7 Health Facts Women Need To Know
During Women’s Health Week our aim is to raise awareness to some of the health issues that disproportionately affect women and where chiropractic care has been shown to offer some significant relief.
Fibromyalgia
Fibromyalgia is a condition which causes people to experience symptoms that include widespread pain and tenderness in the body. It is often accompanied by fatigue and problems with memory and concentration. Figures suggest that as many as 90 percent of cases of Fibromyalgia occur in women.
Chiropractic care has been shown to offer some relief from the painful symptoms of Fibromyalgia by performing gentle manipulations or mobilisations of the spine and other joints within the body to ease the symptoms. We can also provide you with effective lifestyle strategies and advice to minimise the impact and suffering associated with Fibromyalgia
Arthritis & Osteoarthritis
Arthritis is a general term for conditions that affect the joints and surrounding tissues. Joints are places in the body where bones come together such as the knees, wrists, fingers, toes, and hips.
Osteoarthritis (OA) is a painful, degenerative joint disease that often involves the hips, knees, neck, lower back, or small joints of the hands. OA usually develops in joints that are injured by overuse from performing a particular task repeatedly. Eventually this repeated impact thins or wears away the cartilage that cushions the ends of the bones in the joint. As a result, the bones rub together resulting in joint pain. Arthritis is another condition where we see more women affected than men. It is thought that genetics is a contributing factor to this.
Chiropractic care can help manage the symptoms of Arthritis & Osteoarthritis. Gentle manipulation and/or mobilisation may be used to increase joint range of movement and relieve joint pain. In addition to this, various soft tissue techniques such as massage, targeted stretching and trigger point therapy can be utilised to ease muscle tightness and pain.
Migraine & Headaches
Women suffer from migraines three times as often as men. A migraine headache is usually an intense, throbbing pain on one, or sometimes, both sides of the head. Headaches, whilst uncomfortable are not usually as debilitating as migraines. Like migraines though, headaches are more likely to affect women. In fact, headaches is one of the most common reasons people seek chiropractic care.
Chiropractic care is very effective in treating headaches because it restores normal biomechanics (movement) in the neck as well as addressing any muscular, disc or ligament injury and recent research has shown that chiropractic treatment is effective in the management and cure of both common and classical migraine.
In addition to common complaints that affect women more than men, general health and wellbeing is also important to manage. Good nutrition and general exercise including resistance training is very important for women to support bone health. Finally, Women’s Health Week is all about raising awareness and getting women to focus on their health issues. Women are far more likely to ignore their symptoms that men, so make yourself a priority this September and start your journey towards improved health, strength, fitness and general wellbeing.