In the interest of clarity, we use tendinopathy, tendon injuries, and tendonpathology interchangeably in this article. Tendinopathy is the current preferred clinical term to encompass all tendon dysfunction including tendinitis and tendinosis. We know tendon pain is awful. You start to miss your weekly tennis practice or evening runs. You may not be able to turn a door knob or open a sauce jar without help. Tendon injuries can be intrusive to our daily lives. Today we give you nine tips to help you through your journey to a full, functional, and happy life. 1) Pain is the key tendinopathy symp ..read more

It has been all too busy but I thought I will drop by real quick and do a short post on the paper What does best practice care for musculoskeletal pain look like? Eleven consistent recommendations from high-quality CLINICAL PRACTICE GUIDELINES. There are quite a bit of good stuff in there but we will briefly mention on their general recommendations + low back pain recommendation today.  This paper was just published earlier this month and here are the eleven recommendations: 1. Care should be patient centred. This includes care that responds to the individual context of the patient, empl ..read more

We all know some one who have had a low back injury from sports. Maybe you are recovering from low back pain yourself. Today we want to share with you seven truths (references included) everyone should know about their low back. #1 High load doesn’t mean higher risk of back pain While it is common for athletes to think they get injured their back because they have been training too much, this is not supported by research. It is true that in some sports (e.g rowing), an increase in training load is associated with a higher risk of back pain. The reverse, however, is also true in some instances ..read more

Not all chiropractors are quack. However, we know there are some who peddle half truths and quackery, tarnishing chiropractic care in Singapore. Today, we want you to know the truth of how to find a good chiropractor. 1. Spinal Manipulation and Chiropractic Adjustments are one and the same. Spinal manipulative therapy is an umbrella term for a variety of thrust techniques used in musculoskeletal care therapy. Chiropractic adjustments are performed by chiropractors, osteopathic manipulations are performed by osteopaths. Physiotherapists do too perform spinal manipulation (that’s their preferre ..read more

If you have been following our blog for a while, you would know we highly, highly emphasise that pain does not equal to damage. This is confusing to most people because we think of our symptoms in the biomedical model. What if we are all wrong?   Nail in the foot and nail in the head. Only one of the two accidents pictured above elicited a substantial pain response. Can you tell which?The biomedical model sucks. For most parts of musculoskeletal care, the biomedical model does not explain how our pain behaves. The biomedical premise suggests the brain receives a certain stimulus from ..read more

When it comes to living with chronic pain, most patients are aware that something must change for them to get better. Most people with back pain or neck pain start with changing their posture. When the self-directed intervention doesn’t work, they seek the help of professionals such as chiropractors or maybe massage therapists for some postural correction work. For most cases, the results are underwhelming. Research tells us that posture is poorly correlated with pain and that an effective pain management strategy should address both physical and psychosocial factors. This is also known as th ..read more

Sciatica or sciatic pain can be debilitating. If you are suffering from it, you would know exactly what I mean. Today we will discussed sciatica and what you can do about it to help yourself. What is sciatica? Sciatica pain is awful. Even the Pope had to take a sick day because of it. If you are experiencing nerve pain in the legs or buttock region, you would most likely be told that you have sciatica. Sciatica sometimes occur with back pain and is often attributed to herniated discs in the lumbar spine. Lumbar disc herniations typically occur on one or two spinal levels. This means it will o ..read more

If you are experiencing constant back ache and not ready to seek professional help, this article is for you. There are tons of content online to help people relieve back pain. My job here is to help you make sense of those content. It’s not so much what to do but how to do it. First thing first, you can’t beat good, evidence-based professional help. If you have seen a chiropractor or physiotherapist previously but didn’t get the results you were after, it could be just because they weren’t very good. That doesn’t mean chiropractic care or physiotherapy doesn’t work! When you are ready to seek ..read more

If you are hard-science person considering mindfulness practice as a pain management strategy, this is for you. With research around neuroscience behind chronic pain and mindfulness practice, I hope to answer to questions from an evidence-based perspective. What is chronic pain? What is mindfulness? How to manage pain? How does pain make people change their habits? How does mindfulness help chronic pain? Can meditation help with chronic pain? Why do I hurt? Pain from a neuroscience perspective What happens to your brain when you practise mindfulness? Mindfulness from a neuroscience perspect ..read more

To a large extend, chronic pain patients seek help not because they have pain but because they are suffering. And we have a lot of people living in pain in Singapore. According to the GSK 2017, four in ten people in Singapore experience body pain every week. So, today we are going to talk about how your brain works and how you can use non-fluffy compassion to help unleash your full potential. Understanding how your brain works under stress We live in stressful times. Amidst the the coronavrius epidemic, riots are breaking out across the United States and China is set to impose a national ..read more