pain levels and keep you moving. Whilst wear and tear (degeneration) to our joints is a normal part of the ageing process, the pain from arthritic changes can be debilitating, so let's look at some ways you can help yourself. This article will focus only on osteoarthritis, sometimes referred to as OA, rather than other forms of arthritis. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines suggest that manual therapy such as osteopathy can relieve pain, increase flexibility and improve quality of life for people with osteoarthritis. This is also reflected by the NHS guidelines which recommend manual therapy (stretching and manipulation), alongside exercise, weight loss and pain medications to manage symptoms. Clearly, there are many things people can try before considering surgical options! What is osteoarth...

Horse riders are a special breed of people: We work hard to care for our horses, we bend, twist and lift heavy weights on a daily basis and that can play havoc with our body. We often habitually muck out one way, or sweep one way, heavily favoring one side of our body, yet we expect to be able to sit centrally on our horse to help his body and use each side of our being independently. That takes some serious skill! Riders don't think twice about trying to work out what's gone wrong with our tack or our horses if we encounter a problem, but riders ourselves generally are very last on the list to ever get any attention, and the impact on our horses from that can be huge. Did you ever think that your own body and your riding can be hindering how your horse uses his body? If we sit in an unbalanced way, our horses have to not only compensate for their problems, but ours too which will limit how well they perform. Certainly not what we want if we are competing! Osteopathy can be a really us...

Whilst working, many of us are not aware of what our posture is like. The risk from poor posture comes from a reduction to the movement in the joints of the body, along with repetitive patterns of strain. When we get pain from our poor posture, medical advice and physical therapy treatment will often be required to reduce the imbalances created over a period of time. So what can we do to avoid these restrictions? Well, quite a lot, beginning with good sitting posture! In an ideal world, good posture includes the head being positioned over the top of the spine and the buttocks, with a slight 'S' shaped curve through it. Neck and shoulder muscles should have even tension at the front and back of the body, and the lower back should be in its natural curved position.It's advisable to support your pelvis against the back of the chair. Good posture makes breathing and digestion more efficient by helping to de-compress the front of the body. Chair Ergonomics. When working in the office, there...

​Osteopathy is a system of medicine that focuses on treating, and preventing, painful muscle and joint problems. By using specific hands-on techniques, Osteopaths focus on creating balance within the body. Osteopaths use joint mobilisations and manipulations (the 'click') together with stretching and massage techniques to increase the flexibility of joints and body tissues. This helps to relieve muscle tension, relieve muscle spasms and improve tissue health, all of which help the body to heal itself. Osteopaths are commonly thought of for treating back pain, and while this is something osteopathy can work really well for, osteopathy can be used to treat a variety of other things too, such as:• Neck pain• Shoulder pains, e.g. frozen shoulder• Elbow problems, e.g. tennis elbow • Hip and knee problems• Arthritic changes• Sports injuries• Generalised aches and pains• Headaches, particularly those arising from tension and neck problems• Migraine prevention• Nerve pain such as neuralgia or ...

So many people we see struggle with the effects of poor sleep, so, in aid of National Sleep Awareness Week, we thought this would be an excellent topic to talk about! A good night's sleep is as vital to your health as eating the right things and exercising. Your physical and emotional wellbeing depends on getting enough, yet we're living in sleep-deprived times. Some people like to be competitive about how much sleep they get, like being sleep deprived is a badge of honour, but it's not good for our bodies. Scientists say we're now getting an hour or two less sleep each night than we were some 60 years ago. Each person has different needs when it comes to how much sleep we need. We should be waking up feeling refreshed in the morning, and the ability to wake without an alarm is a good indicator that you're getting enough sleep. If you don't get enough sleep, you may be irritable or agitated, be unable to concentrate properly, have blurred vision, be clumsy and disorientated or slow to ...

Spring and summer are a wonderful time of year. Back are the lighter nights that provide us with beautiful displays of colour as the sun sets. Nature wakes up from the long winter months; birds sing, and animals start to shed their thick winter fur. Trees and plants finally begin to grow leaves again and start flowering as the weather warms up, but alas, this means only one thing for some of us: Hayfever. Hayfever is an allergic reaction by the body to the inhaled dust and pollen from trees, flowers and grasses that causes the mucous membranes of the eyes and nose to inflame and causing running of the eyes and nose; and let me tell you, it's downright miserable! The most common Hayfever symptoms include:• A runny nose• Red and itchy eyes• Scratchy or sore throat• SneezingWe can also experience wheezing and shortness of breath alongside the above symptoms. Almost all sufferers have generalised feelings of fatigue, much like a cold is beginning.How long do the symptoms last for?For some ...

It's no surprise that sports injuries go hand in hand with participating in our chosen sports, but did you know that osteopathy can play a key part in keeping you fit and functioning at full capacity? We often (mistakenly) hear that osteopaths can't treat sports injuries and that the athlete needs to see a sports massage therapist or a physiotherapist, but you may be surprised to find out that when it comes to sports injury treatment osteopaths can hold their own! Here at Nene Valley Osteopathy, we work with many sports players from all disciplines and levels with great results. Osteopathy not only looks at the injury and how that itself can be improved but also assesses your general health and how your body performs to treat you accordingly. Similar to a Sports Massage Therapist, we can use a variety of soft tissue techniques including massage and trigger point therapy plus some specialised extras like mobilisation, stretching and manipulation (the 'clicking') which, together with oth...

We commonly see patients in clinic presenting with sciatic pain that is often described as a deep, gnawing pain from the back or the buttock and into the back or side of the leg that is sometimes electric, shooting or stabbing. It can occur without lower back pain, and sometimes it can cause a limp when walking. Sciatica is a very painful condition that can be grouped with a family of pains called neuralgia. Neuralgia literally means "pain with a neurological cause", or pain that is due to nerve problems – but that's not enough to make a diagnosis. We commonly see many primary health care practitioners use the phrase 'sciatica' as a diagnosis, but the word sciatica merely means the patient has pain in the leg, rather than be a proper analysis of the cause of the pain. To get to the root cause of the pain, we need to look at what can cause sciatica? Is all sciatica the same? Several different things can cause sciatica. Possibly the most common cause of sciatica is when one of the nerve ...