Healthy ageing and/or physical health generally lies on a scale of from feeling well to feeling ill. You don’t suddenly wake up one day with Alzheimer’s, osteoarthritis or cancer. They develop over time. You don’t notice them early on because you haven’t yet developed any symptoms. That doesn’t mean that the problem was not there, hidden underneath.

Symptoms are indicators and a signal to you that there is something not right within the body. The problem is by the time you develop enough symptoms to notice anything the pathology has already built up enough to put you back several steps no matter what remedial action you then intend.

In particular, it is little known that it can take decades before anyone notices any symptoms of osteoarthritis and therefore will be oblivious of its original cause. This is why you may often hear from your GP or rheumatologist that your arthritis cannot be treated but only ‘managed’. They fail to appreciate or understand how an injury you may have suffered long ago would manifest its severity to you as symptoms of osteoarthritis.

The original injury may have been a bump or a fall that caused a bone to go out of place. When out of place in a direction the body could not self-correct a compensation pattern would have been developed. Over the years as you acquire more and more injuries you develop more and more degenerative compensation patterns until your body is no longer able to either hold a pattern or create new ones to get around the original injuries.

The older the injuries and the longer you wait, the more radical the treatment would need to be in order to be effective. This of course will create greater anxiety and stress not to mention further disruption to your life.

To help recognize early symptoms of physical decline we have compiled a list of signs to pay attention to. A sign is a point of observation a professional can see that you yourself may not have noticed.

To stay healthy and active, look out for the following early signs;

• Poor balance (ranging from a poor lunge or single-leg exercises to a bit of unsteadiness on your feet)
• Odd walk
• Struggling with an exercise, activity or movement that you found easy in the past. (Pain or stiffness on overhead reaching is a common sign)
• Twinges or catching pain
• Repetitive pain in the same area
• Change in posture (refer to our ‘How Do I Look’ post to measure this)
• Poor concentration, brain fog, feeling stressed or moody
• Clumsiness (shaking, poor coordination, knocking into or dropping objects)
• Having to click your joints often to relieve pain or tension

You can see that some signs that are commonly thought of as a normal part of ageing, are actually a sign of physical damage and can, therefore, be improved with the right approach.

Ageing doesn’t have to be uncomfortable or painful. It cannot happen gracefully provided you maintain a healthy lifestyle through proper mechanics, movement and diet.

Contact us if you are experiencing any of the above signs to get your body healthy and back into the best condition again.

Let us get to the root cause of your ailment(s). We offer a FREE consultation including a demo of the ‘First Rib Manoeuvre’ before you decide on proceeding with any treatment. You will feel the difference to your pain and movement right from the off.