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Our Duty of Care to You…..
Before we get into this newsletter, a little housekeeping. As members of a highly regulated profession we are, quite rightly, audited by our regulatory body – The General Chiropractic Council. The General Chiropractic Council, like the General Medical Council constantly police the conduct of it’s registrants and are persistently reviewing the Code of Conduct under which we all must act. This high quality reflective system is solely for the patient’s best interest, ensuring you get the best care because of it.
One important legal requirement within the Code of Conduct is the Re-Examination. This rule of British law states that should a previous patient who has not been seen for over six months request an appointment we are legally bound to perform a full re-examination. Patients may claim ‘it’s the same thing’ but, we risk our practicing license and missing a vital and possibly sinister development in the patients health, if we ‘just carry on as before.’ Especially if there has been other health developments such as trauma. We are not willing to undermine our own professional integrity or the high level of service we offer by not adhering to this. Thus as per our terms and conditions we will continue to allocate and charge for the extra time necessary to perform a thorough re-examination of patients whom we have not seen for over six months. Any health professionals that do not follow this procedure are in breach of their Duty of Care to you as a patient.
We would also like to take this opportunity to raise awareness of our new prices for 2024 as noted in your reminder emails. Those patients whom have been with us over the last 13 years will be aware that this is just the second time we have had to increase our fees. We have therefore outlined the current full fees below;
Single Treatment £53
Pre-paid Block of 6 Treatments £290
Pre-paid Block of 10 Treatments £430
Initial 1-2-1 Course of 4 £225
Single ‘On-going’ 1-2-1 £55
Block of 10 121’s £450
New Patient Initial Consultation £95
New Patient Second visit – Report of findings + Treatment £53
Re-Examination + Treatment £95
Finally we would like to thank you all for your continued loyalty and hope that these newsletters act as another valuable resource for maintaining your focus on a healthy, happy and balanced lifestyle.
Anxiety and Stress – Becoming Invulnerable
This newsletter focuses on whether we can ‘stress-proof’ ourselves with exercise. According to some data, mental wellbeing has overtaken physical wellbeing as the number one reason people exercise. A growing body of evidence also supports the idea that exercise can have a lasting impact on our capacity to cope with stress and anxiety.
Main Points:
Exercise as a Stress Shield: Mental wellbeing now tops the reasons for exercising, with evidence suggesting it helps manage stress.
Training the Stress Response: Exercise trains the sympathetic nervous system, reducing overreaction to stress and aiding quicker relaxation.
Evidence from Research: A 20-week study showed that students who exercised regularly had a lower stress response, as measured by Heart Rate Variability.
Single Sessions Count: Even one exercise session can protect against stress effects, lowering blood pressure spikes during stressful times.
Cortisol Control: Exercise reduces cortisol release in response to stress, particularly with higher-intensity workouts.
Brain Benefits: Exercise influences brain activity, promoting feelings of happiness and reducing fear responses.
Practical Takeaway: Regular exercise can improve stress and anxiety resistance, which is especially important during the year’s stressful periods.
How Exercise Trains Our Stress Response System
In 2006, a scientist called Mark Sothmann described the ‘Cross-stressor adaptation hypotheses’ based on the idea that exercise stimulates and trains our sympathetic ‘fight or flight’ nervous system, helping us avoid overreacting to stress and relax more quickly after we’ve experienced it. Ten years later, a study called ‘Does exercise increase our capabilities to buffer real-life stressors?’ tested this hypothesis in 60 students.
Half the group followed a 20-week exercise programme consisting of walking or running for 30 – 60 minutes twice weekly. The other half were assigned to a non-exercising control group. The researchers used ‘Heart Rate Variability’ (HRV) to measure the students’ stress responses during their exam period (recall. we looked at the vital health metric Heart Rate Variability in the newsletter ‘Its not the Stress that Kills us, Its our Response to it’) Consistent with the hypothesis, students who completed the exercise program demonstrated HRV patterns indicating reduced reactivity to stress.
Even a Single Exercise Session Can Make a Difference…
This finding that a light, multi-week exercise program can be beneficial is encouraging. Still, other research indicates that even a single exercise session could protect against some of the adverse physiological effects of stress and anxiety. It’s important to note that stress is not inherently a ‘bad thing’. However, the physiological responses associated with stress can be harmful. For example, experiencing stress can elevate blood pressure, and high blood pressure is one of the leading preventable factors related to premature death. Consequently, trying to keep it in a healthy range is essential. The review ‘A single session of exercise reduces blood pressure reactivity to stress’ looked at 29 studies explored how exercise could help.
The results revealed that even a single exercise session could reduce blood pressure spikes when we experience stress, indicating that exercise can have a ‘stress buffering’ effect. Various exercise types, intensities and durations can be beneficial. However, moderate-intensity exercise for 30–60 minutes, carried out before a stressful experience, seems particularly effective. For example, this could involve fitting in a bike ride or run before a stressful meeting.
The Impact of Exercise Intensity on Cortisol Release During Stress
Exercise also seems to have a beneficial effect on how much cortisol is released in response to psychosocial stress, which represents experiences such as the threat we feel if we’re being evaluated or judged, excluded or when we need to perform under pressure. The recent article ‘The effects of exercise intensity on the cortisol response’ revealed that the level of cortisol released in response to exercise is inversely related to cortisol released in response to a subsequent psychosocial stressor.
For example, exercising was associated with a smaller cortisol response when participants experienced a psychosocial stressor later in the experiment. The higher the intensity of the exercise, the lower the cortisol response. This finding indicates that exercise has a ‘dampening’ effect on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis), the mechanism describing the interaction between the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and adrenal glands, which plays a central role in our response to stress. According to the paper ‘Habitual physical activity mediates anxiety’ exercise also seems to influence the brain, biasing activity in the amygdala (sometimes described as the brain’s stress, fear and pain centre) towards feelings of happiness and against fear.
How could we put this into practice?
The practical application of the research is clear. Exercise may act as a defence in the face of stress, improving our resistance to stressful situations and reducing the adverse effects of chronic stress. As we enter the New Year, I hope these findings encourage you to stay active for your body and mind!
This is the first newsletter of 2024. I really appreciate the time you’ve taken to read the issues I’ve released though 2023. The feedback was superb, thank you. I hope you’ve found them interesting and useful, and I look forward to sharing more science-based tools to support your wellbeing and performance in 2024!
Here are the back issues: Click Here
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