The connection with back pain

A growing amount of evidence suggests back pain may be partly caused by weak core abdominal muscles over time.

At least 84 percent of us will experience back pain at some stage in our lives. By strengthening your core muscles, you can help protect and strengthen your back, and potentially reduce the risk of back pain.

How to strengthen your core

Forget the old sit-ups that your school Physical Education teacher made you do. There’s no single core exercise that’s ideal for everyone because we all have different issues and needs.

A good starting point is the plank. Or at least, to work up to the plank. It doesn’t require equipment and you can do it pretty much anywhere.

Here’s an easy explanation:

1. Plant hands directly under shoulders (slightly wider than shoulder width) like you’re about to do a push-up. A variation is placing your forearms on the floor instead, with your elbows is placing your forearms on the floor instead, with your elbows aligned below shoulders and your arms parallel to your body.
2. Ground your toes into the floor and squeeze your glutes to stabilise your body. Your legs should be working, too – be careful not to lock your knees.
3. Neutralise your neck and spine by looking at a spot on the floor about a foot beyond your hands. Your head should be in line with your back.
4. Hold the position for 20 seconds. As you get more comfortable with the move, hold your plank for as long as possible without compromising your form or breath.

Why women?

Biology can explain only some of the differences.

Hormonal changes across a woman’s life – during puberty, the menstrual cycle, pregnancy and menopause - have been linked to anxiety. Women also tend to be more prone to stress and to have different coping mechanisms than men. They are more likely to spend more time thinking about life stressors, which can increase anxiety, while men tend to engage more in active, problem-focused coping.

But there are certain life events that can particularly affect women. Beyond Blue and Jean Hailes have identified a number of factors that can impact women’s mental health, including:

• Caring for others. Women do most of the caregiving, whether for a partner, elderly parents, and/or children. While it can be a very positive experience for many, caring can affect your physical and mental health, financial security and independence, particularly if caring for people who are ill, frail or with a disability.
• Infertility and miscarriage. The grief and loss of infertility and miscarriage can be devastating for women and is often experienced privately, which can further impact mental health.
• Pregnancy, having a baby and becoming a mother. For some women, adjusting to the major life change and challenges of early motherhood leaves them more likely to experience depression and anxiety.
• Menopause. Hormone changes in the years leading to menopause can contribute to depression and anxiety. The physical changes of menopause – hot flushes, night sweats, interrupted sleep and weight gain – can also impact mental health.
• Relationships. Conflict at home, particularly physical and mental abuse, can cause great fear and anxiety. Women who are separated, divorced or widowed are more likely to experience mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. As well as feelings of loss and grief, the end of a relationship can affect financial security, social connections, housing and relationships with children.
• Money worries. Stress over money is common and can affect your mental wellbeing. According to a recent BlackRock study focusing on the relationship between wealth and wellbeing, money is a top worry amongst the 27,000 people they asked worldwide. In many of these cases, women indicated that finances caused higher levels of stress than men did.

If you’re feeling stressed, it’s not your fault

We’re seeing our old world-order destabilise. Our work, education and our economy – it’s all rocky and uncertain right now.

Robert Neimeyer, PhD, director of the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition and professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Memphis, says, “The losses include our sense of predictability, control, justice, and the belief that we can protect our children or elderly loved ones,”

Dr Neimeyer points out that the level of grief we feel is usually connected to our level of attachment to the thing we’ve lost.

“We’re capable of losing places, projects, possessions, professions and protections, all of which we may be powerfully attached to,” he says. “This pandemic forces us to confront the frailty of such attachments, whether it’s to our local bookstore or the routines that sustain us through our days. We’re talking about grieving a living loss – one that keeps going and going.

So what can we do about it?

You don’t have to suffer alone.

Here are ways to help manage this ambiguous grief and loss.

1. “Name and claim it,” says Dr Neimeyer. It can help to give this “wordless suffering” a name, and know that it’s a feeling shared by so many.
2. Understand it. It can help to understand that this kind of grief fluctuates. It’s perfectly normal to feel overwhelmed one day, and yet happy and grateful the next.
3. Keep social. Do what you can to maintain your social supports. Even if you can’t see someone and hug them, it can help to stay connected online and by phone. Talk to your friends and family about ambiguous loss – you might be surprised by how they open up about their own experience.
4. Stop doom-scrolling. When the news keeps updating with yet more suffering, it’s tempting to keep refreshing your news feed. It’s almost like we’re seeking control. Try to give yourself breaks from the news and limit yourself to a couple of checks a day for urgent updates.
5. Remember your strengths. Look back on those times when you made it through tough situations, and remind yourself how resilient you are.

1. Ask for permission to apologise

Inflammation has become a favourite topic of wellness bloggers and influencers. It’s a scary sounding condition that’s blamed for many common illnesses, often with justification but frequently without any strong evidence.

What is inflammation?

Inflammation is usually a good thing. Without it, wounds and infections would never heal, spelling bad news for your survival.

An inflammatory response is the natural response of your immune system to any foreign invader or perceived threat, whether that’s bacteria, viruses, parasites, fungi, or an injury.

You’ll see acute inflammation in action if you cut or burn yourself. An influx of white blood cells and chemicals trigger redness and swelling – all part of your body’s response that begins the healing process. Inflammation is also in action out of sight, fighting off disease, including the rogue cells that cause cancer. After the initial reaction, inflammation calms down to allow your body to heal.

Can inflammation work against us?

Yes, it can. Inflammation becomes a problem when it can’t be turned off and your body continues to react to something it sees as a threat.

Persistent, invisible, low levels of inflammation (known as chronic inflammation) can damage your body. It’s linked to many long-term diseases including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s and some cancers. It plays a role in inflammatory bowel disease and is even believed to contribute to certain types of depression.

Inflammation is serious, but you can do something about it. It all starts with understanding what can cause it.

What causes chronic inflammation?

Viruses, autoimmune disease like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, and pathogens the body can’t get rid of can all cause inflammation. So too can:

• ageing
• smoking
• poor diet
• stress
• lack of sleep
• being overweight, particularly carrying weight around your middle.

What you can do

Your diet and lifestyle can go a long way to calming down chronic inflammation. Getting active for as little as 20 minutes every day can reduce chronic inflammation. So too can quitting smoking, getting adequate sleep, losing weight and reducing stress.

One of the most powerful tools you have to combat inflammation is your choice of food. Pick the wrong ones and you can accelerate inflammation. But choose the right foods and you can reduce your risk of illness.

“A pretty poor typical Western diet high in highly processed convenience foods and added sugar and low in minimally processed plant foods has been implicated in inflammation,” says nutrition research scientist Dr Tim Crowe on his blog Thinking Nutrition.

“What is widely considered an anti-inflammatory diet” is one high in fruits, vegetables, healthy fats, legumes, and wholegrains,” explains Dr Crowe. The Mediterranean style diet is a good example, especially if you include fish and olive oil, as it is rich in antioxidants and other inflammation-fighting nutrients.

What do we mean by slips, trips and falls?

A slip: is when your foot loses traction with the ground surface. This can be due to inappropriate footwear or walking on slippery surfaces that are highly polished, wet or greasy.

A trip: can occur when you catch your foot on an object or surface and lose your balance. Most commonly, people trip on low obstacles that are difficult to spot, such as uneven edges in flooring, loose mats, open drawers, and poorly stored materials such as untidy tools or electrical cables.

How to prevent injury

• Report any inadequate or broken lighting, which can prevent someone noticing slip or trip hazards.
• Avoid and/or report trailing cables or other low obstacles such as open drawers, loose mats or carpet tiles, or wrinkled carpeting.
• Keep walking areas clear of clutter or obstructions.
• Clean up or report any contaminants immediately. Contaminants can be wet, such as water, oil or grease; or dry, such as dust, metal shavings, plastic bags or off-cuts.
• Wear appropriate footwear for your role. It should be suitable for your type of work and work environment, comfortable, and with an adequate non-slip sole and appropriate tread pattern.
• Always take your time and pay attention to where you are going.
• If you are carrying or pushing anything, make sure it doesn’t prevent you from seeing any obstructions.

It’s boring, but your best options are tap water or milk. Most of us have access to fluoridated drinking water, which helps to protect and strengthen teeth. If your local tap water is unsuitable for drinking, bottled plain water is also a good option.

If you do drink fizzy drinks, or other acidic drinks such as hot water and lemon, kombucha or apple cider vinegar drinks, follow these with a glass of clear tap water or plain bottled water and avoid brushing your teeth for at least 30 minutes. Any form of acid will soften your tooth enamel and if you brush too soon you risk adding to the erosion.

FACT: Exercise alone can’t create a big energy deficit.

The process should be fairly straightforward. Exercise more, burn kilojoules, develop an energy deficit and lose weight.

Except it isn’t quite that simple.

While your food intake accounts for 100 per cent of the energy that goes into your body, exercise only burns off less than 10 to 30 per cent of it. Your basal metabolic rate (energy needed for basic body functions) accounts for 60 to 80 per cent of total energy expenditure.

If a 90-kilogram man added 60 minutes of medium-intensity running four days per week while keeping his kilojoule intake the same, and he did this for 30 days, he’d lose just over kilograms, calculated Dr Kevin Hall of the US National Institutes of Health.

“If this person then decided to increase his food intake, or relax more to recover from the added activity, then even less weight would be lost,” says Dr Hall.

If you are overweight or obese and trying to lose a large amount of weight, it would take lots of time, effort and willpower to make a real impact on kilojoule deficit through exercise alone.

FACT: You can’t outrun a bad diet.

For many years we’ve believed that lack of exercise and excess kilojoules are equally to blame for the current obesity crisis. Many researchers disagree, with some claiming in the British Medical Journal that “you can’t outrun a bad diet.” They blame our expanding waistlines primarily on our food choices, stressing that where the kilojoules come from is as important as the number.

Poor diet does more than add weight. According to The Lancet global burden of disease reports, poor diet is responsible for more disease than physical inactivity, alcohol and smoking combined. You can be active every day, but it won’t negate the effects of an unhealthy diet.

FACT: Exercise is the world’s best drug.

This doesn’t mean you should give up exercise. There are many reasons to move more beyond weight loss. “It’s probably the single best thing you can do, other than stopping smoking, to improve your health,” says Dr Hall.

Upping your activity levels will reduce your risk for chronic diseases including heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, dementia and certain cancers. It will support your immune system so you can better fight off illness; improve your sleep quality, fitness and mood; and protect against depression, anxiety and stress.

And while exercise may not help us lose a lot of weight on the scales unless we address diet too, studies have shown it’s essential for keeping weight off and preventing weight regain.

As a bonus, regular exercise changes our dietary habits, which means we’ll have an easier time making healthier food choices.

So two questions: why it is so fatal, and why aren’t we talking about it more? Let’s answer the first question first.

Why lung cancer is so fatal?

Surgery is still the best treatment for lung cancer, but many people aren’t diagnosed until it’s too late for surgery.

People can live with lung cancer for many years before they show any signs or symptoms, and screening for lung cancer is not yet commonplace.

Why we are not talking about it?

The truth is that 80% of lung cancer is caused by smoking. This has led to a stigma around the disease. Many people presume that a patient’s illness is due to smoking, and that they could have just chosen not to smoke. This is far from accurate. It’s not the individual’s fault they were sold these cigarettes became addicted, it’s Big Tobacco that is really the problem here. We don’t stigmatise any other cancer, even if it might have been going out in the sun or eating too much barbecued meat. This stigma could lead to delays in seeking treatment and this could impact long term outcomes.

What about lung cancer screening?

Lung cancer screening is a test to see if there are any early signs of lung cancer in people who are not showing any symptoms. It allows lung cancer to be caught at an early stage, which greatly improves the chances of treating it successfully.

Some countries have started implementing government screening programs for patients deemed “high risk”, but many countries do not. This is partly because lung cancer screening is not yet advanced.

The only recommended screening test for lung cancer is low-dose computed tomography (also called a low-dose CT scan). The problem is that false positives have created a lot of over-diagnosis and unnecessary interventions which can also cause harm.

This is changing. In countries like the UK, Canada and the UAE, programs are being developed to introduce or expand lung cancer screening, although the focus for many lung cancer campaigns still remains on quitting smoking.

In addition, a new lung cancer prediction tool has had some success. The tool uses a mathematical formula to predict risk, based on a combination of factors such as age, smoking intensity, duration and years quit, as well as body mass index and family history of lung cancer.

Today, spend a few moments decluttering just one area of your home. In a small but meaningful way, it will help you:

- focus on what’s important to you.

Choosing what to keep and what to remove is a powerful exercise in figuring out your values, your preferences and what you really need and want in your life.

- feel more organised.

“A place for everything and everything in its place”. Whether this was first said by Ben Franklin or Mary Poppins, they were both very wise. The act of decluttering often helps you streamline your morning and evening routines, with everything you need all lined up and within easy reach.

- clean faster

Less stuff means less stuff to tidy. With more space, and more organised spaces, you’ll find it easier and quicker to do routine cleaning such as vacuuming and tidying up.