Horse riders are a special breed of people: We work hard to care for our horses, we bend, twist and lift heavy weights on a daily basis and that can play havoc with our body. We often habitually muck out one way, or sweep one way, heavily favoring one side of our body, yet we expect to be able to sit centrally on our horse to help his body and use each side of our being independently. That takes some serious skill! Riders don't think twice about trying to work out what's gone wrong with our tack or our horses if we encounter a problem, but riders ourselves generally are very last on the list to ever get any attention, and the impact on our horses from that can be huge. Did you ever think that your own body and your riding can be hindering how your horse uses his body? If we sit in an unbalanced way, our horses have to not only compensate for their problems, but ours too which will limit how well they perform. Certainly not what we want if we are competing! Osteopathy can be a really us...

In today's modern world many of us suffer from injuries and pain in our muscles and joints arising not only from our hobbies, but from our lifestyles, work and illnesses too. We now spend far longer sitting behind computers, bent over our mobile devices and stuck in traffic behind the wheel of a car. We appear to do very little exercise and tend to neglect our bodies. When it comes to pain, too often we see only the symptoms being treated medication but sometimes we need to look at why the pain is originally occurring, not just that it's there. Sciatica is a prime example of this. We often hear that someone has sciatica and the doctor has prescribed medication to help to mask the pain, but the definition of sciatica itself is pain effecting the leg, therefore it's use as a diagnosis doesn't describe what the root cause of it is. The sciatic nerve is made of 5 nerve roots that exit the spine, and combine together to create a thick, cord like nerve which runs through the pelvis and down ...

Whilst working, many of us are not aware of what our posture is like. The risk from poor posture comes from a reduction to the movement in the joints of the body, along with repetitive patterns of strain. When we get pain from our poor posture, medical advice and physical therapy treatment will often be required to reduce the imbalances created over a period of time. So what can we do to avoid these restrictions? Well, quite a lot, beginning with good sitting posture! In an ideal world, good posture includes the head being positioned over the top of the spine and the buttocks, with a slight 'S' shaped curve through it. Neck and shoulder muscles should have even tension at the front and back of the body, and the lower back should be in its natural curved position.It's advisable to support your pelvis against the back of the chair. Good posture makes breathing and digestion more efficient by helping to de-compress the front of the body. Chair Ergonomics. When working in the office, there...

​Osteopathy is a system of medicine that focuses on treating, and preventing, painful muscle and joint problems. By using specific hands-on techniques, Osteopaths focus on creating balance within the body. Osteopaths use joint mobilisations and manipulations (the 'click') together with stretching and massage techniques to increase the flexibility of joints and body tissues. This helps to relieve muscle tension, relieve muscle spasms and improve tissue health, all of which help the body to heal itself. Osteopaths are commonly thought of for treating back pain, and while this is something osteopathy can work really well for, osteopathy can be used to treat a variety of other things too, such as:• Neck pain• Shoulder pains, e.g. frozen shoulder• Elbow problems, e.g. tennis elbow • Hip and knee problems• Arthritic changes• Sports injuries• Generalised aches and pains• Headaches, particularly those arising from tension and neck problems• Migraine prevention• Nerve pain such as neuralgia or ...

It's no surprise that sports injuries go hand in hand with participating in our chosen sports, but did you know that osteopathy can play a key part in keeping you fit and functioning at full capacity? We often (mistakenly) hear that osteopaths can't treat sports injuries and that the athlete needs to see a sports massage therapist or a physiotherapist, but you may be surprised to find out that when it comes to sports injury treatment osteopaths can hold their own! Here at Nene Valley Osteopathy, we work with many sports players from all disciplines and levels with great results. Osteopathy not only looks at the injury and how that itself can be improved but also assesses your general health and how your body performs to treat you accordingly. Similar to a Sports Massage Therapist, we can use a variety of soft tissue techniques including massage and trigger point therapy plus some specialised extras like mobilisation, stretching and manipulation (the 'clicking') which, together with oth...

We commonly see patients in clinic presenting with sciatic pain that is often described as a deep, gnawing pain from the back or the buttock and into the back or side of the leg that is sometimes electric, shooting or stabbing. It can occur without lower back pain, and sometimes it can cause a limp when walking. Sciatica is a very painful condition that can be grouped with a family of pains called neuralgia. Neuralgia literally means "pain with a neurological cause", or pain that is due to nerve problems – but that's not enough to make a diagnosis. We commonly see many primary health care practitioners use the phrase 'sciatica' as a diagnosis, but the word sciatica merely means the patient has pain in the leg, rather than be a proper analysis of the cause of the pain. To get to the root cause of the pain, we need to look at what can cause sciatica? Is all sciatica the same? Several different things can cause sciatica. Possibly the most common cause of sciatica is when one of the nerve ...