Today  working  usually implies sitting at a desk from morning to evening. While this may seem more comfortable than working in the fields, sitting at a desk can trigger a host of back problems. This is because sitting in the same position all day makes the spine bend forward and lowers the efficiency of the back muscles. Working at a desk not only strains your back, but also restricts your movements to typing on a keyboard and moving a mouse. 

Once a back problem begins, it usually lasts a lifetime hence; here are a few tips to save your back.

Get yourself a good chair: Your chair is crucial to your back s health. Avoid the hard backed plastic chairs and pick a more flexible mesh backed office chair if you sit at the table for a long span of time. Ergonomic chairs may seem expensive, but are worth the expense in the long run.
Stretch your muscles: Sitting in the same position all day, puts the muscles under stress and with time can constrict the muscles. Make it appoint to stand up every 30 minutes and stretch your back and sides. Also try rotating your hips and shoulders form time to time.
Take a break: No matter how much work you have in front of you, take a break at the end of each hour. Taking even 2 minutes off out of 60 every hour can have a huge impact on your health. If you still feel guilty skip using the phone to connect with your colleague and walk over to their desks instead.
Get a pedometer: Keeping a pedometer will help you track the number of steps taken in a day. Ideally, a person should take 10,000 steps a day to stay healthy. If you sit at a desk for majority of the day, take every opportunity you can to up the count on your pedometer. Go for a walk around your office after lunch or park your car a little way off from the office to create opportunities to walk.
Take the stairs: As far as possible avoid escalators and elevators. Instead climb stairs for a quick workout. If your office is on the 20th floor, walking up may not be feasible, but you could get off the elevator on the 18th floor and walk up the remaining two floors.
Eat healthy: Lastly, pay attention to what you eat. Avoid eating at the office canteen or picking up a bite at the coffee shop and carry lunch from home. This ensures that you eat a balanced meal.

World Spine Day-6 Back Saving Tips for People Who Sit at a Desk All Day

Stress is sometimes good for you. When you stretch yourself beyond your capacity, your body accepts challenge and increase the capacity to cope up with challenge. To a certain extent, it is good for body. But when the stress crosses the limits, it starts hurting you. That's the bad stress for you. Moderate stress for too long a time also is bad for you. Most of the hormonal diseases like diabetes, thyroid etc. Occur because of long standing underlying moderate stress. 

Stress can be physical or mental. Physical stress is due to long and continuous physical activities like walking, jogging, travelling, cycling. Mental stress is mainly because of financial tension or relationship distress. Both types of stress cause similar damages to body. Stress is the main underlying cause behind diseases like high blood pressure, heart disease, thyroid, diabetes, kidney disease, peptic ulcer, bleeding disorders, cancer, recurrent infections etc. 

Finding out the reason of stress and removal of cause of stress should be the main line of treatment of such diseases.

Stress - Good and Bad

Arthritis is a painful joint condition that leads to pain and stiffness as well as lack of proper mobility due to inflammation and swelling. Usually, an orthopaedic specialist will prescribe anti-inflammatory and pain relieving medication for this condition, but there are various things that you can do to ensure that this condition does not become a debilitating one in the long run. One of the best ways of doing this is by limiting your diet in certain ways when it comes to inflammation producing food. 

Here are a few types of food to avoid if you are suffering from arthritis.

Fried food: Fried and processed food is packed with too much of salt in order to better preserve it so that it has longer shelf life. Also, the use of oil in order to deep fry can have a detrimental effect on the inflammation that is already causing problems for your joints. Therefore, it is best to avoid fried, fatty and processed or packaged food that has been frozen for too long.
AGEs: When we speak of AGEs, we are not talking about the number of birthdays that you have celebrated. AGEs are actually Advanced Glycation End products that are a toxin released by food when it is heated, grilled, fried or pasteurised. These toxins can render damage to the proteins in your body. Once this process starts, the body retaliates by sending forth cytokines which are basically inflammatory messengers. This can lead to inflammation and arthritis.
Sugar: Sugar and other refined carbs also have a large amount of AGEs as discussed above. These types of food should also be avoided by patients suffering from arthritis. Also, artificially sweetened drinks and too many baked goodies should be avoided by these patients.
Dairy products: Owing to a certain kind of protein that most dairy products contain, these kinds of food are considered harmful for patients of arthritis. These proteins can encourage inflammation and irritation of the tissue that surrounds your joints. Switching to a vegan diet is considered helpful for arthritis patients.
Alcohol: Excessive drinking is a major problem that can aggravate your arthritis situation. Smoking and drug abuse also leads to such problems. Drinking excessively can lead to the development of gout.
Corn oil: This kind of oil is a part of most packaged, processed and fried food. It also leads to inflammation. Arthritis patients should switch to omega fatty three oils which can be found in fish.
Taking care of your body is a matter of maintaining a good diet with lots of activity that will be congenial for your condition. This will also help in keeping the painful symptoms of arthritis away.

Arthritis - 6 Foods You Must Avoid!

Gout is a disease of the joints. It is a kind of arthritis, which is caused by the deposition of uric acid in the joints. The deposited uric acid causes inflammation of the joints. The disease occurs when our body fails to eliminate the excess uric acid in blood by excretion or the production of the acid is increased.

The level of uric acid in our bodies goes up when the amount of purines in our meals is increased. Purines are responsible for the production of uric acid. They are found in meats, alcohol, sea food and other food items. When digestion of these foods takes place inside the body, purine is released into the blood stream. Uric acid level is also increased by a sedentary lifestyle. Sometimes other factors like intake of insufficient water, consumption of medicines and obesity can also affect the uric acid level in the blood.

Symptoms of Gout

One will notice a redness and swelling around the affected joint. Gout commonly affects the big toe, ankles, hands and wrists. The patient has to deal with intense shooting pain in the joint. The patient also feels some itching in the affected region. Some patients develop nodules called tophi in the joints.

Homeopathy Treatment for Gout

In most cases, patients seeking allopathic treatment for gout take frequent pain killers to get rid of the pain. The pain killers will provide temporary relief. But the main problem persists. However, homeopathy treats the root cause of the problem and aims at eradicating the disease completely. In this article, three commonly used homeopathic medicines used for treating gout have been listed. However, these medicines may not suit all individuals with gout. The effectiveness of the medicines largely depends on the patient s lifestyle. These medicines are listed below:

    Colchicum: It is the primary medicine given to patients suffering from gout. It is good for the treatment of the chronic cases. It is given to patients who suffer from pain in the big toe. The pain is unbearable, when the affected area is touched. The region turns hot, red and swollen. In these patients, the pain starts from the left side usually. The patient feels feverish. Their problem will intensify in warm weather. Their joints get stiffer.

    Ledum Pal: It is for patients who suffer from gout pain travelling upwards. The pain is likely to start from the patient s feet and travel towards the knees. The patient will not be able to bear external warmth. The patient feels better with cold application.

    Benzoic Acid: This medicine is for patients who suffer from gout along with offensive urine. The odour of the urine is intolerable. The colour of the urine is unusual brown in colour sometimes. There is a cracking sound in the joints.

Homoeopathic medicines can be a big boon for all those who suffer from high uric acid. These medicines work by reducing the uric acids overproduction by the body and accelerating the removal of this waste product from through the kidneys.

Homoeopathy is known to control the uric acid diathesis and is also useful in acute attacks. Homeopathy helps in controlling the pain during the acute attack of gout as well as helps in preventing the recurrence of such episodes. It helps in reducing stiffness and improves the mobility of the joints.

One big advantage that homoeopathy offers in the treatment of high uric acid is that once treated the chances of relapse are very less, this is also subjected to the condition that diet and Alcohol and weight are well controlled.

With continued treatment from a specialised homeopath, the patient notices reduction in the frequency of attacks and intensity of pains with gradually leading to complete cure.

Suffering from Gout - Can Homeopathy Help in Treating it?

Endoscopy refers to inserting microscopic cameras into the body through tiny incisions which throw up pictures of the inside of the body onto a screen. Endoscopy has been used for diagnostic purposes since the 1970s. Endoscopy for surgery has become popular from the 1990s.

Endoscopic spine surgery is a state-of-the-art surgery technique which involves micro incisions and minute tubes that cause almost no damage to surrounding tissues and muscles. It is a minimally invasive surgery and it is also called a pinhole surgery.

What are the advantages of endoscopic pinhole spine surgery?

There are a lot of reasons why doctors opt for an endoscopic surgery-

  It is also called Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery (MISS) because it causes little blood loss
  Recovery is almost immediate. A person can resume everyday activities within a week
  Very little pain around the surgery region so minimum pain medication is needed.
  No muscle or bone is removed.
  Since screws and rods are not used, full mobility of the spine can be restored
  The wounds are minute and do not usually require stitches and thus no ugly scars are left after the wounds heal.

What are the characteristics of an endoscopic spine surgery?

  The surgery is performed under local anaesthesia
  The person is discharged within 24 hours of the surgery
  The incisions that are made are microscopic

What are the different types of endoscopic surgery?

Endoscopic discectomy:
It is the least invasive of all spinal surgeries. It is used for treating herniated discs. Endoscopy reveals images of the spine. Through the same tunnel, surgery tools are inserted and the bulging or herniated disc is pulled out with a grasper. The wound does not always require stitches to close it.

Endoscopic Laminotomy:
This a substitute for open laminotomy. The camera helps locate exactly where the target area is. Then an incision is made below and above the lamina to relieve the pressure compressing the nerve.

Endoscopic facet rhizotomy:
With microscopic cameras, the nerves causing pain are identified and then the laser is used to numb these nerves which relieve pain. This type of surgery can also remedy a previously botched spinal surgery, facet joint arthritis or facet joint pain

Endoscopic foraminotomy:
This type of surgery again uses microscopic surgical tools guided by a tiny camera to enlarge a narrowed neuro of spinal nerve root canal to give it more room to move about without being compressed.

Endoscopic Spine Surgery & Pinhole Technique!

Fractures are simply a break in a bone. They can be caused due to injury, (traumatic fractures) or a pre-existing condition like osteoporosis that causes weakening of bones (pathologic fractures). There are many ways to classify fractures. All fractures fall into the major categories of simple and compound fractures. Simple fractures are fractures where bones remain inside the skin and don t jut out. They are also called closed fractures.

Compound fractures, also called open fractures, are broken bones that penetrate through the skin. These types expose the bone and deep tissues to the environment. Compound fractures are more serious of the two. The healing here may be affected due to deep infections for which antibiotics need to be used. There are many different sub types of fractures and we re only going to skim through them here.

Comminuted fractures: Severe fractures in which a bone breaks into several smaller pieces.
Avulsion fractures: A small piece of bone is completely torn off from the main bone due to fierce pulling off a part of the body.
Other types of fractures are characterised by the many different angles the bone breaks into like transverse, oblique and spiral fractures.

Diagnosis
When a bone is broken there are symptoms like swelling that doesn t subside on its own and pain. In such a case it s imperative that one goes to a doctor for a diagnosis. Doctors can usually recognise most fractures by examining the injury and taking an X-ray. The X-ray also provides a clear idea about the type of fracture and the degree of displacement of the bone. And, it s important that the patient doesn t wait too long before approaching a doctor. This is because bones begin to heal very quickly after a fracture and the bone tissue will heal using any tissue available. This can lead to a misalignment of broken pieces of bone and cause disability and loss of function.

There are cases when X-ray may not show a fracture. This is especially common in fractures in the hip and wrist in older people. For diagnosing these, doctors will get some other tests done such as a computed tomography (CT) scan, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), or a bone scan.

Treatments
Fractures have to be treated by doctors. The doctors set the fractured bones in their proper place and hold them there so that they can heal. Setting a bone is called "reduction." Reduction without surgery is called "closed reduction." But if the fracture is serious, it s going to require surgery with bone repositioning, called open reduction.

In extreme cases, pins, plates, screws, rods, or glue are used to hold the fractured bones in place, inside the body. Once the bone abutment has been treated, the bone is immobilised to allow the broken pieces to heal. In most cases, the fractured part is set in a rigid cast. The fractured ends of the bone can be fixed into place using metal pins connected to an external frame. This is removed after the bone has healed.

Fractures - How To Diagnose Them?

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