Physiotherapists in Winchester treat many different conditions including the issues profiled below.

Chronic Neck Pain

The risk of long term neck pain and disability has been the subject of much investigation to try and stop this disabling, painful and costly condition developing. The warning signs which indicate a risk of developing this condition are known as yellow flags and are mostly to do with our understanding and emotional state. Physical factors are much less important unless they are very high levels of pain after an injury. Yellow flags include believing that the neck pain is due to serious injury or damage to the neck tissues; avoiding activity or movement due to fear of causing damage; resting excessively; waiting for a cure for the pain instead of working on it themselves; developing depression and becoming withdrawn; not improving over a couple of weeks; believing that hurt equals harm and that disability is likely.

These symptoms and attitudes can sneak up on someone so it is important to work at getting mobile and back to normal as soon as possible after injury or an episode of neck pain. It is useful to analyse how the recovery is going and take steps to fix any of the problems that the patient or an adviser identifies as relevant.

Bone Metabolism

Bone, like muscle, is an adaptive tissue and bony mass and its structure changes to resist the forces which are applied to it in activity. Changes in the bone require that a large number of cells which are quite far apart join in to perform a particular activity and they do this by chemical messengers but also by long outgrowths from their cells connecting with others. How fast bones can strengthen or become weaker is not clear, although experiments have shown that a bone can increase its mineral content by 40% in six weeks if it is frequently loaded. A loss of 10-15% of bone mass can be expected if a bone is kept unloaded for eight weeks.

Cortical bone may be 35% greater in mass in the playing arm of a professional male tennis player and bone can react even more strongly as its density is very high in expert weight lifters. Sclerosis, an increase in density of vertebrae adjacent to discs which are suffering degeneration, is less beneficial a process and may impede nutritional transport through the bone. Osteophytes, bony outgrowths, may be an attempt to stabilise a joint but can also get in the way and cause nerve impingement.