Work Boots and Wellies

Tommy Conway - Chartered Physiotherapist and Director - OneHEALTH

On your feet all day, working on site? Working on the farm? You wear wellies or work boots? Your lower back, hips, knee and feet feel knackered? Get home,Take off the boots, you just want to relax in the chair for the evening! On your feet all day, all you need is a rest, but you can’t rest because of the pain and stiffness. On the telly they keep telling you “you need more exercise” to solve your problem but this is where they are wrong. 

Did you ever take out the insole of your work boots? Wellies? You will find no insole, or  a small useless cardboard piece, the same thickness as an envelope. With no support your foot is making contact with hard plastic and then the hard ground. There is no cushion whatsoever in your work footwear. There is no shock absorber for your feet, knee, hips and lower back. If you are on site, on the farm you need support to help save your...

Sciatica in pregnancy - Don’t put up with it

Tommy Conway, Director and Lead Physiotherapist at OneHEALTH

Sciatica is a diagnosis that many people receive but they don’t know how they got it and what caused it. Everybody knows it is a severe painful condition and everybody knows at least one person that suffered from it. If you have pain running from your back, into your buttocks, down your leg and struggle to drive, sit and walk then you could have sciatica. 

When I see pregnant clients with sciatica, they think it is just part of the pregnancy, they are told ‘you just have to live with it for the duration of the pregnancy and there is nothing you can do.’ This is not the case, it is common to get sciatica during pregnancy but it is not normal and should not be accepted as normal. There are warning signs at the start of your pregnancy if you are going to avoid sciatica and you need to incorporate the right stretching and strengthening regime to prevent...

Breathing Rehabilitation - Recovering after Covid-19 

Tommy Conway - Chartered Physiotherapist and Director - OneHEALTH

Covid - 19 has affected me and my family personally, my mother unfortunately contracted the virus but luckily after spending 6 days on a ward in hospital she was able to return home. She is one of the lucky ones who got great medical assistance and is doing better now. It’s harrowing to leave someone at a door in a wheelchair and just look as they are wheeled in, not knowing will they be wheeled out or walk out. She is doing better now, thank god but there are after effects. She has a very painful chest due the constant coughing and also a heaviness around her ribcage and back which is weighing her down. She knows that she has lost a lot of her movement and still struggles to get a long, big, deep breath in. As I have explained to her, unfortunately this disease has left her at a deficit and we have to fight to get it back. The good news is, when you...

Are you ready to run?... 7 quick tips. 

It is great to see over the last year the amount of people out walking and running. If one thing these lockdowns have shown us, running and walking really helps clear the mind. This is not a new phenomenon but it has been steadily increasing all of last year, no matter the time of the year. 

Usually in January I see a surge in running and running injuries. Most that get injured just believe they are not “a runner” and that their body “isn’t able for it” but this isn't true. The way I look at it, some people survive the couch to 5k and some people don’t. Usually if you get 2 -3 months of running injury free you are hooked and that’s what I want to see. Unfortunately, a lot of people break down early, give up early and go again the following year, to just break down again. Think of this process as a leak in your house, imagine you see a patch forming on your ceiling and you rip everything...

Foot pain in the morning and not going away?

Tommy Conway, Director and Head Physiotherapist at OneHEALTH

You wake up, throw off the blankets, get your feet on the ground and look forward to your day. Well that’s how it used to be! Now you wake up, throw off the blankets, hesitate when placing foot on the ground and slowly limp down the stairs. Your foot is stinging with pain, it's in your heel and travels along the bottom of your arch. It feels red hot and sore to touch.  You're no longer able to walk without breaking into a full on limp, ringing someone to come collect you as you know you won’t make it home. You have tried the magic golf ball, rolling the arch of your foot day and night, yes it works a little but doesn’t stick. Now you have thrown in using a half filled water bottle, frozen, great for easing your pain but the relief doesn’t last, back to limping out of bed the next morning. The condition you have is plantar fasciitis, a very painful,...

Do you feel that your body is not aligned? One leg feels shorter than the other? When you stand and you look in the mirror, do you see one shoulder lower than the other? Do you persist with pain on one side? Is it always on the same side and never the other? Do You Have “A Problem Side?” What I hear on a daily basis in the clinic is “I always have problems on this side, it is my foot one week, my knee the next, and then my back and neck goes but it’s always on the same side.” As adults we have symptoms, years of being out of alignment but in kids you can see it too. Take a look at your kids, do their knees touch when they walk? Are they always swayed to one side when standing? Are they already complaining about growing pains? These are all signs of the body being stuck to one side. As I like to say “Stuck in a turn”. See we move forward and walk by turning from our right left to our left. Our hips and ribcage have to turn left and right. If...

Pinching hips

Tommy Conway, Director and Lead Physiotherapist at OneHEALTH

Do you have a pinching sensation at the front of your hip? Does it start when you're driving or getting out of the chair? Is it starting to feel tight when you're going for a walk?These are all symptoms of a hip impingement. This condition starts off with a light pinch at the front of the hip to eventually becoming painful to put on socks, walk up stairs or sit up in bed. The light pinch will start to radiate pain down the front/back of the thigh and can often be confused with sciatica. The hip impingement is caused by a lack of movement and space in the hip joint and this light pinch is a warning shot that there is less space for the major nerves of the legs to move, the frontal nerve and the sciatic nerve. Also over time this lack of space will cause changes to the joint and this is where arthritis will set in unless treated. Some of my clients present with both pain travelling down the front of the leg and...

Knee injuries - “It happens with a twist”

Tommy Conway, Director and Lead Physiotherapist at OneHEALTH

Have you started to get a stiff knee all of a sudden? Or have you twisted suddenly and now your knee hasn't been right since?. It’s the age old story, we all know someone with a bad knee. The pain and stiffness Starts slowly and eventually you see they have a full limp. The knee can be of some mythical importance, most think it’s an unsolvable problem. The reason for this is history. How many times have you heard about a great sports person that had to retire because they had “Bad knees”. The story hasn’t moved on but science has. If you take a knee surgery now, you can barely see the stitches post op whilst 20 years ago the scar would be the length of your knee cap. The knowledge about how the joint works has also improved so now more than ever we have the potential to help your sore and stiff knee.

The biggest problem with knees is most...

Pain/Numbness/Pins/Needles Going Down Your Arm Into Your hand?

Does your hand get pins and needles? Does it sometimes go numb? Do you get pain sometimes in your neck and down your arm? Are you working from home and think you're starting to get ‘rounded shoulders’? If this sounds familiar then you possibly have a cervical neck radiculopathy.

Cervical neck radiculopathy can be described as the following: When a nerve root in the cervical spine becomes inflamed or damaged, resulting in a change in neurological function. Neurological deficits, such as numbness, altered reflexes, or weakness may radiate anywhere from the neck into the shoulder, arm, hand, or fingers. Pins-and-needles tingling and/or pain, which can range from achy to shock-like or burning, may also radiate down into the arm and/or hand.

When I see clients with this condition they always ask “Is it nerve damage?” “Will I need an operation”? They explain that it started...

Shoulder Impingement - “My shoulder is sore to sleep on”

Tommy Conway, Director and Lead Physiotherapist at OneHEALTH

Do you have a shoulder that you can’t lie on at night? Do you wake in the morning with a painful shoulder? Does it even wake you up in the middle of the night if you spend 20 minutes lying on it. This can be a sign of a shoulder impingement which causes a lot of pain, starting with minor restrictions and then building up to a loss of movement and eventually unable to lift and hold objects like the kettle or a cup of tea. These restrictions can start with you being unable to reach for the seatbelt, unfasten your bra, tucking your shirt in can be restricted or even putting on your jacket can cause problems. All of these early restrictions are a warning sign to a shoulder impingement issue. When I usually see clients in my clinic with a shoulder impingement they have it a number of months, even a year. Believe me this condition does not improve with...