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After I posted how we use a gym ball to treat and provide pain relief to pregnant mums I met up with Vicky Warr, a young dynamic fitness instructor whose company, Beez Kneez, provides pregnant mums across West London a wide range of prenatal and post natal fitness programmes.

We had a good chat on such topics as managing good physical and mental health during and after pregnancy, good nutrition, and exercise teaching methods, during which I appreciated her caring, reflective and tonic approach to these subjects. Her website is clearly laid out with good information on Beez Knees classes and activities (including short videos) – www.beez-kneez.co.uk

I proposed to Vicky to visit one of her classes and provide the mums a tutorial on using a gym ball for good pelvic alignment, and involving their partners in giving them simple pain relief treatment during the last weeks of pregnancy. Do take a look at their fitness and nutrition programmes if you are concerned about remaining in good shape during and after pregnancy.

If you are just starting your third term of pregnancy, your baby’s weight becomes significantly more noticeable, and you will increasingly tend to experience lower back, pelvic and perineal pain or discomfort. These symptoms can be upsetting as they increase both your level of tiredness and tension (particularly if you are still working or looking after young children) and perhaps concern about a potentially more protracted and uncomfortable delivery.

This is where a gym ball may turn out to be a faithful ally. We recommend that our pregnant patients start using a gym ball as their main chair towards the end of the second term – for eating, working at the computer or even watching TV.

Sitting on the slightly unstable and mobile gym ball favours better seated posture, gently mobilises the pelvis and lower back, and helps massage and relax the perineal muscles.

We also tend to use a gym ball when treating pregnant mums (or mums to be), and we have devised a simple treatment routine that supportive partners can safely give during the final weeks of pregnancy, reducing spouse tension and pain from the neck to the pelvis. This has the cumulative benefits of involving Dads positively, providing tangible relief to the Mums, and further enhancing the couple’s relationship at an important stage of their partnership.

I developed this treatment routine to help my own wife with her third and fourth pregnancies. Her first two deliveries had been protracted and traumatic (our eldest child was delivered by emergency C-section), and in stark contrast, our last two children were born relatively peacefully at home. My wife asserts that this result is significantly owed to a combination of osteopathic treatment and her gym ball routine.

To find out more about osteopathic healthcare support during pregnancy and after delivery, do contact us – we are located in Uxbridge and opened a second osteopaths’ in Ealing last September.

Gym balls are very cheap (from less than £10) and can be found in the likes of Sports Direct and Argos. You might also find this post helpful: Reducing aches and pains during pregnancy (and how to speed up post-natal recovery)

As the cold rainy weather settles in, many of our patients in Ealing and Uxbridge are reporting epidemics of flu, colds and various upsets ravaging their families and colleagues at work.

So it seems like the right time of the year to offer some tips to boost your immune system. If you are feeling under the weather, or want to try and fight-off the colds this winter then our top 10 tips are as follows:

• Watch your diet
  Stuff yourself with as much seasonal fruit and raw or lightly cooked veg as you can; choose brown over white – for bread, pasta and rice; prefer grilled or poached oily fish (tuna, salmon) over red or white meat – and generally, eat less rather than more;
• Optimise your intake of natural minerals and vitamins
  by juicing 250-300 ml-worth of mixed fruit and veg. For example, combine apple, carrot, celery and a little grated ginger;

• Consider botanical immune boosters
  such as turmeric in curcumin form, echynacea, bromelain (found in pineapple stem), liquorice and co-enzyme Q10;

• Drink less caffeine and alcohol
  and, needless to say, tobacco and occupational drugs which threaten to overpower your waste elimination organs (liver, spleen and kidneys);
• Consider multi-vitamin supplements
  If you are feeling very depleted, or under pressure to recover, consider some good quality high potency multivitamins and minerals: Cytoplan or Lamberts are considered good brands; we’re not great fans of supplements, but sometimes there’s little choice;
• Ensure good fluid intake
  Aim for six to eight 200ml glasses of fluids per day: water and natural fruit-juices are in; tea, coffee, and high caffeine, fizzy drinks are out;
• Replenish your body with electrolytes
  If you have been suffering from vomiting or diarrhoea for any duration; 1 litre of homemade electrolytes can be made up by adding 1/3 L fresh apple juice, 2/3L water, 2 tea-spoonfuls or raw cane sugar of honey and 1 tea-spoonful of sea-salt – to be sipped within a day;
• Go for daily exercise and deep breathing
  Aim for a daily brisk 30-minutes walk in the fresh air – try for two to four 30-minutes sessions of light exercise a week, and invest in 200 bounces per day on a bouncer/mini-trampoline to stimulate your lymphatics!
• Treat yourself to manual therapy
  You’d expect us to say that but… a couple of sessions aiming at stimulating good blood and lymph flow, activating the waste elimination organs and encouraging good whole-body function is a sound investment this time of year;
• Get some decent rest - this is not a great season for regular partying (end of year excepted!) – aim for 7-8 hours of daily sleep, aiming to have retired to bed by 10 O’clock to give your body a chance to repair itself.

We hope these tips don’t come over too much like a one way ticket to boot camp. On the upside, using them may just allow you to reach the end of the year in top form to fully enjoy Christmas and new year celebrations.

With our best wishes of good health!

Can we help? This is our blog highlighting what we at Bridge to Health do. If you want a friendly chat with an osteopath – please contact us at Uxbridge Osteopaths / Ealing Osteopaths.

Most of our office-based patients come to us complaining of a similar set of injuries typically induced by the sedentary lifestyle that goes with working at a desk, and the poor postural habits we acquire in that environment.

Once the pain and other symptoms have been addressed, the focus of patient care switches to the prevention of similar occurences in the future. Ever in quest of the magic bullet, many patients ask us whether acquiring good working posture will address the problem.

Inevitably, the answer is… both yes and no!

Unquestionably, learning and applying the basic components of good desk-based posture – as outlined in an earlier post – Top tips for better posture at work (in the office) – is pivotal to injury prevention.

But we also have to acknowledge some fundamental truths: namely, that we were not designed and equipped to work for hours at a time at a desk (no more than to drive for hours in a car or totter around on 3-inch heels carrying a briefcase crammed with laptops and documents…).

Effective workplace injury prevention involves addressing a much wider range of issues including:

1. desk and office-based exercises at regular intervals during the working day
2. daily home exercise to counter some of the stresses inherent to desk-related postural imbalances
3. nutrition and hydration habits at home and work
4. sound lifting and carrying ergonomics (some advice posted here)
5. regular and effective relaxation/recovery routines
6. good sleeping habits and posture

All of which combine to provide a more comprehensive insurance against posture and stress-related injuries in the future. It is with this in mind that we designed our Workplace Injury Prevention Workshop, which aims to train office workers, increase awareness and reduce the risk and cost of postural and repetitive strain injuries. If we can help your organisation – please get in touch (we are osteopaths based in Ealing and Uxbridge)

In our excitement we forgot to announce that our new clinic in Ealing has opened and saw its first patients on Tuesday this week!

In case you missed it our address and contact number for Ealing is:

Bridge to Health
Platinum 8 Studios
22, the Green
Ealing, London W5 5DA

Telephone: 020 8566 0767

We are just 3 minutes walk from the Broadway or 5 minutes from Ealing tube station.

So you can now book an appointment to see an osteopath in Ealing or in Uxbridge and we have a rota for Peter, Jessica and myself being in one clinic or the other.

It’s been a very busy time getting the second clinic open and we are looking forward to helping more patients in the coming months.

I must admit Peter and I approached our visit to the Back Show with a mixture of wariness and cynicism, expecting to come across an endless array of dubious gadgets, miracle potions, and the-definitive-solution-to-all-back-pain-at-an-almost-affordable-price…

In the event, we spent a really absorbing couple of hours meeting a wide range of enthusiastic professionals, each contributing something specific and positive to the complex patchwork of musculoskeletal pain.

We first met Katie Baylis of Putnams, a family-run firm specialised in an extensive range of orthopaedic products. Having just written a blog post about choosing a pillow, Peter was interested in their pressure relief cushions. You can review the range on their website but Bridge to Health patients can order through us to get a discount.

A short while later, we were sampling the unique footwear concept of Terra Plana, a company that has designed a shoe aiming to deliver the same experience and benefits to foot and body as if you were wandering around… bare foot. We were so bowled over by the experience that we instantly purchased a pair each, and I have scarcely used anything else in clinic since, feeling far less tired than previously by the end of the day.

A Terra Plana shoe using bare foot technology

We then spent ten minutes lounging around in the best office chair I have ever come across, the SwingSeat^TM designed by SmartMotion Technology. Pricy, but if you are going to be chained to a desk all day… it’s the next best thing to a walk in the park – and we can offer discounts, so speak to us first!

We then chanced upon the Healthy Back Bag Company which manufactures an alluring range of stylish bags designed to carry light to moderate weights whilst minimising spinal damage. I was favourably impressed by their laptop bag, as I’m constantly badgering patients to carry theirs more smartly… take a peak at the catalogue.

I also spend a lot of time trying to tempt patients to spend more time swimming, which is why I was happy to come across the Art of Swimming, an organisation led by Steven Shaw that has imported Alexander technique’s postural framework to the swimming pool. Their teaching program sounds very exciting and may well be available in a swimming-pool close to you.

I quickly visited the stand of the National Osteoporosis Society which publishes a set of handy self-help booklets, and our friends and colleagues at the Pilates Foundation and at the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique (STAT) as the show began closing.

Time was running out as I passed the Back 2 stand which promotes the MastercareMini^TM, a very practical light “inversion table” (a device allowing you to stretch your back by hanging upside down), which as a back sufferer always makes me drool. The ushers were converging on us by that time, but I will be investigating that contraption in the near future.

We will definitely be returning to the 2010 Back Show next year, scheduled at the Olympia 2 on 24th and 25th September (dates to be confirmed). Indeed, I would recommend you do so yourself!

While we are busy preparing to open our second Osteopathic Healthcare Clinic in Ealing, a new osteopath has also joined our team.

Peter and I have been looking for a third partner for a while, and as we considered a short-list of friends and colleagues, Peter contacted Jessica Busen-Smith, a colleague whom he had met when studying at the British College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Although she was already working for clinics in central London and Epping, she readily agreed to meet us and visit our premises in Uxbridge. We were immediately drawn to her quietly confident and sunny personality, and her caring, reflective approach to osteopathic treatment. She in turn voiced approval and support of our vision of osteopathy and health.

Jessie is treating patients in Uxbridge on Mondays and Wednesdays, and will soon be available in Ealing as our team rotates between the two clinics.

Jessie brings a wealth of professional and human experience to her practice beyond her osteopathic training. She gained her first degree and Masters in physics with honours at Sussex University, and then worked for four years as a research assistant for the Childrens’ Hospital Immunodeficiency program (CHIP) in Denver Colorado, where she was involved in liaising with patients and parents as well as research activities. Those two experiences alone hint at a good combination of logic, rigour and human empathy.

Welcome Jessie!

I’m pleased to say our new telephone number for our new Ealing clinic is working again. To speak to an Osteopath in Ealing – for booking an appointment or seeking advice whether osteopathic treatment is appropriate please telehone 020 8566 0767.

You can also book appointments for Ealing by telephoning the Uxbridge number.

Original post:

Frustratingly, there is a delay in our new telephone line (the 020 8 number) “going live”.

Whether you are trying to contact an osteopath in Ealing or Uxbridge, please call the Uxbridge clinic on 01895 2000 50 where we can also book appointments for the Ealing clinic.

We are sorry for any inconvenience. Hopefully, B.T. will have us up and running before too many people notice.

As always, when considering setting up an osteopathic clinic in a new area, the big word rings in your ears: Location, Location, LOCATION! The brief is simple: where will our patients find it convenient and pleasant to visit us in Ealing?

Over the past few weeks, we have been scouring Ealing town centre in an attempt to answer this question.

We have visited gyms, dentists, beauty centres, pharmacists, business centres and GP practices. After some thought, our choice has settled on a treatment room in the health suite of Platinum 8, a hairdressing and beauty salon on Ealing Green, a three minute walk off the Broadway.

(photo of Platinum 8 salon – photo of our new clinic to follow)

We were struck by the cheerful, village-like atmosphere of the Green, and equally by the pleasant, welcoming and slightly quirky ambiance of the salon, located a stone-throw away from Ealing Studios, and a convenient 5 minute walking distance from the companies situated on the Uxbridge Road.

We want to present osteopathy as a clinical form of manual therapy transforming dis-ease into everyday comfort and health. As such, an osteopathic practice should fit easily into a setting such as a hairdressers/beauty salon.

Ealing patients who have patiently trekked to Uxbridge in the past will notice a similarly restful decor style as in our other clinic at the Fitness First Centre on Uxbridge High Street. We are aiming to open for treatment in the course of the week starting 19th October, and look forward to welcoming you at our new address:

Bridge to Health
Platinum 8 Studios
22, the Green
Ealing, London W5 5DA

Telephone: 020 8566 0767

Welcome – and tell us what you think!

We are very excited to announce that we will shortly be opening a second osteopathic clinic based in Ealing!

Whilst our clinic in Uxbridge is entering its third year of operation and becoming increasingly busy, we are also focusing on opening a second clinic down the road in Ealing, an area close to my heart. I have lived here for the past 20 years and although I have mixed feelings about what is becoming of its shopping centre – never mind its planned shopping centre! – I also love its bustling diversity.

Why osteopathy in Ealing?

The area may already be well serviced by osteopaths, but the age-old adage remains true: it’s all about who you know and trust, and a number of people at my parish church of St Benedict’s, at the Ealing Rugby Club, and at the French School André Malraux have regularly asked me why Bridge to Health was not located in Ealing.

Seen that way, it seemed appropriate to move forward with an Ealing Clinic. We have been scouting premises for the past couple of months and have finally settled for an address on The Green, a 3 minute walk from the High Street. We are planning to open for treatment during the week starting 19th October. Watch this space!