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

Hand Injuries - Prevention

Many hand injuries can be prevented by taking sensible precautions or by avoiding obviously risky behaviours. One of the most common behaviours, especially amongst young men in social situations, is to damage their hands by punching each other or punching objects in anger such as doors or walls. This commonly results in fractures to the metacarpals or fingers, injuries which need careful management for the best functional outcome. The use of knives should be carefully regulated with training and supervision for those who work with them routinely. Separating frozen objects with a pointed knife whilst holding the object is a relatively common reason for stabbing a knife through the palm.

Health and safety regulations should be closely observed when operating machinery or dealing with electrical equipment. Injuries to the hands are almost always preventable with a little planning and forethought. Machinery with moving parts, especially rotational ones, requires operators to avoid wearing gloves or jewellery or loose clothing especially around the cuffs. In other situations gloves of the appropriate type should be used. Hands should not be placed in dangerous positions, so push sticks for saws or brushes to clean away machine debris should be employed.

Simple Neck Exercises

Neck problems are very common with neck, head, upper back, shoulder and arm pain all possibly referred from the cervical spine discs, joints, ligaments and muscles. The cervical spine is a long column with a heavy weight (the head) balanced at one end, a process that demands good movements and strong muscular control to achieve effectively without pain. Neck pain is commonly secondary to poor posture over a long period of time such as working at an office desk or kitchen worktop, where the neck has to maintain one posture for much longer than is helpful.

It can be helpful to perform simple neck exercises every day to maintain the ranges of motion of all the cervical joints and other structures within normal limits. Different parts of the cervical spine are specialised for different movements and it is important to make sure that the specific movements for each joint are practised daily. The upper neck vertebrae are specialised for rotation as moving the head round to look at something is a very important ability, and there is a small amount of a nodding movement here also. Further down the neck the focus is more on forward and back movements functionally adapted for looking up and down.