Exercise better than surgery

http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/wellbeing/back-pain-breakthrough-20091118-iloq.html

 

Alexander technique is good for back pain.

Nice study showing that fish oil is effective, but glucosamine is not for arthritis: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7875192.stm.

Complex regional pain syndrome: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7804123.stm

Not a good article because it doesn't explain what is it, but worth mentioning.

After much silence from me, it is time to write again. The last few months have been quite depressing from a physical perspective as all the time off work and in the gym and pool and at the physio seemed to have helped achieve nothing. However, having spent little time exercising the last few weeks, I have discovered a wonderful remedy: golf balls.

I was struggling with my shoulder last week. The muscles around my left shoulder blade were all in spasm and - given the limited opening hours of physios here - I was desperate to find someone to stick a thumb into the muscle to release it. I'd found some joy in lying on a tennis ball before, but realized I needed something smaller and harder to get more relief. I bought a small bag of golf balls and wondered whether they would be too painful to lie on, but they were great! It's quite tricky to get two working at the same time (eg. left and right shoulder) but one point at a time works really well. The best spot seems to be just to the left of the spine against innner edge of the shoulder blade, but I discovered another muscle during an experimental Thai massage session, that works pretty well too: against the outer edge of the shoulder blade, about 5cm below the left armpit. I was able to lie there watching TV of reading for two hours and managed to completely relax the whole shoulder by the end of the evening. As with massage, I find that the most contentious point in the muscle seems to more around - as I relax one point, the tighness seems to shift along (around?) the muscle to another area. If you persist, you should find that you can eventually relax the entire muscle, moving the gold ball (or your body) every few minutes. Highly recommended and much cheaper than seeing a therapist!

I still had a bit of a stiff neck. The best I could do was turn my head to the left and right as I was lying down with the golf ball under my shoulder. This felt like a decent stretch, but not a release. I don't have a great home treatment for this, since the angle required essentially means I'd have to stand on my head! So if anyone can propose a remedy for this, let me know.

On a completely different tack, there now appears to be an injection for rheumatoid arthritis (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7692701.stm) so that may be of interest to some of you that have joint pain from that.

Apparently (according to K) I have an unstable SIJ. So that means another round of Googling (and mental adjustment) to try and deal with the problem. According to http://mcr.coreconcepts.com.sg/the-unstable-sij/, a sacroiliac belt might help :(

This PDF is pretty authoritative too: http://www.capitalregionneurosurgery.com/cm.pdf.

There you go. As I have been told, knee operations won't help me: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7607891.stm.