The Body in Action: You Can Keep Your Joints Young

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 248 pages
• Published by: Allen & Unwin May 28, 2007
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1741141184
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1741141184
• Book Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Weighs: 14.9 ounces

Product Description
For those who suffer from aches, pains, and creaky joints, this handy reference shows how to keep the body's skeleton young and healthy. Including a series of stretches, this guide explores how muscles, joints, and bones work, how and why they wear and tear, and how to combat stiffness and pain. Treatments focus on the lower back, thoracic spine, neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, ankles, and feet. Further advice teaches the warning signs of imminent joint problems, immediate action necessary for restoring mobility, and how to break the terrible habits of a sedentary lifestyle. Extensive diagrams of the body and how-to illustrations of exercises encourage patients to actively manage their pain. A daily 30-minute strengthening regime is also outlined for continued movement and flexibility.

About The Author
Sarah Key is the author of Back in Action and Back Sufferer's Bible. She is the official physiotherapist to Britain's Royal Family, for which she was made a Member of the Victorian Order in 2001. Her private practice treats back-pain sufferers and trains medical professionals in back care.

Reader Reviews
The material in this book is invaluable. There are between 6 and 8 excercises for each major joint or spinal segment in the body, graded from beginner to advanced. They are all beneficial, I have tried them. All can be done safely by the average person with osteoarthritis, spinal aches and pains and stiffness/loss of mobility of all causes. For more complicated musculoskeletal problems, physio supervision would be required. You only need about an hour to do the whole lot, but I find it easier to break it up and do two joints/areas per day, which takes about 15 minutes and makes the whole day go more smoothly. If you only have one problem area, you can just do the exercises for that area. The areas she describes and prescribes for are: feet, ankles, knees, hips, lumbar spine, thoracic spine, cervical spine, shoulders, elbows and wrists. She explains in detail how each area works, what goes wrong and then describes the excercises to fix it. The book could have done with some more editing, it is a bit unclear at times, and more wordy than necessary. However, it is well worth the effort of decoding and abbreviating the info to suit your particular problem areas. It has totally improved my knees, thoracic spine and neck, more than any massages or other physio exercises I have had before, and understanding the mechanisms of dysfunction helps gain control of symptoms too.