Health News and Information

Leaning forward over a dressing-table or washbasin to see in a mirror may become a cause of backache. It can be avoided by bringing the mirror nearer, either putting it on an extension arm or fixing it on the wall beside the basin. While shaving, the fact that your arms are raised increases the workload [...]

Severe chronic pain can sometimes be relieved by applying very small electrical currents to either side of the pain site. This method is thought to work by stimulating the nerve ends in the skin, and thus overriding the nervous system’s reception of pain messages; its principles being the same as those of acupuncture, although using [...]

You will be asked to remove your outer clothes. You will be asked to do a number of things to enable the doctor to assess your problem. While standing upright, you will be asked to bend, as well as you can, backwards, forwards and sideways, so that the doctor can see which of these movements [...]

The facet joints which unite each vertebra to its immediate neighbours may be jerked out of alignment by severe sudden stress, such as a twisting movement: this is called subluxation. A still more violent movement may pull the bones even farther apart so that the joint becomes unstable; this is called dislocation. It is uncommon [...]

Back pain is a common scourge of humanity – at least in developed countries. There can be few westerners who do not experience it, if only for a short while, at some time in their lives. There is no telling when it will strike, because it need not be preceded by injury: it may be [...]