osteo_monica (2025)

01/12/2022

Let's face it, shovelling snow kinda sucks!

The dreaded chore is upon us again this winter. It feels never ending winter out there at the moment, doesn't it? But what's more is that it can lead to aches and pains which can be difficult to get rid of.

In clinic this week, I have seen the effects of shovelling- patients with an aching back, a sore shoulder, a stiff neck...the list goes on.

That snow is heavy and shovelling a driveway can be as strenuous as doing a hard workout! Here are a few tips to keep you safe out there:

1. Prepare your body by warming up. Take that extra 5 minutes to get the blood flowing so your muscles are ready to (*ideas*: small to large shoulder circles, a brisk walk around the block, 10 lunges and 10 squats)
2. Take frequent breaks and don't work until you are exhausted. (*idea*: time for a coffee break!)
3. Shovel smaller amounts, instead of trying to lift a full shovel every time.( The more fatigued we become, the greater the risk of injury)
4. Use the power of your legs to push the snow, rather than lifting, where possible.
5. Switch sides by holding the shovel in the other hand.
6. Ask for help! https://snowangelscanada.ca is a site that connects volunteers and people that need help. I am a volunteer on the site so get in touch if you need some help!

Remember, shovelling is demanding and some aches and pains are likely but should decrease after a couple of days. However, if the pain/ stiffness persists and you'd like some relief or ideas on how to avoid/ prevent an painful episode in the future, please give me a call or a text. Shovelling can actually be an excellent way of getting some exercise and fresh air in the winter and sometimes a few movement tips can really make a difference. Osteopathic assessment and treatment can be booked directly (no referral necessary) and is tailored to what you need- pain relief from hands on therapy, a head to toe assessment to look at your contributing biomechanical and movement patterns or exercises to get you shovel-fit 😉. Give me a call or a text on 306-307-8875 to book an appointment.

Stay warm and safe out there. And as SnowAngels says 'Keep calm and shovel on'

19/09/2022

How can I help you? Here are a few indications that osteopathic treatment, using a holistic approach and cognitive "rich" rehabilitation/ movement, might help you.

1. You have symptoms you feel are related but no one else is putting them together:
- An osteopathic approach looks at the body as a whole unit
- After all the knee bone is connected to the thigh bone..... :)

2. You need someone who is able to take extra time to listen to your whole story:
- I am fortunate in clinic to have time to take a detailed health history.
- I can help you to make sense of your pain in a way that matters to you

3. You feel that your pain is effected by stress or anxiety:
- Pain can be amplified or decreased by multiple factors
- The nervous system and the physical body are intricately related and cannot be separated

4. You pain is in control of you:
- My approach is to problem solve with you to give you back some control in your life so you are not held hostage by your pain.

Osteopathic consultations available with:
Monica Abrosimoff, M.Ost
at CBI Health, Lloydminster
587-789-1566

Adapted from: - thanks for the great content. Check them out!

17/09/2022

Credit: Nick Hannah, PT. Follow him at

It's completely normal to focus on pain. The body normally produces a sensation of pain when we need to protect. However, there are circumstances where the nervous system becomes hypersensitive and therefore the volume on the pain/ stiffness, etc gets 'turned up' and becomes more frequent.

Of course, there are some pains that we shouldn't ignore. Your health professional (physiotherapist, osteopath, doctor, chiroptractor, etc) should be able to help with this and a great question to ask in every consultation is: Am I safe to move?

Once we know we are safe to move, the next steps are often unclear. If our expectation in treatment/ rehab is primarily to get rid of pain, we are often disappointed as the pain tends to creeps back. Pain becomes the central focus of life and we stop doing the things we love. Life gets put on hold until the pain resolves.

This can start a negative cycle which can include:
---> increased stiffness, de-conditioning, increased worry about the duration of symptoms, less connection with social networks, decreased engagement in meaningful activities, increased barriers to movement, a sense of hopelessness......

So, an alternative to focusing on the pain is to focus on building resilience or becoming anti-fragile. I like to think of it as building a buffer, so we have some 'extra' in the tank to support us when challenged.

What are the unique, individual factors in your life that might be associated with your pain? These can be massive opportunities for increasing your overall health and building that 'buffer'.

Some examples might be:
- Poor quality sleep
- Increased worry
- Excluded movements (movements you avoid)
- Social isolation
- Increased pressure (work, sport, family etc)
- Beliefs about pain
- Thoughts around lifting, bending, twisting
- etc. etc. etc..........

Monica Abrosimoff
Osteopathic therapist, CBI Health Lloydminster
587-789-1566

Source:
https://www.instagram.com/hannahmoves/

25/08/2022

It's always wonderful to get messages like this when patients start to feel better and more confident in their movements.

Empowering through knowledge and encouraging self management are corner stones of my practice.

What would you do today if you had no pain at all?

18/08/2022

Moving with pain can feel like a scary experience. I often hear patients say that they simply don't want to make things worse.

It is completely normal to feel the need to protect from further harm.

However, when does this have the potential to do more harm than good?

The research shows us that there are good opportunities for pain reduction when we engage in active strategies & meaningful activities that get sore joints moving.

As a society, there is an overriding belief in the fragility of the musculoskeletal system. This is often aligned to the belief when you have pain it is an accurate measure of tissue damage.

However, we have learned that when pain persists, there are other important factors that influence a person's pain experience.

For me, osteopathic treatment is about helping the person identify these factors to improve the health of the joint.

Let's take knee osteoarthritis (OA) as an example. Perhaps there are structural changes in the joint, this contributes to discomfort which causes you to stop moving, this leads to de-conditioning & stiffness as the knee adapt to its 'new normal'

How can we approach this to create a meaningful change?

We can look at the inflammatory component of OA and consider the wider context:
-not eating well?
-putting on weight around the middle ?
-less active?
-increased stress?
-not sleeping well?
These factors create a physiological environment that is pro-inflammatory and can sensitise the joint structure. A change in the above has the potential to decrease a pain experience.

We can look at the physiology of the joint structure. We can't change the structure of the cartilage but can we make the cartilage healthier?
Yes! We can help by:
- coaching to put appropriate load through the joint by offloading sensitive parts of the knee
- addressing weakness and bracing which often happens in the presence of pain & instead helping make muscles stronger & more resilient to support the joint
- encouraging movement to help lubricate the knee & decrease stiffness, helping specialised structures such as proteoglycans increase their capacity to reabsorb water

& much more..

Ref:
Dr. J.P Caneiro, physioedge podcast 146

17/08/2022

Stacey Urch Kosko

11/08/2022

Healthcare systems often break the body down into parts with the aim of focusing on the 'cause' of the problem. There is often great success in this approach...

However, sometimes, the pieces are not put back together to see the person as a whole. Pain may linger and full function may not be restored.

An osteopathic consultation looks at you as a whole person, taking into consideration your symptoms and discomfort but also your whole unique story and how you arrived in the situation. Treatment then focuses on the person as a whole to help you move freely and engage completely in the activities you want to do.

Find out how Osteopathy can support you & your health and book an appointment with an Osteopathic Practitioner today!⁣

05/08/2022

Back pain happens... Did you know that 8 out of 10 people will suffer from back pain at some point in their lives?

Lifting is a non-optional part of being of life for most of us. Your back is designed to be strong and robust and to help you lift and carry. Often when we have back pain after a day at working in the garden or on the job we blame lifting for our pain.

However, lifting within your personal limits is not bad for your back and exposing yourself to lifting can strengthen your back and help build a "reserve tank", to create a buffer to protect from pain flare ups.

Consider that bending and lifting is not 'dangerous' or bad for your back, but your pain system can kick in to protect us under certain circumstances such as when we are not prepared, we hold our breath and brace too much or we are fatigued.

How can we reframe lifting and move with confidence? Osteopathic treatment can help you work with your body and beliefs using movement experiments and dedicated, gradual exposure to moving with freedom, including bending, twisting and lifting.

Thanks for reading and sharing.

Monica, osteopathic therapist, CBI
Lloydminster
587-789-1566

01/04/2022

Does your pain stop you from doing the things that you love? Have you slowly quit doing meaningful activities because either a) you are scared of making things worse or b) just simply wanted to wait until you felt better?

This is a common thing that happens when we experience pain that persists for longer than we expect. Suddenly one day you wake up and realise that your movements and activities have disappeared.

Ask yourself this: If you had no pain, what would you do today?

Movement is medicine! By doing just a little more each day, we can gradually add these things back into our lives. There are often little adjustments that we can make to feel more comfortable in these movements as well.

If you are worried about whether it's safe to move, please ask for some help from a trained professional! In most cases, even if we are sore, we are safe to move and will actually feel better once the body gets moving. Of course there are multiple secondary health benefits to being active, it really makes sense to take that ship out of the harbour and explore the world!

And remember, regardless of your pain condition, you are likely to experience some 'feedback' from the body after doing some movement that you haven't done for a while or something completely new. This is normally and it means that you are on the road to getting stronger.

Sometimes this is hard to do on your own though! If you need support getting moving, please get in touch with me at CBI Health in Lloydminster on 587-789-1566. I am available Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.

08/03/2022

Pain analogies help us to make sense of the multiple contributions and complexity of our pain.

This is analogy that has been described by Greg Lehman (http://www.greglehman.ca)

Greg writes:
"Look at pain as the overflowing of a cup. Many things contribute to what is in that cup. You can have a lot of physical, mechanical, emotional and social stressors and have no pain. But at some point a sudden increase in one of those stressors or a new stressor puts you just over the edge and the water flows out and now you have pain. Often people will have more pain when there a changes in the stressors in their life. It is the inability to adapt to the new stressor that contributes to pain not necessarily the amount of the stressor in your life.
Pain occurs when we fail to tolerate and adapt to all the stressors in our life. Its not stress - its unmanageable stress
We need to keep that cup from overflowing.
The multidimensional nature of pain means there are a multitude of things that can help with pain.
You can decrease one contributor a great deal or per- haps address a few of them. What you can also do is BUILD A BIGGER CUP. This means over time you can build resiliency or coping that allows you to adapt and tolerate all the stressors in your life. Most people can’t run a marathon today. But people can slowly build their tolerance to the stresses of running and do it soon."

For me, working with people in the clinic, this gives us a huge opportunity to find multiple ways to wellness. Think about it- we may only need to take a little out of the cup to make a difference!

27/02/2022

We all want to know what is causing our pain and modern technology now allows us to look inside our bodies at our structure.

However, did you know that having a scan is a snapshot in time and does not show us pain!?

Pain is a complex experience with multiple contributions. A scan is a static picture and does not show us movement or function!

These advances in technology are incredibly helpful and necessary in some cases. (For example where there are red flag symptoms and serious pathology).

The majority of back pain (90-95%) is not from the above causes and even though it can be very painful and even frightening, it often improves very quickly on its own.

One potential problem is that once we view a scan and read a report that describes our 'damage' we cannot unsee this information. Reports are often very comprehensive, using complicated medical words which can be scary. We take this information in and it has the potential to decrease how confident we feel in thoughtless, fearless movement.

"Beliefs about the body and pain play a powerful role in behavioural and emotional responses to musculoskeletal pain." (Caneiro et al 2021)

If you would like to discuss your scan, please get in touch!

References

Brinjikji W, Luetmer PH, Comstock B, et al. Systematic literature review of imaging features of spinal degeneration in asymptomatic populations. AJNR Am J Neuroradiol. 2015;36(4):811-816. doi:10.3174/ajnr.A4173

Caneiro, J. P., Bunzli, S., & O'Sullivan, P. (2021). Beliefs about the body and pain: the critical role in musculoskeletal pain management. Brazilian journal of physical therapy, 25(1), 17–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bjpt.2020.06.003

Hall A M, Aubrey-Bassler K, Thorne B, Maher C G. Do not routinely offer imaging for uncomplicated low back pain BMJ 2021; 372 :n291 doi:10.1136/bmj.n291

12/02/2022

If we start to change the story around pain and to understand that pain is there to protect us, we often start to feel completely different about movement, rehab & recovery.

Did you know that there are people who do not feel any physical pain? People born with an extremely dangerous condition called C**A rarely live past 25. Pain is our most powerful protective device!

What are the factors that feed into the body creating pain? Pain is weird! It is a complex, multifactorial process that occurs in the body and the brain in a flash of a second. It is unique to the person and dependent on context.

How much pain we feel is dependent on how threatened we feel, even if we are not aware of it. Here are a couple examples.

American physician, Dr. Henry Beecher worked in Italy on the front lines during WWII. He observed men with serious wounds including amputations awaiting evacuation away from the front lines. He observed that there was no correlation between the seriousness of the men's wounds and the expression of how much they were suffering.

In fact, 3/4 of wounded soldiers claimed that they weren’t experiencing significant pain and didn’t ask for pain relief, even when offered it. One third claimed to feel no pain at all, while another quarter said they were experiencing only slight pain.

Beecher concluded that their emotional state and their context was the key. They were not suffering because their wounds represented an escape “from an exceedingly dangerous environment, one filled with fatigue, discomfort, anxiety, fear and real danger of death,” but because they provided them with “a ticket to the safety of the hospital”.

On the other hand, there is the story written up in the British Medical Journal (Fisher et al. 1995) of the 29 year old builder who stepped on a nail and watched it go right through his boot, he collapsed in complete agony and was rushed to hospital, however when they removed his boot, the nail had gone between his toes and there was no tissue damage at all.

These are extreme examples but perhaps they are useful to help us to understand how our context/ environment/ habits/ thoughts might be contributing to our ongoing or episodic pain.

10/02/2022

Osteopathy is for everyone- appointments are available to people of all ages- from babies to the elderly. Initial appointments are 1 hr & follow ups are 30 min. Call CBI Health in Lloydminster on 587-789-1566 to discuss options for:

• Neck and back pain or sciatica
• Tendon pain
• Shoulder, wrist or ankle pain
• Mobility problems
• Sporting injuries
• Pregnancy related pains
• Headaches
• Effects of Osteoarthritis
• Post surgical stiffness
• Aches and tension
• Chronic pain
• Problems which have persisted & have not been helped by other approaches

What is Osteopathy?
It is a safe & effective patient-centred therapy. It is a system of assessing, diagnosing, treating & preventing a wide range of health problems. There are many different approaches in osteopathy.

I have a special interest in evidence informed practice, pain science, movement-based therapy & empowering patients to understand and self-manage their pain. I studied Osteopathy in the UK and gained my Master’s degree in 2018 from the University of Greenwich (European School of Osteopathy).I completed my masters over 5 years of study. I have been working with patients for 6 years now.

In the UK, osteopathy is a regulated health profession & therapists are valued as allied health professionals. I am registered with the General Osteopathic Council in the UK and the Alberta Association of Osteopathic Manual therapists (AAOMT).

What can I offer your you?
1. Acute injury management and rehabilitation - Usually 2 to 6 treatments to get patients on their way to recovery. Treatment may include manual therapy, exercise, and movement homework.
2. General musculoskeletal assessment and treatment- Designed to increase mobility and offer self-management strategies. Patients can attend as often or as little as they would like to. There is no required number of treatments and no requirement to rebook. I aim to increase confidence to self-manage & to decrease dependence on regular treatments.
3. Problem solving & movement strategies for problems that just won't go away. Aimed at patients that suffer from chronic or episodic pain to help improve movement & understanding and re-engage with meaningful activities.

06/02/2022

Perfect posture does not exist.! The body craves movement and variety.

We are wonderfully imperfect and asymmetrical.

If we stay in any one posture for long enough, the body will start to give us signals to move. These signals come in the form of discomfort. When we are still, postural muscles have to work hard to keep us upright against gravity. The muscles begin to fatigue and become sensitive, triggering your pain protection system and encouraging you to move / stretch.

Have you ever tried to stand completely upright in the ‘culturally accepted’ position that is thought of (mistakenly) as good posture? I once had a patient tell me that when he was in the army, they used this position a punishment. Why? Because it’s uncomfortable!

Posture can be static like when we are seated but also dynamic, for example when we are running. We need variety in all these situations.

So remember the best posture is one you are going to adopt next. As david butler would say- motion is lotion!

#

Come and see me at cbi health in lloydminster if you want help working through any pain which you believe may be posture related 587-789-1566

01/02/2022

Pain may not be what you think it is...

Our understanding of pain has changed a lot in recent years. We now understand that pain does not 'come from' the tissues - it is a perception that we experience as the result of the evaluation of a variety of factors which determine how dangerous the situation is.

Dr. Lorimer Moseley (a clinical scientist who investigates pain in humans) explains it like this- “Pain is an unpleasant conscious experience that emerges from the brain when the sum of all the available information suggests that you need to protect a particular part of your body”

What contributes these complex interactions? -Any information held in the body or brain - past experiences/ signals from nociceptors/ context/ habits/ culture/ beliefs, mechanical load on the tissues, lack of sleep, stress [insert factor here] etc, etc, etc.....

Pain's job is to protect you. It's about survival and generally it does a good job. However, there are times when the body's alarm system becomes too sensitive.

If you are interested in learning more, I would recommend watching Dr Moseley's TED talk where he tells the highly entertaining story about his experience with a snake bite- Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwd-wLdIHjs

Studies demonstrate that when people understand more about how pain really works, they often experience less pain.

Understanding what unique factors may be contributing to your experience of pain will help to make sense of why you feel the way you do. This can be an important step towards modifying your pain.

30/01/2022

I often get asked what an osteopathic therapist does. There are many different approaches in osteopathy. I have a special interest in pain science, evidence informed practice, movement based therapy and empowering patients. Here is what I can offer you:

First and foremost-
* individual person-centred care *
working together with you, tailored to your unique story of your unique experience of your discomfort! The more questions you have for me, the better.

Simply put, I can offer:
1. Problem solving and movement strategies for problems that persist and just won't go away.
2. A general 'check in', stretch and loosen up.
3. Management & rehabilitation of acute injuries.

Initial assessments are 1 hour and follow ups are 30 minutes.

I aim to work with you to help you boost your mobility and ease your pain while helping you make sense of your situation.

We will look at the big picture, including- (but not limited to!)- your history, movement patterns (static and dynamic), habits, beliefs about pain, and lifestyle to help *make sense* of where you are and how you arrived to this point. Treatment is not about realignment (we are all naturally asymmetrical!) but about exploration and becoming aware of how and why we move the way we do and what options we have to modify symptoms and outcomes.

There is no required number of treatments and no requirement to rebook. In fact, it is my aim to give you the tools to take back control of your pain and be confident to self manage so that if, for example, you do have a flare up on the weekend at 3am, you have a variety of tools to manage your pain and are not dependent or waiting for help from treatment.

You can simply come and see me just once or as often as you like. You can book directly and do not need a referral.

If this sounds like something you would like to try or discuss further, please DM me or give us a call at CBI health in Lloydminster - (587) 789-1566

25/01/2022

Your pain is ALWAYS real but ....pain can be complicated! It can be surprising to learn about recent research that has shown that there is not always a link between pain and tissue damage.

It is pretty common to feel pain and to believe that there is something 'wrong' in the body. We often seek help from doctors in trying to find that one problem which is causing our pain so we can fix it.

However, pain can exist with no tissue damage at all or can continue to exist long past the point when the tissue has 'healed'.

Why does this matter?
We now understand that pain is there to protect us. The sensation of pain is influenced by more than your tissues and acts as an alarm to get your attention. Understanding the multifactorial nature of a pain sensation gives us a lot of options to modify it and this is what we can work on in clinic! Watch this space to learn more about the what might be contributing to your unique experience of pain!

(By the way.....The opposite can also be true- you can have tissue damage and have no pain at all! Think of that bruise you noticed on your leg but had no idea of where it came from! Pain is weird!)

Sources:
https://www.painrevolution.org/target-concept
https://www.csp.org.uk/system/files/myth_busters_leaflet_-_final.pdf

osteo_monica