2012 Newsletter
The Newlands Physiotherapy Practice - our latest news
Kerry is on the Western Cape Branch of the Orthopaedic Manipulative Physiotherapy Group (OMPTG) of the South African Society of Physiotherapy (SASP). She is on the work committee for the OMT Course, and on the General Executive Committee of OMPTG. She continues to do part-time lecturing on the OMT course and on the master's programme at Stellenbosch.
Lara after being a student on the 2010 OMT course, has now taken up Kerry's challenge and joined the OMT committee. She is assisting on the course that is currently being run in Cape Town.
Pauline celebrates 23 years since the inception of the Practice in 1989.
Avril and Di continue to run the reception and admin efficiently, we thank them for their ongoing support.
Kerry, Lara, Dr. Lorimer Moseley and Pauline Dr Lorimer Moseley PhD, a clinical and research physiotherapist in Australia, came to South Africa to run the Explain Pain course in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Pauline, Kerry and Lara have all attended this very worthwhile course.
We hope you enjoy looking at our website. Details of our attendance at recent courses will be found on About Us.
www.newlandsphysio.co.za
Pain is more than an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience (Mersky and Bogduk, 1994). Butler and Moseley (2003) mention that although it is unpleasant, pain is a very normal response to what our brain perceives to be a threat.
Our brain interprets the messages coming in and responds by making us move, think and behave differently, which is essential for healing. If our brain thinks that experiencing pain is not the best option at the time, it will block the pain experience of even a severe injury. Or, our brain can become extremely focussed on pain.
David Butler and Lorimer Moseley, authors of the well-known book Explain Pain believe that there are many misunderstandings and unnecessary fears about pain. They believe that understanding pain can help people change the way they think about pain, reduce its threat value and improve the management of pain.
The Explain Pain book highlights some valuable insights into understanding pain:
- Pain is normal. Simple everyday pains like sprains and postural pain are easily related to changes in our tissues and our brain responds by alerting us to the fact that our tissues are under threat and action is required – like moving when we are feeling a bit stiff after sitting for a long time, for example.
- Pain can be much more complex: amputees can experience foot pain in a foot that is no longer there.
- The amount of tissue injury does not always equate to the degree of pain our brain makes us experience.
- It has been shown that people with severe degenerative changes in the spine, seen on x-ray, can have no pain whatsoever. Butler and Moseley simply say that if there is no pain, it means that these tissue changes are not perceived by the brain to be a threat. The brain decides whether something hurts or not.
- Our brain scrutinises incoming messages within the context of our prior experiences, beliefs, knowledge, culture and current emotional state. The amount of pain produced in a location in our body, will depend on this evaluation.
- Pain is always an output produced by our brain.
- Understanding pain is a crucial part of the healing process and can help us feel less threatened by a pain experience.
- Neurotags are groups of brain cells activated together in many areas of our brain to produce an experience. We can have pain neurotags from previous pain episodes that can be re-triggered and therefore heighten our response when we experience similar pain again.
Pain is a vast subject and not possible to clearly summarise in a few paragraphs. There is a large amount of literature on pain and we have some informative articles and books at the practice that you can access should you be interested in doing some reading.
When visiting our website, www.newlandsphysio.co.za click on “view our Newsletter” and you will see two sections.
- Newlands Physio, where you will find our previous Newsletters.
- Equilibrium, which is a monthly newsletter submitted by the South African Society of Physiotherapy (established in 1924) www.physiosa.org.za . There are tips and information on health events, health conditions, various injuries and self help tips. Read about Should you go cold or hot, Putting your health first, and more...
We also all continue to keep up to date with talks and workshops organized by the Western Cape OMPTG and Sports physiotherapy groups.
We are members of the OMPTG and further information is available on their website. www.omptg.co.za
National Physiotherapy Back Week is in September. The theme is More than just back care...from prevention to function.
For more information about our Back Classes look at Services on our website.
We have 4 back rehab classes a week:
Monday 17h15 – 18h00
Tuesday 08h00 – 08h45 and 08h50 – 09h35
Thursday 17h15 – 18-00
The Practice hours are:
Monday – Friday 07h00 – 18h00
Saturday 09h00 – 12h00
