neck pain

Seven Tips To Prevent Aches And Pains While Gardening

April 22, 2022 by Jon Crooker

Gardening is a fun pastime for some and a chore for others. Aches and pains while gardening can and do happen. Not great for anyone, especially for those that don’t love gardening! Here are seven tips to help prevent aches and pains while gardening

1. Start from a good place

As the saying goes, prevention is better than cure. Keeping fit and healthy will mean that gardening isn’t such a shock to your muscles. Incorporating exercise and stretching into your weekly or daily routine will help you stay fitter and less prone to injury.

2. Warm up your muscles before gardening

Treat gardening as you would any other type of exercise and warm up before you dive in! Remember, gardening uses a lot of different muscles, so be sure to warm up and stretch thoroughly. Common garden injuries include back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain, wrist pain, and knee pain.

3. Be mindful of how you are moving

Gardening involves a lot of different movements that your body may not be used to. From lifting heavy objects such as bags of mulch and flowerpots filled with soil, to bending over digging. If lifting, remember to lift with your knees. If something is too heavy, ask for help. Think about investing in a wagon to move heavy objects from place to place.

Be mindful of how you are leaning when digging holes or weeding. Remember to kneel rather than bending over when you spot a weed. Good posture while gardening is a must to help aches and pains later in the day.

4. Take regular breaks

Don’t be a hero! Gardening is like housework; it is never-ending! You will never be finished, so don’t rush to get your mulch done in one day or weed every flower bed. One of the keys to preventing aches and pains while gardening is knowing your limits. We get the sense of accomplishment of getting all your annuals planted, but you don’t want to end up in pain the next day.

5. Use tools and work smarter

There are so many excellent tools on the market that help to prevent aches and pains while gardening. We found this wonderful article listing nine tools that help, including long-handle weeders and garden kneelers.

6. Get creative

If you do end up with aches and pains each time you garden, then it may be time to get creative. There are many ways to garden. Think raised beds and flower walls. You may love annuals, but moving your garden to mainly shrubs and perennials can reduce how much digging you have to do. Think about planting groundcover plants to help keep weeds at bay. There is nothing wrong with enlisting help. If gardening is something you love, think about farming out some of the more laborious jobs, like mulching.

7. Stretch your muscles afterward

Just as you should warm up before gardening, be sure to cool down and stretch afterward. If you end up with aches and pains that linger on, we advise seeking out chiropractic care. There are many benefits to chiropractic care. Here at Bryn Mawr Wellness, we strive hard to help our patients keep doing the things they love, whether running marathons or tending to their yards.

Why Text Neck is Such a Problem

June 5, 2018 by Jon Crooker

Text neck is a relatively new term, coined from the bent over position we find ourselves in while texting and the resulting pain it causes. The neck is a wonderful thing. It supports the weight of the head which on average is about 10 pounds.

However, that’s with the head in the position it should be, straight on top of the shoulders when standing. When the neck bends forwards and downwards, the law of gravity increases the weight of your head. A study published in the journal ‘Surgical Technology International’ showed that if you leaned forward by just 15 degrees the head weight feels more like 27 pounds.

A 45-degree angle and the head weight feels like 49 pounds, and with a 60 degree angle forward – common when texting or browsing the web on your smart device – and your head feels like 60 pounds! That means your neck is having to cope with an extra 50 pounds of weight – that’s a 500% increase. No wonder our necks are suffering!

Why is text neck so bad?

It’s true, looking down isn’t a new thing. We’ve been looking down to read for years. However, never before have we looked down for such long periods as we do since we could text, email and surf the web from our smart devices. In fact, according to a study from IDC, 79% of respondents had their phone on or near them for all but up to 2 hours of their waking day.

Preventing text neck

We aren’t asking you to give up your phone, but we are asking you to make some simple changes:

Keep your phone at eye level. The more you can avoid looking down and increasing the angle of your neck (which as we know increases the weight of the head) the less you’ll strain your neck
Take frequent breaks. Prolonged neck flexion is much worse than short bouts
Practice good posture. Stand up straight with your shoulder blades pulled back
Keep healthy. Stretch your back and neck regularly.

The neck is one of the most common areas of complaint we treat at Bryn Mawr Wellness. If you are feeling any sort of discomfort, then please book an appointment so we can assess what’s going on. We can then use the appropriate technique to get you back up to full health. We’ll also show you a range of stretches to help you keep that way.

Back to school and backpack wearing related injuries

August 25, 2016 by Jon Crooker

According to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission over 3,000 children (ages 5 to 18) were treated for backpack related injuries in 2014. One of the contributing issues is weight of the backpack. Researchers have reported seeing some backpacks weigh more than 40% of body weight which is hugely over the recommended limit of 10%. Other issues include the fit of the backpack and the way it is carried.

As your kids return to school, we thought we’d look at how you can help educate them and prevent backpack injuries:

Choose the backpack carefully. We know that kids and teenagers worry about being judged but practically must win out here. Choose a backpack that has wide (preferably padded straps) and comes with a waist strap. The waist strap helps with maintaining balance and takes the load off of the neck and shoulder muscles;
Make sure that the backpack is the right size. The bag should end above the waist (around two inches). The lower the backpack hangs below the waist the more work the shoulders have to do and the more it throws the posture off;
It might be hip to wear a backpack over one shoulder but this puts pressure on one side of the body, leading to muscle spasms, neck and lower back strains. Ensure your child uses both straps and that they are fitted snug so the bag doesn’t hang backwards, away from the body, pulling posture out of alignment;
Work out how to get the weight of the bag to 10% of your child’s body weight. Ideas include only carrying what’s needed for that day, making more frequent trips to the locker, or investing in a second set of the most commonly used books;
If there is no way of reducing the number of items needed, then consider using a roller bag instead;
Teach your kids how to pack the bag with the heavier books closest to the spine. This will allow for better posture;
Even with the backpack is around the 10% body-weight it’s a good idea to bend from the knees when lifting the backpack. This will reduce unnecessary strain on the back muscles.

As well as hurting the muscles in the body, a heavy and ill-fitting backpack can throw your child’s balance off making them more prone to tripping – not good with a school full of stairs.

If your child does start to experience back pain then there are a number of ways we can help. One way is through ‘adjustments’ or ‘spinal manipulation’ which helps to restore joint mobility.