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Gardening Pain-free from Pursuit Physiotherapy

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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.

 

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Health

Radio-Canada journalist defends report exposing ‘gender clinics’ for ‘transitioning’ children

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Radio-Canada journalist Pasquale Turbide revealed that concerns from parents were what originally sparked her investigative report on the gender ‘transitioning’ of children in Quebec.

Radio-Canada journalist is defending her investigative report that exposed a “gender” clinic in Quebec for prescribing potentially sterilizing hormones to an actress posing as a young teen in less than ten minutes. 

In a March 3 interview on Tout le Monde en Parle, Radio-Canada journalist Pasquale Turbide  revealed that concerns from parents were what originally sparked her investigative report on the gender “transitioning” of children, and that she stands by her work despite backlash.   

“Parents began writing to us last summer, when there was a bit of a controversy about names, pronouns, all-gender bathrooms, etc,” said Turbide in French.  

“But the letters we were getting were not about those issues, they were talking about medical transitions,” she explained.   

According to Turbide, the parents who contacted Radio-Canada revealed that their children, who believed they were “transgender,” were being offered sterilizing “puberty blockers” in the name of care.

“We started to look into it, and we easily found fifteen to twenty people who were all telling us more or less the same story,” said Turbide. “They were often very open-minded parents, open to homosexuality, open to all sorts of things but were panicking at the speed of the transgender healthcare system.”  

The documentary, published by Radio-Canada, the French arm of the state-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), delved into the dangers of giving children “puberty blockers” as well as the regrets of detransitioners, the term for people who have undergone irreversible surgeries in an attempt to “change” their gender but now regret it.   

The report also followed an actress posing as a 14-year-old patient at a private “gender clinic” in Quebec where she was prescribed testosterone and advised on life-altering mutilating surgeries during a consultation that lasted a meagre nine minutes.  

During her interview, Turbide exposed the dangers of taking puberty blockers, especially considering many of the side effects are still unknown.   

“Girls take testosterone, boys take estrogen and that’s semi-irreversible,” Turbide added. “Some things don’t come back even if they stop. One’s voice will stay changed most of the time. The face of their shape is another thing that’s affected. You can become infertile if you are a girl. It’s not yet clear how far it can go.”  

Turbide further pointed out that some Scandinavian countries are seeking to ban the irreversible treatments for children.  

The documentary went viral online the same week leaked internal communications show doctors who offer so-called “gender-affirming care” know that transgender hormones cause serious diseases, including cancer. 

Journalist Michael Shellenberger released the internal documents from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which “is considered the leading global authority” on so-called “gender medicine,” despite being an LGBT activist group. 

The “WPATH FILES” include emails and messages from an internal discussion forum by doctors, as well as statements from a video call of WPATH members. The files reveal that the doctors working for WPATH know that so-called “gender-affirming care” can cause severe mental and physical disease and that it is impossible for minors to give “informed consent” to it.  

As LifeSiteNews has previously noted, research does not support the assertions from transgender activists that surgical or pharmaceutical intervention to “affirm” confusion is “necessary medical care” or that it is helpful in preventing the suicides of gender-confused individuals.   

In fact, in addition to asserting a false reality that one’s sex can be changed, transgender surgeries and drugs have been linked to permanent physical and psychological damage, including  cardiovascular diseases, loss of bone density, cancer, strokes and blood clots,  infertility,  and  suicidality.    

There is also  overwhelming evidence that those who undergo “gender transitioning” are more likely to commit suicide than those who are not given irreversible surgery. A Swedish study found that those who underwent “gender reassignment” surgery ended up with a 19.2 times greater risk of suicide.   

Indeed, there is proof that the most loving and helpful approach to people who think they are a different sex is not to validate them in their confusion but to show them the truth.   

A new study on the side effects of transgender “sex change” surgeries discovered that 81 percent of those who had undergone “sex change” surgeries in the past five years reported experiencing pain simply from normal movement in the weeks and months that followed — and that many other side effects manifest as well.    

Additionally, LifeSiteNews compiled a list of medical professions and experts who warn against transgender surgeries, warning of irreversible changes and lifelong side effects.    

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COVID-19

Dr. Pierre Kory sounds alarm over gov’t failure on excess deaths in Tucker Carlson interview

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Stephen Kokx

Dr. Pierre Kory told Tucker Carlson that since the COVID vaccine rollout there has been a ‘skyrocketing’ of deaths primarily among those who are young, and that it is being completely ignored by the medical establishment.

Dr. Pierre Kory was attacked during COVID-19 for recommending Ivermectin and other treatments Big Pharma did not approve of. Now, he’s speaking out about the “explosion” of excess deaths in the United States and calling out the government’s inaction in response to it.

During his appearance on the Tucker Carlson Encounter on Wednesday, Kory stated that there has been a “skyrocketing” of death tolls of more than 158,000 Americans, primarily among those who are young, healthy, and working. The government won’t admit this, he told Carlson, but life insurance companies are getting a “shellacking.” 

“This is the clearest indictment of our public health agencies,” Kory said. The “knowledge that this is occurring and they are not doing anything tells you they have failed… If they were functioning, this would be a major public health initiative.” 

Kory is a world-renowned pioneer in the field of ultrasonography. Previously, he served as Chief of Critical Care Service and Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin. He helped co-found the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC). In June 2023, Kory published the best-selling book War on Ivermectin: The Medicine that Saved Millions and Could Have Ended the Pandemic. 

During his conversation with Carlson, Kory argued that Vitamin D was not promoted during the so-called pandemic because it “threatens the disease model.” He also ripped the mask off “high impact medical journals” that doctors and other industry professionals look to for guidance on how to treat patients. They “have been captured” and publish “fraudulent,” Big Pharma-backed studies, he said.  

Kory and Carlson also exposed government officials like President Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and others who told the public the COVID shot was “safe and effective.” Kory explained that that messaging was agreed upon ahead of time despite no real studies showing it to be true.  

Kory added that the U.S. government only speaks of “long COVID” when they should be focusing on “long vax,” referring to the variety of long-lasting injuries people have suffered from the shot like extreme fatigue and sensory neuropathy. 

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