Gardening

The gardening "season" is with us again. Well, I mean the longer days at least, and the valiant attempts by both gardeners and plants to produce a harvest of sorts before the other inhabitants of our garden thwart us in a fiendish variety of ways.
As usual the Blackthorn winter brings us cold weather, ie snow as usual, which means frustration for gardeners, who always want it to be warmer than it is. ADVICE: keep warm when you're outside. It's all too easy to work up a sweat and then get cold in the wind. That often leads to back problems. And try to divide your tasks up so you don't attempt to do too much at once. Fatigue and cold is not a good combination!

Book table

Thanks again to everyone who has brought books in, and those who've bought them!
Our recent support has been to a charity called Mobility India, which helps people with disabilities, supplying prostheses, training etc to the poor in India (£120) and to the Devon Wildlife Trust (£80). Our charity of the moment is Rokpa, which supports Tibetan healthcare and educational projects in Tibet. The UK branch of Rokpa is based on Samye Ling Tibetan monastery in Scotland.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Our clinic will be open on Christmas Eve, Monday, then on Thursday through to Saturday as normal.

New Year's week we'll be open every day except for Tuesday.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone from the team!

Cerebral Palsy research project

The Cerebral Palsy research trial funded by Cerebra, and organised by the Peninsular Medical School, Great Ormond Street Hospital and the Osteopathic Centre for Children is still running. We are part of the Devon end of the trial which will be recruiting new children until next Spring.
The Peninsular Medical School has some interesting information on this exciting project.

Who do we treat?

It often seems to surprise people when we claim to treat problems other than low back pain or other spinal mishaps, so I thought it might be useful to analyse, briefly, the symptoms of the patients of one of our practitioners over the last fortnight.

Neck 22
Headache/pain 9
Shoulders 6
Thoracic/rib 4
Lumbar spine 14
Disc involvement (+sciatica) 6
Hips 1
Knees 2
Stress 16
Emotional/psychiatric 4
Post RTA multi area symptoms 4
Ears 3
Throat/swallowing 1
Cardiac (post operative & angina) 3
Babies - colic 3
Babies - plagiocephaly 1
Asthma 1
Multiple sclerosis 2
Muscular dystrophy 1
Parkinsons 1
Cerebral palsy 1
Fibromyalgia 1
ME 1
Rheumatoid arthritis 2
Osteo arthritis 2
Post-operative problems (scarring/adhesions) 2
Ovarian 1
Abdominal/bowels 1
No specific symptoms/maintenance 7
Dogs 1
So although spinal problems are the most significant issues for many(about 40%), people come to us with many other types of conditions, and often we can help. Most people will have had previous medical help or advice with these things which has either not helped enough or has caused other problems.

Emergency telephone number

Osteopaths from all over Exeter have been co-operating to create an emergency telephone number for weekends and bank holidays, when most of our practices and clinics are shut. This number, 07014 223 466, will be answered by osteopaths working on a rota, to give advice and possibly treatment if circumstances allow. Our own involved osteopath is David Stainer-Smith.

This does not of course change our normal phone arrangements. As we are open on Saturdays already, patients who need treatment or advice can still get help on our usual number (o1392 221321) on Saturdays.

Holiday snap.

OK, by popular request here's a pic of one of our intrepid osteopaths pretending to go native on a bedouin horse. That's at Petra in Jordan (at Easter).