Stress Relief / Management

Every day of the week, we are visited by patients complaining of lower back pain, neck pain, head-aches, shoulder, elbow or wrist strains.

Many of them are busy professionals from companies and organisations in the Uxbridge and Hillingdon area. As we gather background information relative to the causes of injury, many of these patients will rather insightfully say

“it must be posture-related”.

In a sense, they are right: as office workers sit at their desk all day, increasingly hunched over their computer screen, so their chest and neck muscles tighten, compressing the vertebrae in their neck, straining their mid and lower back muscles, causing their shoulders, elbows and wrists to function at unnatural angles, and to sustain repetitive strain injuries; and as they cross their legs in these interminable meetings, so their pelvis may become twisted, resulting in lower back pain and lower limb complaints. The current prevailing mood of heightened stress is but an extra potential trigger of the injury process…

However, there is a degree of fatalism in incriminating posture, in other words it is often seen as an inevitable fact of life.

As osteopaths, we hope you would expect us to disagree strongly: with a little awareness focussed on understanding the mechanism of injury, altering the layout of work stations, improving working posture and implementing some basic lifestyle and postural exercise routines, the frequency of work-related injuries can be radically altered.

Over the coming weeks and months, Bridge to Health’s osteopaths will be stepping up their campaign to increase public awareness of how to prevent these types of injuries.

Our June health offer to local employees living or working in and around Uxbridge will centre on a postural assessment and osteopathic treatment, coupled with some practical exercises to enhance posture.

We will also be speaking to our corporate clients to encourage them in a pragmatic approach to work-station ergonomic assessments, coupled with employee training in workplace injury prevention practices.

If you believe you’re suffering from the effects of poor posture, feel free to contact your local osteopath on 01895 20 00 50 (the address for our Osteopathic Clinic in Uxbridge is here). If you think that a conversation with your company’s health and safety representative would be helpful, they are welcome to visit our website www.bridgetohealth.co.uk and then to contact us on the same number.

Since setting up our osteopathic clinic in Uxbridge 18 months ago, we have received numerous offers of physical or virtual receptionists to manage our patient calls and bookings so leaving us free to treat patients.

We have not taken these offers up and do not intend to do so. When people are in pain and ring Bridge to Health, the first thing they want to know is whether we can help them.

At that point, nothing can replace speaking to the osteopath directly, who can then either confirm that osteopathic treatment is appropriate, or advise the patient otherwise, such as to contact their GP or even go straight to their nearest A&E.

When you contact Bridge to Health – our telephone number is 01895 20 00 50 – you will speak directly to an osteopath. If we are treating a patient, you may need to leave a message and provide us with your contact details, and we will return your call shortly afterwards, usually within the coming 2 hours.

A Presentation to the Rotary Club, Hillingdon

In the week before last we had the pleasure of being invited by the Rotary Club of Elthorne Hillingdon to address their local members on the enticing topic of preserving good health.

The presentation was entitled “Ten Tips to Avoid the Osteopath and Maintain Rude Health“: it aimed to take to task the conventional and somewhat resigned approach of many, where health is just how one is “all equal, touch wood”, and disease is the state in which one turns to the GP for pills.

The presentation emphasised that our body and its predominant state of health are a miraculous gift, and that it is worth investing in a few simple dietary, physical and lifestyle daily practices to maintain that enviable state of health.

Some of the thoughts caused a bit of a stir – the idea of daily hot and cold showers more of a shudder – but at the end of a reasonably long and lively question and answer session, the consensus seemed to be that the osteopath had left his audience with food for thought, and some practical health hints that some might go home with and implement the very next day.

Bridge to Health in Uxbridge regularly offers to share this type of presentation with corporate audiences, health spas, gyms, sheltered housing or residential homes. If you feel that your company or organisation might benefit from this type of workshop, please contact Mathieu on 01895 2000 50 at the clinic (click here for all contact details).

We often have patients come to us for a Deep Tissue Sports Massages to relieve tension, work-out aches and for simple relief of stress. This is a great treatment to work into knotted muscles, and stimulate blood flow. Although we provide such treatment as a specific service, we are always looking at the body through osteopathic eyes and we often find that although the massage will achieve the desired result, the effect is not always as long lasting as it might be with a more holistic approach to treatment.

Sports massage is extremely effective for patients involved in… you guessed it… Sports! By treating the working muscles before training or competing, performance can be enhanced, and massage post event will speed recovery. But you don’t have to be a high level athlete to reap the rewards.

We often use these massage techniques as an integral component of broader osteopathic treatment. It must be added that the reason some patients like this kind of treatment is that it is quite simply an enjoyable and relaxing treatment in its own right.

The Bridge to Health Osteopathic Healthcare clinic is located in Uxbridge town centre, 4 minutes walk from Uxbridge station on the Picadilly and Metropolitan underground lines (so we are just a hop from Hillingdon, Ickenham and Ruislip). Nearest car park is Cedars, off the roundabout on Oxford Road.