Let me guess, you’ve done your shopping and you’ve got a stack of holiday gifts to wrap. Congrats! Now comes the fun part, wrapping them.
You may love this part or you may dread it.
Either way, if you’ve ever plopped yourself on the floor to wrap, you know that it doesn’t take long before your back starts aching. Avoid back pain while wrapping holiday gifts by being smart about your wrapping station.
Here are some simple tips to help reduce “gift wrap fatigue” so you have a happier holiday season.
If your first choice is to drop on the floor and spread all the wrapping paper around you, you’re not the first. But know that it’s not going to help you feel your best. Floor sitting doesn’t create great posture and good posture will help your body feel better.
By the way, the bed isn’t any better.
Instead, choose a table with a matching chair for the height. Your kitchen or dining room table should do the trick. This will reduce your back and neck strain so you’ll feel better.
If you choose to create a gift-wrapping station where you stand, wear supportive shoes while you do. Standing barefoot or in flip-flops will not help and it won’t be long before you’re feeling achy.
Break it Up
Marathon gift wrapping sessions may seem efficient but can leave you exhausted. Instead, you’ll minimize the strain on your back, neck, and arms if you break them up. Maybe wrap the gifts as you buy them, or have a few mini-wrapping sessions. Your body will thank you.
My favorite gift-wrapping solution is using gift bags. They’re easy and always look good. Plus, you don’t have to fuss with uneven bits of paper and losing the scissors or tape.
Stretch Your Body
Gift-wrapping may not seem like a workout but you are using different parts of your body in ways that are not typical for you. It will help if you do a few simple stretches before and after. If you’re drawn to yoga, you might want to wrap gifts after you have a short yoga session when your muscles are warmed up.
Enlist the Help of Others
If you’ve got family members who can help, let them. You don’t win any points by doing it all yourself, plus, it helps them feel involved.
Yes, Visit Your Chiropractor
At McQuaite Chiropractic in Doylestown, Pa, we’ve seen back injuries from lifting/moving Christmas trees, slip and falls on icy sidewalks, and yes, back and neck pain for marathon gift wrapping sessions.
We’ll help you feel your best. Not only can chiropractic care readjust your spine and improve your posture but it can also release tension and boost your immune system. Give yourself a break and schedule an appointment with us.
If you’re like one of the millions of people who suffer from low back pain, you want to feel better. You’ve tried massage, you’ve tried pills, you might even be considering back surgery.
But before you go that route, you decide to try chiropractic treatment for low back pain. After all, at least 22 million Americans use chiropractic treatment for pain relief across the country and thousands use it here in Bucks County.
How Chiropractic Care Works
As you may know, chiropractors use spinal manipulation to help your body heal itself. According to WebMD.com, “Manipulation is used to restore mobility to joints restricted by tissue injury caused by a traumatic event, such as falling, or repetitive stress, such as sitting without proper back support.”
Essentially, your chiropractor re-aligns the 30+ bones, ligaments, tendons and tissues in your body so they’re in their rightful place. When you’re feeling pain, it can be from a herniated disc — which is a spinal disc that’s out of place and pressing on a nerve.
Or, it could be a host of other things, the only way to know is with an evaluation. The evaluation will dictate your treatment plan.
There is No “One Size Fits All” Chiropractic Treatment
Everyone has individual needs depending on their medical history and the initial evaluation. That’s why I take an x-ray to better evaluate what’s going on inside. For example, low back pain can be caused by any number of things – from poor posture to a car accident to raking leaves.
Based on your x-ray, symptoms, and medical history, I’ll make a customized treatment plan to help your body heal.
For some people, they may benefit from two to three chiropractic visits/month while others will see the most benefit in two to three visits per week to start. I’ve even had patients where they came daily for two-four visits accelerate the healing process.
The reason you need multiple chiropractic adjustments over a short period of time – especially at the beginning of your treatment plan is that you’ll find the best results over multiple treatments.
You don’t expect to see immediate results after one trip to the gym. One chiropractic treatment can give you immediate relief, but ultimately, the best results build on one another just as it takes consistent trips to the gym to see the best results.
The Benefits of Multiple Chiropractic Treatments for Low Back Pain
Many of those people have never visited a chiropractor before.
When you work with chiropractic medicine, our intent is to get to the source of the problem rather than cover it up with pain pills. In addition to multiple chiropractic treatments for low back pain, I usually recommend other modalities too. Heat or cold therapy, massage, and electrical muscle stimulation can all relieve pain.
As you can see, there are many factors that can affect your chiropractic treatment. There’s no magic formula. We’ll assess your condition and go from there. At our Doylestown office, we do take most insurance and offer a free consultation.
Fall leaves are pretty but they can be a pain to clean up. Which means many Doylestown area residents will spend time raking leaves this weekend (and over the next few weeks.)
Fall yard work like leaf raking is great exercise and it’s nice to enjoy the crisp air of the season, yet, it can also lead to back pain and injury. After all, raking uses different muscles than you’re probably used to using. Worse, thousands of people wrench their back doing every fall because of yard work.
4 Ways You Can Protect Your Back While Raking Leaves
In Bucks County, like much of the country, leaf raking is a seasonal chore that can leave you sore and achy. Worse, it can cause back pain and injury if you aren’t careful.
In fact, according to Penn Medicine, approximately 76,000 Americans are hurt every year from leaf raking and other yard work. As you probably know, it only takes one misstep to hurt yourself and weekend yard work warriors are most at risk.
Here’s how you can protect yourself.
1- Warm up and Cool Down – Simple stretches may not seem like they do a lot but they are useful.
Side stretches, trunk rotations, and bending to the ground to touch your toes (or your version of touching your toes – it’s ok if you don’t get all the way down) will help prepare your muscles.
2- Batch It – It’s better for your body if you do a little a time rather than do it all at once.
If you can get out a few times a week and rake the leaves in 20-30-minute intervals you’re doing your body good and less likely to overexert yourself. If you do choose to do marathon sessions, take breaks and you feel short of breath or a tightness in your chest, take a rest and let your heart rate slow down.
3-Use Good Form – Use your whole body and not just your upper body while raking. This will reduce the pain in your shoulders, neck, and back.
Also, rake towards you rather than away from you as that helps protect your back muscles. Remember to bend your knees when you pick up things and finally, don’t overfill leaf bags until they’re so heavy you can hardly move them.
4- Wear Supportive Shoes – You’ve heard it before but it’s true, supportive footwear can help you maintain your balance and give your back support. Hiking boots or good sneakers will help keep your feet stable — less chance for a slip and fall!
With a little preparation, raking leaves and other yard work can be a great chance for some fresh air and a dose of healthy (and injury-free) exercise. Then you can feel great, have a leaf-free yard and still be able to enjoy the fall activities in Bucks County!
However, if you do hurt yourself, you know where to find us!
Have you ever felt sore after doing seasonal yard work? Have you ever pulled a muscle dragging those fallen leaves to the curb?
Unfortunately, spring cleaning injuries are pretty common. In fact, every year more than 21 million people end up in the emergency room.
Sprains, tendonitis, serious cuts and even fractures are common during seasonal cleanups. So, what’s a homeowner to do? Well, you can certainly hire out seasonal yard work and inside cleaning jobs. But if you’re a do-it-yourselfer, there are a few ways you can protect yourself so that you don’t end up in pain or in the emergency room.
Here’s The Number One Way to Prevent Spring Cleaning Injuries
Take it small bits at a time rather than embarking on a mammoth clean up all at once. Anyone who spends 5-8 hours on a weekend day raking, scrubbing and doing all the other tasks that go along with seasonal cleaning is risking injury – unless you’re already a highly active person.
Think about it, if you’re like most Americans, you drive to work, you sit at a computer and you drive home and sit some more in front of the TV or on your tablet. Even if you get the daily recommended 30 minutes a day of exercise, that’s still a lot of sitting.
So to go from a sedentary life to a day of active cleaning is kind of like lacing up your shoes to run a 10K the first time you take up running.
It’s far better to do break up your spring cleaning into 30-60 minutes stretches over several days if you can.
And of course, before you get started make sure you do a few warm up stretches. Bend over and touch your toes. Reach your hands to the sky and do a few bends from side to side. Put your hands on your waist and twist a few times. Spend 10-15 minutes warming up gently and you’ll be at less risk for spring cleaning injuries.
It’s also critical to enlist help for bigger projects. Whether you need to move heavy items or climb ladders a helper can reduce the strain on your body and help prevent falls. It turns out that falls are a serious source of spring cleaning injuries. Bissell offer cordless vacuum cleaners, reducing the chance of tripping and causing injury.
So, enlist help, do less in smaller bits and warm up before attempting active clean ups.
If you do feel sore or have tweaked your back a good massage or your chiropractor may be able to help you feel better again.
What will you do to prevent spring cleanup injuries this season?
