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Our July Promotion result
Our promotion for the month of July has ended.
The person who made the most referrals has won a Sports First Aid kit (pictured) valued at $150.
Our congratulations go to our winner, Gail Lawler.
The runner-up prize (a 50%-off discount for two people) goes to Sebastian Rambaldini.
Thanks to all those who entered. Every one of you have earned at least one “Refer a Friend” reward for your efforts. We have had over 100 new people introduced to us so far this year, and it’s all thanks to your referrals.
And now, into August – Tradies Month…
Take this opportunity
IC Sports Therapies is developing a team and is looking for people who are mature, flexible, motivated, and reliable, to work with us in Hornsby.
You will ideally be keen to build your own practice and be prepared to work with other disciplines, and have
- Special interest in Masters Sport or Caring for active over-50s
- Looking to work interdependently
- Recently completed study or returning to work, or
- Already have a small practice
Shared facilities, reception and retail space included. $130 per day and a minimum of 2 days per week for a minimum of one year. A trial period of 1 month applies.
All applicants must have Health Fund cover, Public Liability insurance, and Professional Registration.
Would suit Physiotherapist, E.P., Osteopath or Remedial Massage Therapist.
Please contact The Manager on (02) 9477-3103 for further information.
Medibank Recognised Provider status
We are pleased to advise our clients who have health insurance with Medibank Private that, effective 17/05/2015, Medibank have approved us as Recognised Providers. This means that eligible Medibank members are now able to claim benefits for our services from that date onwards.
Update
From November 2015, MediBank un-approved us. For all other Health Funds we are still recognised providers*.
*Recognised Provider status is on a per-therapist basis, and is not Clinic-based.
SMH Half-marathon 2015
Our congratulations go out to our clients who participated in this year’s Sydney Morning Herald Half Marathon last Sunday, May 17th 2015.
Multiple 60-Minute Massages per Week Offer Relief for Chronic Neck Pain
Results of a study funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) found that multiple 60-minute massages per week were more effective than fewer or shorter sessions for people with chronic neck pain, suggesting that several hour-long massages per week may be the best “dose” for people with this condition. Researchers from Group Health Research Institute, University of Washington, The University of Vermont College of Medicine, and Oregon Health and Science University published their findings in the Annals of Family Medicine.
Researchers enrolled 228 people with chronic neck pain into five randomly assigned groups receiving various “doses” of massage: a 4-week course of 30-minute sessions two or three times each week, or 60-minute sessions one, two, or three times each week. Other participants were assigned to a 4-week wait list, which served as the control group. Therapists used a wide range of massage techniques and were not allowed to make any self-care recommendations.
The researchers found that 30-minute massages two or three times per week did not provide significant benefits compared with the wait-list control group. However, beneficial effects of 60-minute massages increased with dose and were particularly evident for participants receiving massages two or three times per week. Compared with the control group, participants were three times more likely to have clinically meaningful improvement in neck function if they received 60-minute massages twice per week and five times more likely if they received 60-minute massages three times per week. However, the researchers noted that longer and more frequent massages might be challenging for many patients due to financial and time constraints. They also noted that future studies of massage for neck pain should include multiple 60-minute massages per week for the first 4 weeks of treatment, self-care recommendations, and longer-term followup.
Reference
- Sherman KJ, Cook AJ, Wellman RD, et al. Five-week outcomes from a dosing trial of therapeutic massage for chronic neck pain. Annals of Family Medicine. 2014;12(2):112–120
Why Ice Delays Recovery
In a 2014 article entitled “Why Ice Delays recovery“, Gabe Mirkin, MD wrote as follows:
“When I wrote my best-selling Sportsmedicine Book in 1978, I coined the term RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) for the treatment of athletic injuries (Little Brown and Co., page 94). Ice has been a standard treatment for injuries and sore muscles because it helps to relieve pain caused by injured tissue. Coaches have used my “RICE” guideline for decades, but now it appears that both Ice and complete Rest may delay healing, instead of helping.
In a recent study, athletes were told to exercise so intensely that they developed severe muscle damage that caused extensive muscle soreness. Although cooling delayed swelling, it did not hasten recovery from this muscle damage (The American Journal of Sports Medicine, June 2013). A summary of 22 scientific articles found almost no evidence that ice and compression hastened healing over the use of compression alone, although ice plus exercise may marginally help to heal ankle sprains (The American Journal of Sports Medicine, January, 2004;32(1):251-261).”
He then goes on to explain that
- Healing Requires Inflammation (Inflammatory cells rush to injured tissue to start the healing process),
- Ice Keeps Healing Cells from Entering Injured Tissue (Applying ice to injured tissue causes blood vessels near the injury to constrict and shut off the blood flow that brings in the healing cells of inflammation)
- Anything That Reduces Inflammation Also Delays Healing
- Ice Also Reduces Strength, Speed, Endurance and Coordination (The cooling may help to decrease pain, but it interferes with the athlete’s strength, speed, endurance and coordination)
Dr Mirkin’s recommends “Since applying ice to an injury has been shown to reduce pain, it is acceptable to cool an injured part for short periods soon after the injury occurs. You could apply the ice for up to 10 minutes, remove it for 20 minutes, and repeat the 10 minute application once or twice. There is no reason to apply ice more than six hours after you have injured yourself.”
Read more in the full article on Dr. Mirkin’s site.
See also Queensland Researchers pour cold water on ice-baths
How to Fix Bad Ankles
People who’ve sprained an ankle are likely to sprain it again, writes Gretchen Reynolds for the New York Times, but there may be a “supremely low-tech” fix: balance training. An ankle sprain interferes with the neural receptors in the ligaments that transmit balance information to the brain. Even when the sprain is healed, balance can still remain impaired—increasing the chance of a future injury.
In sports, ankles are the most commonly injured body part — each year approximately eight million people sprain an ankle. Millions of those will then go on to sprain that same ankle, or their other ankle, in the future. “The recurrence rate for ankle sprains is at least 30 percent,” says Patrick McKeon, an assistant professor in the Division of Athletic Training at the University of Kentucky, “and depending on what numbers you use, it may be high as 80 percent.”
“There are neural receptors in ligaments,” says Jay Hertel, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Virginia and an expert on the ankle. When you damage the ligament, “you damage the neuro-receptors as well. Your brain no longer receives reliable signals” from the ankle about how your ankle and foot are positioned in relation to the ground. Your proprioception — your sense of your body’s position in space — is impaired. You’re less stable and more prone to falling over and re-injuring yourself.
A growing body of research suggests that many of those second (and often third and fourth) sprains could be avoided with an easy course of treatment. Stand on one leg. Try not to wobble. Hold for a minute. Repeat.
The treatment, simple as it is, can be quite beneficial
This is the essence of balance training, a supremely low-tech but increasingly well-documented approach to dealing with unstable ankles. A number of studies published since 2008 have shown that the treatment, simple as it is, can be quite beneficial.
Balance training uses instability to force you to use muscles that stabilize the body during movement. Equipment like stability balls, the vibrating platform, wobble boards, etc. all create that instability which causes more muscles to activate than if you were just standing on a stable surface.
At IC Sports Therapies, we have an array of balance-challenging equipment, a collection which is unique to our practice. We can help you with a program to retrain your brain, and re-establish balance in your life. Phone us today on 9477-3103.
Paracetamol kills pleasure as well as pain, study finds
Paracetamol may be an effective pain reliever but it also reduces feelings of pleasure, a new study suggests.
The previously unknown side-effect means that over-the-counter painkillers are leaving users not only pain-free, but also emotionally numb.
In a study carried out by US researchers, volunteers who took paracetamol reported weaker feelings when they saw both pleasant and harrowing photographs.
“This means that using paracetamol might have broader consequences than previously thought,” said lead author Geoffrey Durso, a doctoral student in social psychology at The Ohio State University.
“Rather than just being a pain reliever, paracetamol can be seen as an all-purpose emotion reliever.”
Previous research had shown that the pain-killer works not only on physical pain, but also on psychological pain.
However the new study takes those results one step further by showing that it also reduces how much users actually feel positive emotions.
Dr Baldwin Way, assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State added: “Most people probably aren’t aware of how their emotions may be impacted when they take paracetamol.
“People who took acetaminophen didn’t feel the same highs or lows as did the people who took placebos.”
Researchers asked 82 volunteers to take 1000mg of paracetamol – the equivalent of two normal sized tablets – or a placebo.
After waiting 60 minutes for the drug to take effect, they were asked to rate 40 photographs on whether the image made them feel positive or negative.
The photographs ranged from the extremely unpleasant, such as crying, malnourished children, to neutral images, like a cow in a field, and very pleasant, such as children playing with kittens.
Results showed that participants who took acetaminophen rated all the photographs less extremely than did those who took the placebo.
(More details of the methodology and outcomes at the Ohio State University report.)
Cannabis may help slow cancer growth
I
sraeli scientists have found that cannabis can help slow the growth of some cancerous tumours, according to the preliminary results of new research.
Researchers at the Technion Institute in Haifa decided to consider whether the plant, in all its forms, could have counteractive properties, reports the newspaper Haaretz.
Initial findings show potential for effectiveness in brain and breast cancer.
Research began a year ago under the direction of Professor Dedi Meiri and focuses on the cytoskeleton and cell division processes in both healthy and cancerous cells.
Early readings indicate that cannabis activates a of self-destruct mechanism in cancerous brain cells, although Dr Meiri says it’s early to draw any definitive conclusions.