By Will Phillips, Occupational Health Manager & Osteopath, Newcastle Sports Injury Clinic The effects of COVID-19 have affected all aspects of life as we knew it, and adaptation and evolution has been essential for the survival of our businesses and workplaces. One obvious response has been that vast swathes of the population are now working from home, and may continue to do so for the foreseeable future, if not indefinitely. There has been a great deal of talk in the media about the consequences to our mental health as a result of working from home, but less well described are the physic ..read more

By Karen Dearden, Clinical Specialist and Clinic Director Are you running no more than you did before but starting to get knee pain and cannot understand why? You are not alone; a lot of people are getting knee problems, back pain, hip pain, achilles or heel pain doing the same level of or even less activity that they were doing before lockdown and cannot understand why. I often walk across the town moor on my way home from clinic, mainly to get some exercise and some fresh air following a day of treating such symptoms wearing full PPE. I also enjoy the scenery and watching all the peopl ..read more

Working from home back doesn’t have to be a pain in the neck… By Karen Dearden, Clinical Specialist and Clinic Director “This weekend I moved around some furniture and swapped the chair that I am using for my home office; my ‘home office’ is a desk with a dining chair. As I am now lucky enough to spend most of my working week in the clinic, I’m no longer at my home office desk for huge periods of time, but after 30 minutes of typing this morning, I noticed that my forearms and my shoulders were aching. The new chair I’d swapped was too low. Luckily, I realised; I know I should know better! Bi ..read more

By Karen Dearden, Clinical Specialist and Clinic Director In our last blog, I explained why lockdown and working from home is having a dangerous impact on our spines. If you’ve not read it yet, take a look here before you read on. 1. Anterior pelvic tilt One of the major issues we’ve seen from working from home is due to what you’re probably doing right now: sitting. Because we’re not commuting, we’re sitting more and walking less. This can lead to weakness in the gluteal muscles (buttocks) and tightness in the hip flexors (muscles at the front of the hip), which can impact hip function and o ..read more

I’m sure you’ve read countless articles by now about the impact of lockdown on our social lives, livelihoods, and mental health, but what about our physical health? Despite Joe Wicks’ best efforts, almost all of us have been more sedentary over the past few months, and this has taken its toll. Specifically, I’m concerned about the impact it’s having on our spines and what this could mean in the long run. At our clinic, we aim to ensure our patients get fit and stay fit, so we see injury prevention as being just as important treatment. This blog was created with this in mind: it’s the first in ..read more

People don’t just come to Newcastle Sports Injury Clinic to have existing injuries treated – many of our patients also rely on us to help with injury prevention, too. One of the advantages of offering the wide range of services that we do is that we can recommend a variety of complementary treatments to a patient to reduce the chances of an injury recurring in the future. One of the best examples of this is our podiatry service. Podiatry at Newcastle Sports Injury Clinic is about far more than just your feet: it involves a thorough assessment of how your feet and lower limbs work. Podiatry at ..read more

Podiatry is a crucial part of injury treatment and prevention, but we find that a lot of people don’t know much about it – or that they underestimate the positive effects that good podiatry can have. Podiatry forms an integral part of the range of services that we can offer at Newcastle Sports Injury Clinic and will often be used as part of a course of treatment, to ensure that the patient gets the best possible results as quickly as possible. Podiatry or chiropody? We are frequently asked what the difference is between chiropody and podiatry, and we dealt with the differences in detail in th ..read more

Physiotherapy can help you keep running and playing for longer Physiotherapy is one of the core services offered by Newcastle Sports Injury Clinic: we have the largest and most experienced physiotherapy team of any private clinic in the region. We introduced that team to you on our latest blog: now we have asked our experts to answer some of the most popular questions about physiotherapy. These are some of the most commonly-asked questions about physiotherapy on search engines. Remember, if you want any more information about how we treat a specific condition, or you have pain or an injury tha ..read more

Despite the wintry weather, January is one of the most popular times of year for people to take up sport or exercise for the first time, or to return to sport after a break. This is typically because of new year’s resolutions which, although always based on good intentions, are famous for rarely lasting beyond the first few weeks of the year. One of the most common reasons for breaking a sports or fitness new year resolution is injury or acute fatigue: injuries occur very easily among people who aren’t used to exercising, or who rush in and push themselves too hard instead of building up acti ..read more

Sports massage is one of our most popular therapies, but it’s important to understand what sports massage is effective for and also what its limits are. Sports massage will do a wide variety of things and can depend on the style administered. For example, regular maintenance sports massage aims to reduce muscle tension, maintain muscular elasticity and suppleness, therefore, decreasing the opportunity for muscle injuries to develop. Alternatively, pre-event sports massage can invigorate muscles to prepare them for activity and can be applied anywhere from 48 hours to two minutes before an eve ..read more