Treat Your Chronic Neck Pain

Women keep saying that we men don't get it, well that's quite true in some cases. We've written before on why women get neck pain (take a look at the video too).

A sustained forward flexion (or poke chin) posture is associated with increased cervical (neck) compressive loading and creep response (or deformation) in the connective tissue.

Here's more evidence from Australian researchers that people with chronic neck pain demonstrated a reduced ability to keep an upright posture when distracted. This means you may start sitting in your office chair with a good posture but your posture deteriorates when you get distracted (e.g. when your boss calls you or when your workload piles up).

58 female subjects with greater than 3 months on chronic neck pain (and 10 control subjects with no pain) participated in the study. Changes in the participants' cervical and thoracic (neck and upper back) posture were measured every 2 minutes during a 10 minute computer task.They were then split in two different exercise groups.

One group received training of the cranio-cervical flexor muscles - picture below (CCF, for which renowned neck researcher Gwen Jull is known for) while the other group received endurance-strength training of the superficial cervical flexor muscles.

Longus Colli and longus Capitis (from Wikipedia)

The researchers showed that after an exercise program targeted at training the deep neck flexors (CCF), people with chronic neck pain demonstrated an improved ability to maintain a neutral neck posture with prolonged sitting.

So here's why you should come to either of our clinics if you have neck pain. Aized has trained under Gwen Jull and she can definitely help you with your neck pain.

Reference

Falla, D Jull G et al (2007). Effect Of Neck Exercise On Sitting Posture In Patients With Chronic Neck Pain. Physical Therapy 87(4) : pg 408-417.

* Thanks to Ming and Dew for helping me get the article.

Kids Who Are Fit Learn Better

Picture by linkway88 from flickr.com

Here's why, I posted it in our other blog, have a read right here.

Children Are Less Fit Today

Children's fitness have declined significantly worldwide over the last 46 years. The evidence was just presented by Australian researchers at the American Heart Association conference recently. An analysis of 50 studies on more than 25 million children age 9 to 17 in 28 countries around the world (Singapore included) between 1964 and 2010 showed that kids today are not running as fast or as far compared to their parents.

And this spells bed news as healthcare costs look set to rise. Why? If a young person is unfit now, chances are they may more likely develop conditions like heart diseases later on in life according to lead researcher Grant Tomkinson.

Tests were done to measure how far the kids could run in a set time (usually between five to fifteen minutes) or how long they took to run a half mile to two miles. Overall, the kids today are about 15% less aerobically fit than children 30 years ago. This is about 90 seconds slowed when running a mile (or about 1.6km).

Being unfit for kids also mean that they may not learn as well and quickly compared to fitter kids. Other studies show that active pre teens are helps academic performance. More on those studies at a later post.

In Singapore, the aerobic performances of 3300 Singaporean children between 9 to 17 years tested in 1980 and retested in 1991 remained fairly stable, declining just less than 1 per cent. This is much better than the 5.5% decline internationally. However, before we rejoice prematurely, the researchers could not find any published data for Singaporean children after 1992 so we do not know for sure how our kids compare thereafter.

I grew up in Singapore in the 80's and do remember being tested yearly (so my cohort fared fairly well then according to the data). Am wondering what happened to the data in the 90's then (since the researchers could not find any data published).

The researchers suggested that the drop in endurance running performance is due to increases in fat mass. They also suggested that kids should engage in at least 60 minutes of exercise that involves the body's big muscles such as running, swimming etc.

You can read more from here.

*Picture of the 2013 Cold Storage Kids Run by Runsociety.com

Kinesio Taping At New Town Secondary School

New Town Secondary School - that's why I spent the whole morning teaching both athletic and Kinesio Taping and to the school's badminton players earlier today.

The school had contacted me a few months ago about doing a taping workshop specifically for their badminton players.

Here are some of the pictures from this morning.

Coaching Bryan to take my place....

Easy does it

Mr James Koh on top of things

Getting Mr James Koh involved

Please contact us if you are keen to have a customized taping workshop for your company, school or sports group.

*Thanks to Boo Wen Qian and Clare Tang for helping out at the workshop.

Pilatique Host Introduction To Kinesio Taping Workshop

Dean building his Lego

While my son was having fun, I was doing another Introduction to Kinesio Taping workshop in KL, this time at Pilatique. Their branch in Singapore is just behind Sports Solutions in Gemmil Lane. I had met Steven previously and he kindly agreed to let me use his studio in KL to do the workshop.

Steven and Melissa have much experience running their Stott Pilates courses both in Malaysia and Singapore and they managed to organize this really well given this was a very last minute request for them to host the workshop.

Why was this a last minute workshop? Some of you who've attended the workshop today and yesterday and will know why but for now I'll leave that story for another time....

Here are some pictures that Steven took while I was teaching.

Getting started at Pilatique - nice venue

All ears

Getting Kevin involved

Another pregnant mummy

A big thank you once again to Steven and Melissa for letting me use their Pilatique studio in KL. For more pictures have a look here.

Introduction To Kinesio Taping @ Tunku Abdul Rahman University College

Almost immediately after arriving in KL yesterday afternoon, I was whisked away to Tunku Abdul Rahman University Colleague by Yannie (who had attended a previous Kinesio Taping Level 1, 2 course and our Sports Massage course)  to do the Introduction to Kinesio Taping to some of the students there. Her friends and classmates had heard a lot about Kinesio Taping and wanted to find out more.

There was a big crowd waiting for me, more than 60 plus students plus some members of the public.
Most in the crowd knew anatomy so we could get into the practical real quick.

 Here are some of the pictures from the workshop.

Explaining the weave and the wave

Sharing one many laughs with the group

Prior to the session, one of the students had been taped by her physiotherapist using copy cat tapes. I assessed her with the copycat tape, removed the copy cat and tape reassessed her before putting the original Kinesio Tex tape (in picture below).

Elaine in her best Cleopatra pose

Well Yannie didn't take a great photo of Elaine after I retaped her with Kinesio tape, but the end result was totally different to say the least.

Final touch up for Elaine's taping

Who's causing a commotion....

I had a really great time with the students and shared many laughs with them, looking forward to teaching there again.

A big thank you to Yannie, Melodie, Windson and Steve for assisting me and to Miss Ler for letting me give a show and tell to the students.

NBA Stops Derrick Rose From Wearing Kinesio Tape....

Picture from USATSI

It was first reported on CBS Sports that Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls couldn't wear Kinesio tape to help ease his neck pain. Rose had been wearing it for the past 2 games to help his neck pain.

The decision was quickly reversed though (2 hours later). Have a look here. The journalist writing that article wasn't convinced of the usefulness of Kinesio tape though saying it was merely placebo effect helping.

Well, those of you who've tried the tape may beg to differ, especially those of you who've done the Level 1,2 and 3 courses.

Here's another look at the tape.

Picture from Getty Images