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.
Alberta
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Addictions
After yearslong delay, DEA revokes license of wholesale drug distributor over opioid crisis failures

By Joshua Goodman And Jim Mustian
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration stripped one of the nation’s largest drug distributors of its license to sell highly addictive painkillers Friday after determining it failed to flag thousands of suspicious orders at the height of the opioid crisis.
The action against Morris & Dickson Co. that threatens to put it out of business came two days after an Associated Press investigation found the DEA allowed the company to keep shipping drugs for nearly four years after a judge recommended the harshest penalty for its “cavalier disregard” of rules aimed at preventing opioid abuse.
The DEA acknowledged that the time it took to issue its final decision was “longer than typical for the agency” but blamed Morris & Dickson in part for holding up the process by seeking delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its lengthy pursuit of a settlement that the agency said it had considered. The order becomes effective in 90 days, allowing more time to negotiate a settlement.
DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in the 68-page order that Morris & Dickson failed to accept full responsibility for its past actions, which included shipping 12,000 unusually large orders of opioids to pharmacies and hospitals between 2014 and 2018. During this time, the company filed just three suspicious order reports with the DEA.
Milgram specifically cited testimony of then-president Paul Dickson Sr. in 2019 that the company’s compliance program was “dang good” and he didn’t think a “single person has gotten hurt by (their) drugs.”
“Those statements from the president of a family-owned and operated company so strongly miss the point of the requirements of a DEA registrant,” she wrote. “Its acceptance of responsibility did not prove that it or its principals understand the full extent of their wrongdoing … and the potential harm it caused.”
Shreveport, Louisiana-based Morris & Dickson traces its roots to 1840, when its namesake founder arrived from Wales and placed an ad in a local newspaper selling medicines. It has since become the nation’s fourth-largest wholesale drug distributor, with $4 billion a year in revenue and nearly 600 employees serving pharmacies and hospitals in 29 states.
In a statement, the company said it has invested millions of dollars over the past few years to revamp its compliance systems and appeared to hold out hope for a settlement.
“Morris & Dickson is grateful to the DEA administrator for delaying the effective date of the order to allow time to settle these old issues,” it said. “We remain confident we can achieve an outcome that safeguards the supply chain for all of our healthcare partners and the communities they serve.”
Morris & Dickson’s much larger competitors, a trio of pharmaceutical distributors known as the Big Three, have already agreed to pay the federal government more than $1 billion in fines and penalties to settle similar violations. Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen and McKesson also agreed to pay $21 billion over 18 years to resolve claims as part of a nationwide settlement.
While Morris & Dickson wasn’t the only drug distributor who the DEA accused of fueling the opioid crisis, it was unique in its willingness to challenge those accusations in the DEA’s administrative court.
In a scathing recommendation in 2019, Administrative Law Judge Charles W. Dorman said Morris & Dickson’s argument that it has changed its ways was too little, too late.
Anything less than the most severe punishment, the judge said, “would communicate to DEA registrants that despite their transgressions, no matter how egregious, they will get a mere slap on the wrist and a second chance so long as they acknowledge their sins and vow to sin no more.”
But as the ensuing years passed, neither the Biden-nominated Milgram nor her two predecessors took any enforcement action. Past DEA officials told the AP such decisions usually take no more than two years.
As the pills kept flowing, Morris & Dickson attempted to stave off punishment, appealing directly to Milgram to order a reopening of the proceedings, arguing it would introduce new evidence showing it had implemented an “ideal” compliance program with the help of a consultant who is now second-in-command at the DEA, Louis Milione. The DEA said that Milione has recused himself from all agency business related to Morris & Dickson.
Milione retired from the DEA in 2017 after a 21-year career that included two years leading the division that controls the sale of highly addictive narcotics. Like dozens of colleagues in the DEA’s powerful-but-little-known Office of Diversion Control, he went to work as a consultant for some of the same companies he had been tasked with regulating.
Milione was hired by Morris & Dickson in 2018 as part of a $3 million contract and later testified that the company “spared no expense” to overhaul its compliance systems, cancel suspicious orders and send daily emails to the DEA spelling out its actions.
A footnote of the DEA’s order Friday said that since Milione returned to the DEA as principal deputy administrator in 2021, he has not had any contact with Milgram or other agency staff about the Morris & Dickson case due to his prior involvement with the company.
___
Goodman reported from Miami, Mustian from New York. Contact AP’s global investigative team at [email protected].
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