Easing the Pain of Osteoarthritis

osteoarthritis treatment victoria bcOsteoarthritis is the most common type of arthritis. Older adults often get osteoarthritis, especially if they are overweight.

Acupuncture, physical therapy or massage can help with osteoarthritis.

There are many helpful things you can do to ease the pain of osteoarthritis. Read on for some helpful advice.

What is osteoarthritis?

Osteoarthritis is a type of arthritis that affects the cartilage that cushions your bones at the joints. Cartilage helps your bones glide over one another. If cartilage breaks down, the bones rub together. Osteoarthritis is a chronic (long lasting) condition.

What are the symptoms of osteoarthritis?

Osteoarthritis causes pain and stiffness in the joints. Osteoarthritis is often worst in the knees, hips and small hand joints. In most cases, the exact cause of osteoarthritis is not known.

Who is at risk of getting osteoarthritis?

  • Women and men can both get osteoarthritis.
  • Being overweight increases the risk of getting osteoarthritis. This happens because extra weight causes more wear and tear on the cartilage and joints.
  • There are more cases of osteoarthritis in men who are younger than 45, while women tend to get it when they are 55 or older.
  • Osteoarthritis can also occur due to repeated joint stress from certain physical jobs or sports.
  • Osteoarthritis is genetic. That means you are more likely to get osteoarthritis if a family member also has it.

How can I manage OA?

Physical Activity

Start by being active. Physical activity is an important treatment, regardless of your age or level of pain. It can help:

  • Reduce pain
  • Maintain and improve joint movement
  • Improve physical function
  • Help you lose weight if you are overweight

Swimming is a good option since it puts no pressure on your joints. Activities that strengthen your muscles, such as weight lifting, are also important. Speak to your doctor or see a physical therapist before starting a physical activity program.

Weight management

Studies show that weight loss may help improve physical function for overweight or obese adults with osteoarthritis. Weight loss may also help ease pain.

Other treatments

  • Some people find acupuncture, physical therapy or massage to be helpful.
  • Applying heat and cold may also provide some pain relief.
  • Severe cases of osteoarthritis may need surgery to replace or repair damaged joints.

Does a balanced diet help?

Healthy eating may help reduce the symptoms of different types of arthritis. Here are five healthy eating strategies:

1. Enjoy a wide variety of foods based on Canada’s Food Guide. This will provide the right balance of nutrients that your body needs.

2. Eat 7 to 10 servings of vegetables and fruits each day. Pick lots of bright orange and green options, such as broccoli, cantaloupe and carrots. They are high in antioxidants, which may reduce inflammation, decrease cartilage breakdown and slow the progress of osteoarthritis.

3. Choose more whole grains such as brown rice, barley and oats. They have more antioxidants than refined grains, such as white bread and white rice.

4. Choose more unsaturated fats like canola and olive oil, nuts like walnuts and almonds and fish like salmon.

5. Choose fewer foods made with saturated and trans fat like butter, lard, cream, baked goods and fried foods.

 Are there medicines that can help?

Yes. Medicine can be used to reduce pain from osteoarthritis. Talk with your doctor about which medicines may be right for you. Your doctor may recommend:

  • Pain relievers such as acetaminophen
  • Anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin or ibuprofen if your pain continues
  • Corticosteroids injected right into the joint to reduce swelling and pain

Speak to your health professional before starting any medicines for osteoarthritis so that he/she can help you pick what is right for you.

Are there supplements that can help?

Two supplements called glucosamine and chondroitin are thought to be helpful for osteoarthritis.  However, they are not currently licensed for use as drugs to treat osteoarthritis because research does not show that they are effective. If you choose to try these products, make sure you buy ones that have a Natural Product Number (NPN). This means they are licensed with the Natural Health Products Directorate in Canada. Speak to your health professional before starting any supplements so that he/she can help you pick what is right for you.

Bottom line

If you have osteoarthritis, be active, enjoy a healthy eating plan and maintain a healthy weight. This can help ease the pain in your joints. Speak to your doctor before taking medicine for osteoarthritis.

This article was written by Dietitians of Canada.

/0 Comments/by
, , ,

Diversified Health Explains Sprains & Strains

Diversified Health Explains Sprains & StrainsDiversified Health Clinic explains the difference between a sprain and a strain; which is one of the most frequently asked question regarding an injury.

Sprains:

A sprain is an injury to a ligament, the fibrous tissue that connects bones to other bone. Ligament injuries involve a stretching or a tearing of this tissue.

A sprain typically occurs when people fall and land on an outstretched arm,  land on the side of their foot, or twist a knee with the foot planted firmly on the ground. This results in an overstretch or tear of the ligament(s) supporting that joint.

The usual signs and symptoms of a muscle sprain include pain, swelling, bruising, and the loss of the ability to move and use the joint.

Strains:

A strain is an injury to either a muscle or a tendon which are the tissues that connects muscles to bones. Depending on the severity of the injury, a strain may be a simple overstretch of the muscle or it can result in a partial or complete tear.

A strain is caused by twisting or pulling a muscle or tendon. Strains can be acute or chronic. An acute strain is caused by trauma or an injury such as a blow to the body; it can also be caused by improperly lifting heavy objects which over stresses the muscles. Chronic strains are usually the result of prolonged overuse or repetitive movement of the muscles and tendons.

The usual signs and symptoms of a strain include pain, muscle spasm and muscle weakness. There can also be localized swelling, cramping, inflammation and some loss of muscle function.

Now that Diversified Health Clinic explains the difference between a sprain and a strain, remember to treat the injury as soon as possible with Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation for the first 24 to 48 hours after the injury.

/1 Comment/by
, ,

Diabetes – The Silent Killer

Diabetes - The Silent KillerDiabetes is a chronic condition that stems from the body’s inability to sufficiently produce/properly use insulin which the body needs to use sugar as an energy source. Diabetes can lead to serious complications and premature death.

Complications from diabetes can include; blindness, numb and tingling feet, poor circulation, slow-healing wounds, gangrene, amputation, heart disease and death.  However, in most cases diabetes can be controlled with an active lifestyle and a healthy diet.

Risk factors for diabetes:

If you are aged 40 or older, you are at risk for type 2 diabetes.  If any of the following risks factors apply to you, please talk with your health care practitioner.

  • A parent, brother or sister with diabetes
  • Health complications that are associated with diabetes
  • Had gestational diabetes (diabetes during pregnancy)
  • Impaired glucose tolerance or impaired fasting glucose
  • High blood pressure/High cholesterol or other fats in the blood
  • Being overweight

Symptoms for diabetes:

Signs and symptoms of diabetes can include the following:

  • Unusual thirst
  • Frequent urination
  • Weight change (gain or loss)
  • Extreme fatigue or lack of energy
  • Blurred vision
  • Frequent or recurring infections
  • Cuts and bruises that are slow to heal
  • Tingling or numbness in the hands or feet

It is important to recognize, however, that many people who have type 2 diabetes may display no symptoms.

How is diabetes treated?

People with diabetes need to make a lifelong commitment to their health, which includes the following:

  • Education: Be informed about your condition.
  • Physical Activity: Regular physical activity lowers your blood glucose levels, promotes weight loss, and enhances overall health.
  • Nutrition: What, when and how much you eat play an important role in regulating blood glucose levels as well as maintaining a healthy weight.
  • Medication: Type 1 diabetes is always treated with insulin. Type 2 diabetes is managed through physical activity and meal planning.
  • Lifestyle: Learning to reduce your daily stress level, including maintaining a blood pressure level at or below 130/80.

If you are living with diabetes, become a fact finder! Knowing as much as possible is your best defence against diabetes. Find out how your body uses food and what role insulin plays in this process and build a team of experts with your health care practitioners to help you win the fight!

/1 Comment/by
, ,

Are you living with chronic pain? eToims can help

Are you living with chronic pain? eToims can helpVictoria’s Diversified Health Clinic is the first location on Vancouver Island to offer eToims, a new non-invasive treatment for pain and inflammation in the body’s soft and connective tissues.

When you irritate or damage a nerve, muscle fibers close around the nerve fibers like a fist. eToims uses an electrical pulse that uncurls the fist from the nerve fibers, thus relieving your muscle pain & restoring function, mobility & quality of life.

What is eToims and how does it work?

Using specialized medical equipment, eToims sends very brief but strong electrical pulses to the areas of irritated nerves. This stimulation causes the muscle to twitch, or contract, and then relax. This focused exercising of the muscle at numerous points throughout the muscle relieves the associated pain.

Traditionally this treatment has involved the use of acupuncture needles (Trigger Point Dry Needling, or IMS) to relieve pain. eToims is a non-invasive form of the same treatment – no needles are inserted into the skin – and is available nowhere else on Vancouver Island, and now Diversified Health offers both treatments.

eToims is great for sports injuries or the mysterious soft-tissue injuries from auto accidents that typically stump health practitioners. It is quick to diagnose and fast to heal, getting you active and back on your feet faster than conventional treatments.

What happens during a treatment session?

The current is conducted through moist pads placed on your skin. Muscles that produce the strongest contraction or twitch will be worked on first to start some flow through the nerve and stimulate blood flow in your body. The very tight muscles will be worked on next to try to get as much contraction as possible in these muscles. The more contraction elicited in the muscles, the more relaxed the muscles will become. As a result, there is less compression on the nerves, more blood flow, and more pain relief.

eToims will treat the following conditions

  • Muscle pain/myofascial pain
  • Musculoskeletal pain/discomfort
  • Frozen Shoulder
  • Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
  • Low back pain
  • Facet Syndrome
  • Piriformis Syndrome
  • Post surgical back pain
  • Tension headaches
  • Rotator cuff injuries
  • Tennis elbow
  • Shin Splints
  • Whiplash
  • Repetitive strain injuries
  • Sports injuries
  • Tendonitis
  • Degenerative disc
  • Bulging or herniated disc
  • Spinal Stenosis
  • Fibromyalgia

Please contact our health care practitioners for more information about the eToims Technique.

/1 Comment/by

4 Steps to Developing Health Habits

4 Steps to Developing Health HabitsWritten By Douglas Robb
This study found that individuals who focused on behavior-changing strategies were much more successful than those people forced to endure their doctor’s cognitive approach to behavior change.

Instead of attempting to change their knowledge, beliefs and attitudes surrounding exercise and healthy eating, study participants were successful at increasing their physical activity levels by implementing 4 simple strategies:

Goal Setting

Setting SMART fitness goals involves 5 steps:

S – A specific fitness goal could be a walk each morning before breakfast.

M – For a goal to be measurable, you should define how far you are going to walk and how often you will perform the workout

A – To be achievable, you should start off with a task that you can achieve, knowing that the distance / intensity will increase as for fitness improves.

R – To be relevant, your goal should be in tune with your overall fitness goal – weight loss, improved blood pressure, etc.

T – To avoid ‘accidentally’ missing a workout, you should arrange a specific exercise appointment in your daily calendar.

Stimulus or Cues

Establish physical reminders to encourage yourself to exercise – Pack your gym bag and leave it by the front door every night, leave yourself notes encouraging yourself to work out, schedule your workout into your electronic schedule with an alarm, ask friends or family to call and remind you…really any reminder will help.

Self Monitoring

Keep a workout and/or food log book. It’s tough at first, but it pays off in the end.

Feedback

Reward yourself with a non-food based treat when you succeed. The rewards should become larger / more important to match the degree of fitness success.

Successfully completing today’s workout deserves a small treat, but not missing a workout for 3 months deserves a really big pat on the back.

Doug Robb is a personal trainer, a fitness blogger and author, a competitive athlete, and a student of nutrition and exercise science. Doug has expanded his impact by bringing his real-world experience online via his health & fitness blog, Health Habits. 

/0 Comments/by

What Sleep Condtion Do You Suffer From?

What Sleep Condtion Do You Suffer From? The College of Family Physicians of Canada reports that 65% of all adults suffer from lack of sleep.

For many of us the lack of a good night’s sleep is routine – more than 40 percent of adults experience daytime sleepiness severe enough to interfere with their daily activities at least a few days each month, and each of us have different issues and conditions that contribute to not getting a good night sleep.

The definition of sleep is: a natural periodic state of rest for the mind and body, in which the eyes usually close and consciousness is completely or partially lost, so that there is a decrease in bodily movement and responsiveness to external stimuli.

The next time you are having a discussion about how tired you are feeling, try to incorporate some of the “sleep vocabulary” in your next conversation about the lack of sleep.

Bruxism — grinding one’s teeth while asleep.

Circadian rhythm — the daily fluctuation of physiological or behavioral functions that include sleep-wakestates generally tied to the 24-hour daily dark-light cycle.

Hypopnea –  refers to shallow breathing, or a transient reduction of airflow that occurs while asleep and lasts for at least 10 seconds. It is less severe than apnea, which refers to a more complete loss of airflow.

Hypersomnia — sleeping for uncharacteristically long periods of time.

Hypersomnolence — excessive daytime sleepiness.

Insomnia – a common sleep problem characterized by: trouble falling asleep, waking frequently during the night, waking too early and can’t get back to sleep.

Melatonin — a hormone secreted by the pineal gland in the brain, produced at night, in darkness, and brings on the urge to sleep.

Microsleep  – a brief, fleeting episode of sleep that lasts from a fraction of a second up to 10 seconds. It frequently occurs in sleepy people who are trying to remain awake. These episodes are uncontrollable and can lead to accidents involving cars or heavy machinery.

Narcolepsy — a chronic neurological disorder that involves the body’s central nervous system. A major symptom of narcolepsy is excessive and overwhelming daytime sleepiness.

NREM — slow wave sleep that consists of sleep stages 1 through 4 and is characterized by a gradual decrease of mental activity, body temperature, heart rate and blood pressure. We spend about 75 percent of sleep time in NREM state.

Parasomnias — a wide range of disruptive sleep-related events characterized by full or partial arousal from sleep. They include sleep walking, sleep-related eating, night terrors and bruxism (teethgrinding).

Pavor nocturnus – an episodic emotional disturbance that occurs in sleep.  The episodes may include screaming, moaning, gasping, panic, and anxiety.

Periodic Limb Movement Disorder (PLMD) — periodic episodes of repetitive limb movements during sleep.

REM (Rapid Eye Movement) Sleep — the sleep state in which vivid dreaming occurs.

REM Sleep Behavior Disorder — characterized by the lack of muscle paralysis during REM sleep, during which the individual acts out the ongoing dream.

Retrognathia – a small or recessed jaw that may predispose to obstruction of the airway. This may lead to sleep apnea.

Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) — a neurological movement disorder characterized by unpleasant tingling, crawling, creeping and/or pulling feelings in the legs causing an urge to move in order to relieve the symptoms and resulting in difficulty in falling and staying asleep.

Sleep apnea — a serious, potentially life threatening condition characterized by pauses in breathing during sleep. Sleep apnea may be associated with irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke.

Sleep deprivation — an insufficient amount of sleep or poor sleep due to difficulty sleeping, disruptions and/or a sleep disorder. Sleep deprivation can have a negative impact on a person’s mood, behavior and performance.

Somniloquy – the act or habit of talking in one’s sleep.

If you suffer from lack of sleep, don’t hesitate to speak to your health care practitioner; remember skimping on sleep can put your health in jeopardy.

/0 Comments/by

7 Steps To Better Sleep

Woman SleepingThe College of Family Physicians of Canada reports that 30-40% of adults have some amount of sleeplessness in any given year. If you’re one of them or simply want to get more zzz’s without pills, read on.

Everybody needs sleep. That’s a fact. But when it comes to how much, everybody is different: Some wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with a mere five hours; others need a full seven or eight — any less and they forget what the coffee maker looks like.

If you feel sleepy during the day, are more irritable or just can’t seem to function like your usual self, it could be a matter of needing more shuteye.

If you fall into the “sleep deprived” category, know that you are not alone. Statistics Canada estimates that 3.3 million Canadians over the age of 15 (that’s one in seven of us) report that they have problems falling asleep or staying asleep.

7 steps to better sleep

If you want to put an end to sleepless nights, these seven easy-to-follow tips can be just what you need.

  1. Stick to a schedule. That means going to bed and waking up at the same time every day — even on weekends. In time, you’ll “train” your body to follow a set cycle.
  2. Practice snooze control. If you need to nap during the day, limit it to 30 minutes and take it early enough in the day so that it doesn’t interfere with your nighttime sleep.
  3. Stick to a relaxing routine. Get into the habit of doing the same thing every night before going to bed to trigger your body for sleep. That could mean having chamomile tea, reading or taking a warm bath.
  4. Get comfort-wise. If you’re sleeping on an old lumpy mattress or pillows that have lost their shape, it may be time to invest in new ones. In some cases, you could just need a mattress topper so do some legwork before dishing out for a new mattress.
  5. Think air quality. Take steps to make your bedroom as cool or warm as you like. You may also need to buy a humidifier if the air is too dry, or a dehumidifier if you have the opposite problem. If you have known allergies (such as to dust or strong fragrances) then make sure those are in check.
  6. Limit light and noise. If necessary, invest in earplugs or a nighttime eye mask.
  7. Avoid stimulants before bed. Caffeine (coffee, tea, soda, chocolate), nicotine, alcohol, or too much food or drink could disrupt a good night’s sleep.

You’ll also be happy to know that leading a healthy lifestyle not only does your body good, it also helps you sleep better. So stick to an exercise routine that makes sense for you.

Know when to speak to your doctor

If you have ongoing sleep-related problems, then speak to your doctor. This is especially important if you’re thinking of trying over-the-counter medication or herbal remedies.

References

  • American Academy of Family Physicians, Insomnia: How to get a good night’s sleep
  • Canadian Psychological Association
  • College of Family Physicians of Canada
  • Mayo Clinic, 10 tips for better sleep:
  • Statistics Canada, The Daily, Wednesday, November 16, 2005, (Health Reports, 2002)

Article written by: morethanmedication.ca

/0 Comments/by

Don’t Underestimate The Power of Sleep

Natural Health Practitioners Don't Underestimate The Power of Sleep The benefits of a good night’s sleep impacts every area of our daily life.  While it may be obvious that sleep is beneficial, most people don’t realize how much sleep they need and why it is so important.

The amount of sleep each person needs depends on many factors, including age. For most adults, 7 to 9 hours a night appears to be the best amount of sleep, although some people may need as few as 5 hours or as many as 10 hours of sleep each day.

Sleep is essential to our health, it affects our mental, physical, and emotional well-being.

When you are asleep, your body is…

Fighting disease| repairing your body

Your body produces protein molecules while you’re sleeping that helps strengthen your ability to fight infection. These molecules help your immune system mend your body at a cellular level when you are stressed or have been exposed to compromising elements such as pollutants and infectious bacteria.  Think about the last time you had the flu….. all you want to do is sleep… that’s your body repairing and fighting the virus.

Strengthening the Heart

Sleep helps to reduce the levels of stress and inflammation in your body. High levels of inflammatory are linked to heart disease, hypertension and strokes.

Reducing Stress

A good night’s sleep can help lower blood pressure

Repairing Memory and Cognitive abilities

When deprived of sleep, it becomes difficult to concentrate, hard to recall tasks, and impossible to find your keys! Research suggests that sleep helps learning and memory by consolidating the days memories and tasks, which is essential for learning new information.

Controlling your body weight

Sleep helps regulate the hormones that affect and control your appetite.

Helping in the fight against Diabetes

Researchers have shown that lack of sleep may lead to type 2 diabetes by affecting how your body processes glucose, which is the carbohydrate your cells use for fuel.

The benefits of sleep are extensive and can make a difference in your quality of life, as well as the length of your life. Therefore, sleep like diet and exercise, is important for our minds and bodies to function normally.  So, like our natural health practitioners don’t underestimate the power of sleep.

/0 Comments/by