Former Australian fast bowler and Pakistan Coach Geoff Lawson has publicly called for a review into Cricket Australia's current approach to injury management and prevention, following yesterday's confirmation that all-rounder Mitch Marsh has been ruled out of cricket for up to six months suffering from spinal stress fractures.  Son of former Australian opener Geoff Marsh, Mitch (20) joins Captain Michael Clarke (hamstring), Xavier Doherty (back) and 18 year-old bowling sensation Patrick Cummins (heel stress fracture) on an ever-growing injury list which has promoted questioning of a wider problem - are young players, particularly fast bowlers, being promoted before their bodies are ready?

Back pain - it’s one of the most prevalent and costly musculoskeletal conditions in regard to treatment and disability, with costs estimated at around $9 billion per year in Australia.  The ever-growing costs are largely a result of the high recurrence of such injury and the simple fact that at least 10% of sufferers go on to develop chronic, disabling back pain.

Chiropractic, and the spinal maintenance care it can offer, is a clinical intervention that may prevent these recurrences of back pain. Public health experts today are now turning their attention to the expected recurrence of back pain, as well as its prevention, in an effort to curb the growing epidemic of such conditions.

It's Australian Open time and for tennis tragics that means some late nights. Dominating mens tennis at the moment is Novak Djokovic, and his domination over Rafael Nadal has coincided with eating gluten free! Well, maybe this is not the only reason but it sure has made a great difference. 

In 2010 it was suggested to Novak that he may be sensitive/allergic to gluten - the protein that is found in wheat, rye, oats and barley. His professionalism and goals to perform his best led him to dramatically change his diet. 

Gluten is a protein that humanity is now eating much more. And we are breeding strains of wheat that have a higher content of this protein. While it may be better from a chef's perspective to have more "stickiness" to our breads and doughs, and help make naan bread taste more delicious, it is seriously affecting the health of some individuals. It is thought that there is about 1% of the population with the more serious coeliac disease, and many more who are actually sensitive to the protein and generally feel much healthier without it.

Shirley Rd Chiropractic is pleased to announce that we have now become a stockist of the Mimos Baby Pillow. For many years we have looked after babies who suffer from plagiocephaly – a condition where the skull flattens on one side. While there have been other products that come and go from the marketplace, Mimos Baby Pillow is the first that we have seen that helps to dramatically reduce the pressure from the baby’s skull while sleeping. 

Plagiocephaly and its causes

There are two main types of plagiocephaly: (1) Synostosis (sutural fusion), (2) non-synostotic (deformational). The second type is the most common and you may notice flattening of one or even both sides of the head.

It was an honour to be recently asked by Dr. Anthony O’Reilly from The Chiropractic Alumni (tCa) to do a lecture on the “Neurology of Scoliosis” at a Sydney College of Chiropractic and Macquarie University Department of Chiropractic Conference (20 August 2011). The conference, held at the Stamford Grand in North Ryde was solely dedicated to Scoliosis and it was good to be speaking alongside A/Prof. Lindsay Rowe (radiologist and author of Essentials of Skeletal Radiology), Dr. Jeb McAviney (Internationally recognised scoliosis expert) and Dr. Inger Villadsen (European rehabilitation specialist).

What follows is a summary of the latest neurological information on scoliosis and the new relationships being discovered between brain imbalance and scoliosis. I then discuss how chiropractors with a knowledge in functional neurology may help those who have, or may be developing, scoliosis.

Perfect abdominal breathing is readily observed in the newborn but unfortunately as we age, tension and stress in our day-to-day lives restrict this preferred pattern, resulting in a chronic and largely detrimental pattern of breathing. 

And we thought breathing was one thing we couldn’t get wrong!

When we breathe, the diaphragm relaxes and contracts in order to inhale and exhale respectively (this can be easily seen by the rising and falling of the abdomen when we breathe).  When an individual is under stress however, either emotional or physical, their breathing pattern changes.  Typically, we take shallow breaths using our chest and shoulders, rather than our diaphragm, in order to move air in and out of our lungs, which gradually causes the body to automatically breathe into the neck and shoulders and not correctly into the abdomen.