During March the Luck’s Yard manual therapy team including our chiropractors and massage therapists, gathered for an in-house training session.
The aim was to work on concepts from our own RED-AMBER-GREEN brochure on how we can help our patients to achieve their health goals safely and efficiently.
We created the RED-AMBER-GREEN brochure in 2016 to help patients understand their journey from acute or chronic pain in the Red phase, to recovery in the Amber phase and finally to the Green phase where patients are pain free and can manage their condition.
The team discussed strategies to help patients understand how so many people get into the ACUTE and RED phase that sends them to Luck’s Yard Clinic for the first time.
The red phase is where we might have active symptoms like pain, inflammation, soreness and reduced mobility. The body or spine may be out of alignment and imbalanced.
We see a lot of people who will wait until their pain or discomfort is so bad that it truly affects their quality of life. Symptoms may include inability to sleep or turn over in bed, being unable to get in and out of the car, drive, get to work or unable to exercise.
There are people have chronic and intractable pain and cannot find any relief at all leading them to rely on pain medication to cope through their day. Many people accept this situation as ‘normal’ without considering how it can be resolved.
The Therapists discussed how we can be even better at understanding how so many people get into this situation and how so many get used to living with pain or limited mobility on a daily basis. We should never accept chronic pain without finding out what we can do about it.
Next the team looked at how we can help our patients to move from the RED phase into the recovery phase of AMBER where we stop feeling our symptoms so often or intensely and the therapy team would describe the condition to be in a more passive phase. This means that you are not reminded of your pain all the time, but the therapists can still assess where the body is out of alignment.
In the AMBER phase the area of injury is healing and recovering, but it is still very fragile. At Luck’s Yard, we believe that this is a tricky place to be, as many people will think that cessation of pain means that you are fully recovered. Because patients feel so much better they may do too much activity too soon, and consequently have another relapse and then moving back into the red phase.
We want to do everything we can to help and educate our patients about this, so the team discussed what we can do to ensure that as many patients as possible are followed safely through AMBER into GREEN.
One of the things we have done at Luck’s Yard is to create a multitude of ways for patients to do their rehabilitation exercises. We have paper copies, YouTube exercises, and finally our Chiromoves exercises both as a DVD and an app.
But we also believe in following and supporting our patients through this phase, as it takes patience and understanding of how long the tissues need to recover.
The last point the team discussed was how we can help more of our patients to understand their true health potential so they can get into and stay in their own green phase.
Many people are used to thinking that they are limited in what they can achieve in their health and wellbeing dependent on their age. But we have so many patients in their 70’s and over who are really fit and healthy and more importantly in charge of how active they are, so we are keen to support active living whatever age.
We also love working with people who come in and tell us they are OK, but they want to be even better. They are so keen to be the best they can be and reach their own health potential for a long time.
This is where we as therapists have the unique position of having the knowledge of where our patients can go with their health and we now need to be even better at helping and motivating our patients towards their individual goals.
The Luck’s Yard team all believe it is our mission to make sure we are truly working along the principles of helping our patients to understand where they are and how they can move forward towards their own unique health expression. Our job is to be their partner on this journey whatever they chose it to be and where their destination is aimed towards.
Please ask the team where you are next time you come in and how we can be of help to move you towards your health goals.
The Luck’s Yard Manual therapy team:
Tone, Nic, Mariana, Daniela, Jasmine, Rob and Cathy.
