Health
Gardening Pain-free from Pursuit Physiotherapy
Follow these basic body mechanics tips for gardening safely!
Gardening season is here! We want you to enjoy the outdoors without injuring yourself. It’s easy to get overzealous and spend hours in the garden without noticing an aching back or neck until it’s too late. But don’t worry, just because you have a long ‘to do’ list doesn’t mean you have to suffer the consequences. By planning ahead and being smart about your body mechanics you can help prevent soreness and injuries.
Follow these easy tips for staying healthy throughout the gardening season:
Lift properly to protect your back.
Remember to bend your knees and engage your core muscles; use your leg muscles to squat and don’t bend with your back.
- Avoid lifting and twisting through your back – instead keep the load close to your body and pivot your feet and trunk together
- Avoid carrying heavy loads on 1 side of your body – balance it out on both sides or lighten up the load and take more trips. Also consider getting help for heavy lifting – you can’t do it all!
Maintain good posture.
Position yourself close to the task at hand to avoid awkward reaching and twisting. Try to keep your back straight and head in a neutral position so that you are not looking up or down for extended periods of time.
- Use stools, chairs, or knee pads whenever possible to help maintain good neck and back posture.
- When pushing a wheelbarrow or lawnmower keep your back tall and head up. Also bend your knees and engage your core muscles to optimize your power and protect your spine.
- Take mini-breaks to stretch and correct your posture – try squeezing your shoulder blades together, or contracting your deep abdominal (TA) muscles.
Use Proper Tools to Reduce Strain
- Use knee pads for kneeling and avoid sustained squatting. This will give your knees, hips, ankles and back a break.
- Use a step stool or tools with extended handles to make overhead work easier. Bring yourself closer to your task to avoid awkward reaching and reduce neck and shoulder strain.
- Use tools with good grips or ergonomic handles to reduce fatigue on your hand and forearm muscles. Ensure they are a comfortable fit for your hand size.
Prevent Repetitive Strain Injuries
Doing the same task over and over will put excessive strain on certain body parts and muscle groups, leading to pain and injury. Here are some self-management tips to help avoid RSI’s:
- Change positions frequently to avoid stiffness and strain on certain body parts. For example try raking on both sides.
- Alternate tasks to add variety to your body movements and avoid static postures or repetitive lifting. For example do 10 minutes of weeding followed by 10 minutes of pruning.
- Take breaks to stretch and hydrate. It is important to give your body some time to recover, and adding these mini-breaks can help improve your work endurance and efficiency.
- Don’t overdo it! Create a realistic plan ahead of time so that you aren’t trying to get all your tasks done in a single day or weekend. Plan to spread your workload out over several days or weeks to avoid overuse injuries.
- Never work through pain. Listen to your body and stop when you are getting tired or sore. The task will still be there the next day or week!
Keep your body limber
- Warm-up before gardening with some light walking or gently swinging your arms and legs. This helps increase your heart rate and gets blood flowing to the muscles so they are ready to work.
- Take stretch breaks. Do some of your favourites and try to target all your major body parts – neck, shoulders, back, and legs. This will keep you feeling loose and flexible and prevent muscle tension from building up. Move slowly and hold each position for approximately 10-15 seconds.
- Cool-down. An easy walk around the yard and some gentle stretching will help relieve tension after your work and prevent muscle stiffness.
We hope these tips help keep you active, healthy, and pain-free throughout the spring and summer. If you have any lingering pain or specific concerns please do not hesitate to book an appointment for a one-on-one session with one of our physiotherapists. We will be able to assess and diagnose your injury, as well as provide hands on treatment and a therapeutic exercise program to address your specific needs.
Click for more information about Pursuit Physiotherapy.
Health
News RFK Jr.’s vaccine committee to vote on ending Hepatitis B shot recommendation for newborns
From LifeSiteNews
The goal is to examine whether vaccines on the recommended schedule are contributing to the rise in allergies, autoimmune diseases, and other conditions such as autism.
Vaccine advisors to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plan to vote on ending the recommendation of the Hepatitis B shot for infants and discuss other changes to the childhood vaccination schedule.
The federal advisers, selected by RFK Jr., will meet on Thursday and Friday to review the childhood vaccination schedule, according to a report from The Washington Post. The goal is to examine whether vaccines on the recommended schedule are contributing to the rise in allergies, autoimmune diseases, and other conditions such as autism.
The vaccine panel, headed by Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist and critic of the COVID shots, plans to vote on ending the Hepatitis B vaccine recommendation for infants within 24 hours of birth. The panel will decide whether to delay the first dose to a later time.
Critics of the very early administration of the first Hepatitis B vaccine dose argue that it represents an unnecessary risk, as the vast majority of children are not at risk of infection.
The vaccine committee makes recommendations to the CDC director on the vaccine schedule. Directors have typically adopted the panel’s recommendations, compelling insurers to cover certain vaccines. These recommendations also provide a guideline for most pediatricians and medical organizations.
READ: Florida moving to be first state to end all childhood vaccine mandates
“We’re looking at what may be causing some of the long-term changes we’re seeing in population data in children, specifically things such as asthma and eczema and other autoimmune diseases,” Milhoan told The Washington Post.
“What we’re trying to do is figure out if there are factors within vaccines,” he added.
He said that the committee is examining the potential dangers of using aluminum as an adjuvant, an ingredient meant to trigger an immune response strong enough for the body to develop antibodies and protect the person from the disease.
RFK Jr.’s panel has been heavily criticized by establishment health organizations and the pharmaceutical industry. Big Pharma officials have said that removing aluminum from vaccines and replacing it with another adjuvant would cost billions of dollars and take years.
The CDC recently revised its website on the issue of autism and vaccines, now stating, “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” The CDC had previously held that there was definitely no link between vaccines and autism. The change was made at the direct order of RFK Jr.
The McCullough Foundation, founded by famous cardiologist and COVID response critic Dr. Peter McCullough, goes even further in its critique of childhood vaccines. In a recent extensive report, the authors analyzed 12 studies comparing routinely vaccinated with unvaccinated children. According to the report, all of these studies showed “superior overall health outcomes among the unvaccinated, including significantly lower risks of chronic medical problems and neuropsychiatric disorders such as ASD [Autism spectrum disorder].”
Health
23,000+ Canadians died waiting for health care in one year as Liberals pushed euthanasia
From LifeSiteNews
Tens of thousands of Canadians have died while on waitlists in recent years, according to new data. Meanwhile, euthanasia now accounts for five percent of all deaths in Canada.
Over 23,000 Canadians have died while on waitlists for medical care as Liberals focused on euthanasia expansions.
According to government figures published on November 26 by Canadian think tank SecondStreet.org, 23,746 patients died on government waiting lists for health care between April 2024 and March 2025.
“What’s really sad is that behind many of these figures are stories of patients suffering during their final years – grandparents who dealt with chronic pain while waiting for hip operations, people leaving children behind as they die waiting for heart operations, so much suffering,” SecondStreet.org President Colin Craig explained.
“It doesn’t have to be this way. If we copied better-performing European public health systems, we could greatly reduce patient suffering,” he continued.
According to the data, collected through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, there has been a three percent increase of deaths while on waitlists compared to last year. The number is likely much higher, as the reports did not include figures from Alberta and some parts of Manitoba.
Data further revealed that 100,876 Canadians have died while waiting for care since 2018, thanks to increased wait times and insufficient staffing.
“It’s interesting that governments will regularly inspect restaurants and report publicly if there’s a minor problem such as a missing paper towel holder,” Craig noted. “Meanwhile, no government reports publicly on patients dying on waiting lists. It’s quite hypocritical.”
At the same time, the Liberal government has worked to expand euthanasia 13-fold since it was legalized, making it the fastest growing euthanasia program in the world. Meanwhile, Health Canada has released a series of studies on advance requests for assisted suicide.
As LifeSiteNews reported earlier this week, so-called “Medical Assistance in Dying” (MAID) is responsible for five percent of all deaths in Canada in 2024.
At the same time, internal documents from Ontario doctors in 2024 that revealed Canadians are choosing euthanasia because of poverty and loneliness, not as a result of an alleged terminal illness.
Currently, wait times to receive genuine health care in Canada have increased to an average of 27.7 weeks, leading some Canadians to despair and opt for assisted suicide instead of waiting for medical aid. At the same time, sick and elderly Canadians who have refused to end their lives have reported being called “selfish” by their providers.
In one case, an Ontario doctor revealed that a middle-aged worker, whose ankle and back injuries had left him unable to work, felt that the government’s insufficient support was “leaving (him) with no choice but to pursue” euthanasia.
Other cases included an obese woman who described herself as a “useless body taking up space,” which one doctor argued met the requirements for assisted suicide because obesity is “a medical condition which is indeed grievous and irremediable.”
The most recent reports show that euthanasia is the sixth highest cause of death in Canada. However, it was not listed as such in Statistics Canada’s top 10 leading causes of death from 2019 to 2022.
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