PublishedJul 24, 2016, 2:11 pm IST
UpdatedJul 24, 2016, 2:11 pm IST
Emma is undergoing user trials at a medical institution that offers sports injury rehabilitation and pain management.
 Emma, the robotic arm with a 3D-printed massage tip, can resolve some of the challenges faced by sports therapy clinics.

​Singapore: A robotic massage therapist developed by a Singapore-based start-up may help relieve muscle strains and injuries in future.
Emma, or Short for Expert Manipulative Massage Automation, a robotic arm with a 3D-printed massage tip, can resolve some of the challenges faced by sports therapy clinics, such as a shortage of trained therapists and a need to deliver high quality therapy consistently.
Developed by AiTreat, a start-up company founded by Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore) graduate Albert Zhang, Emma is undergoing user trials at a medical institution that offers sports injury rehabilitation and pain management.
"We have designed Emma as a clinically precise tool that can automatically carry out treatment for patients as prescribed by a physiotherapist or Chinese physician," said Zhang, who graduated in 2010 from NTU.
"This is probably the first such robot in the world developed specifically for use by Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) physicians and sports therapists," said Zhang. "Our aim is not to replace the therapists who are skilled in sports massage and acupoint therapy, but to improve productivity by enabling one therapist to treat multiple patients with the help of our robots," he said.
Emma has a user-friendly interface and recommended guidelines for various sports injuries. The robot consists of a single, 6-axis robotic arm capable of highly articulated movements, a 3D-stereoscopic camera for vision, and a customised, fully rotatable 3D-printed massage tip.
Several safety features which work in tandem with advanced pressure sensors are also in-built, to ensure the comfort and the safety of its patients.
Emma has treated 50 patients with different conditions, such as tennis elbows, stiff neck and shoulders, lower back pain, as well as muscle pulls.
To ensure a consistent quality of therapy, Emma has sensors and diagnostic functions that will measure the progress of the patient and the exact stiffness of a particular muscle or tendon.
These detailed diagnostics are uploaded to the cloud where the progress of each patient can be analysed and generated into a performance report. For the first time in TCM treatment, patients can accurately measure their recovery progress using precise empirical data.
This is extremely valuable for athletes, as their injuries, treatment and recovery can now be measured and monitored by their physician and therapists. In addition, the treatment programmes can be adjusted according to the progress of the patients' recovery.

FITNESS

By Marjie Gilliam - Contributing Writer, Dayton Daily News


Massage therapy is well-known for relieving stress and promoting relaxation. It also has been shown to provide a number of health and performance benefits for exercisers, including improving range of motion and muscle flexibility, and shortening recovery time between workouts.
Until most people experience massage, they typically don’t realize how tight and sore their muscles have become. When under stress, our muscles tense up, producing an achy feeling in the neck and back.
A few of the many types of massage include:
Myofascial Massage
This is a mild and gentle form of stretching that helps relieve muscle tissue from the abnormal grip of tight fascia (connective tissue). The fascia system is a densely woven sheet of connective tissue that lines and covers nearly every muscle, bone, nerve, vein and organ. Fascia tightens and becomes thicker when there is inflammation, trauma and tension.
Shiatsu
This form of massage is a combination of different techniques and applied with comfortable pressure using hands, knees elbows or feet, allowing the body to be gently stretched to loosen joints and muscles.
Swedish Massage
This is designed to energize through increased blood circulation and provides a better overall feeling. Typically a full body massage, it involves friction and joint rotations, kneading and tapping of the muscles and soft tissue using long strokes, enhancing circulation while promoting relaxation.
Craniosacral Therapy
CST is a gentle, hands-on method of evaluating and enhancing the functioning of a physiological body system called the craniosacral system — comprising the membranes and cerebrospinal fluid that surround and protect the brain and spinal cord. Using a soft touch generally no greater than 5 grams, or about the weight of a nickel, practitioners release restrictions in the craniosacral system to improve the functioning of the central nervous system.
MASSAGE AT HOME
To treat yourself to a massage at home, there are products on the market that allow you to do just that. Thera-Band has created a variety of high quality massagers suitable for home use, designed to help you work on specific muscle groups and areas of the body. For less than $10, the Thera-Band Foot Roller provides temporary relief from tired, achy feet associated with common conditions and excess activity. Compact enough to easily pack when traveling or tuck into your gym bag, the Thera-Band Foot Roller can be chilled or frozen to help reduce inflammation or pain, and is flexible, so conforms to the shape of the foot. For more information on Thera-Band massage products, visit www.performancehealth.com or www.thera-band.com.
WHEN TO CHECK WITH YOUR DOCTOR
There are some instances in which massage can be contraindicated (such as when joints are inflamed) and with certain forms of cancer, phlebitis, certain cardiac problems, infectious diseases and some skin conditions, so check with your doctor if in doubt. One cleared, your massage therapist can help determine which type of massage is right for you.

If you think drug overdoses are the scourge of inner city 'junkies,' think again

• By Andrea Atkins

From Grandparents.com
(This article appeared previously on Grandparents.com)
Americans all over the country are becoming addicted to opioids, a class of drug that is killing them in record numbers. There has been a 450 percent increase in the number of deaths among women since 1999, in particular, a statistic attributed to opioid use. And the death rate for middle-aged women has spiked enormously. How did this happen?
What Are Opiates?If you take Oxycodone, Percocet or Fentanyl — drugs all classified as opioid painkillers — the experience is “identical to taking heroin,” according to Dr. Andrew Kolodny, founder of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, and a senior scientist at the Brandeis Heller School for Social Policy and Management. And that’s just what hundreds of thousands of Americans are doing every day — legally. Many Americans are taking a painkiller that is addictive and that can potentially harm them if they find they can’t live without it.
Women are more likely to have chronic pain and be prescribed prescription pain relievers, be given higher doses and use them for longer time periods than men.
— Dr. Andrew Kolodny, Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing
“The U.S. is in the midst of a severe epidemic of opioid addiction,” Kolodny says. “Use of these drugs has increased very rapidly over the past 20 years — in fact, there’s been a 900 percent increase since 1997. That’s referring to both prescription opioids and heroin.”
There are 2.1 million people suffering substance use disorders related to opioid pain relievers, according to a report to Congress by Dr. Nora Volkow, director the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “There is an ongoing epidemic of prescription drug abuse and overdose deaths in this country,” she says.
Reasons for the Rise in AddictionThere are two prongs to this problem, Kolodny says: Younger Americans in their teens to early 30s encounter the drug when they have a sports injury or have their wisdom teeth removed. They wind up liking the effects of the pills, but can’t get more of them. Soon, they switch to heroin, which is much more available in places where it previously didn’t exist. They become addicted, and soon entire communities are mourning their death from drug overdoses.
But the other population suffering from addiction to these drugs is older Americans. “That group is almost entirely developing addiction through medical use,” Kolodny says. “When they get addicted, they don’t need to switch to heroin or look for drugs on the black market. They don’t have difficulty finding people who will keep them on a primary supply because they are complaining of pain and their doctors refer them to pain specialists, who keep on increasing the dose. The death rate is much higher in the older group than it is in the younger group.”
And the group that has seen the highest rise in death rates is middle-aged women. “That is the group that is more likely to visit doctors and more likely to complain about a chronic pain problem,” Kolodny adds.
Middle-Age Women Are Most at RiskAccording to Volkow, “Women are more likely to have chronic pain and be prescribed prescription pain relievers, be given higher doses and use them for longer time periods than men.” Evidence suggests, she adds, that for some reason, women may be more likely than men to take these drugs without a prescription to combat pain but also to treat other problems like anxiety or tension.
“But there may be other factors [that make women more vulnerable to the pernicious effects of the drugs] having to do with [biological] differences between men and women,” she says. “We know, for example, that women, in general, have a higher percent body fat and lower percent of body water. Body fat and water content can affect the volume distribution of certain drugs, such as opioids, and with chronic use, can lead to an increased load of drug in the fatty tissues, and potentially have a toxic effect.”
How Did This Happen?Opioids can be an important and effective drug if used correctly, Volkow says. So how did we get to a place where doctors are the starting point for the worst addiction crisis in American history? Kolodny lays blame at the feet of a “multi-faceted campaign by pharmaceutical companies that caused [doctors] to prescribe these drugs.”
In the 1990s, he explains, a powerful marketing campaign got under way to urge doctors to prescribe opioids for pain relief. “The messaging was very compelling,” says Kolodny.
The message said that people needn’t suffer pain, and that opioids did not cause addiction, except in very rare cases. The marketing material acknowledged that opioids would make patients feel sick if they suddenly stopped using the drug, calling it a “benign state” that shouldn’t be confused with addiction.
“They told us that opioids are a way to improve patients’ quality of life,” Kolodny says.
“But it’s not true that patients can be easily tapered off these drugs,” he adds. “It’s not true that it’s a benign state. It’s not true that addiction is rare. One of the reasons these drugs are so addictive is because of the physiological dependence. Patients feel real panic when they stop taking the drugs — it all led to the crisis that we’re dealing with today. It’s so severe that it’s having an impact on life expectancy in the United States, especially among women,” Kolodny says.
Volkow also faults education among physicians who have been poorly trained in pain management. Some physicians, she says, “may find prescribing opioids to be the easiest and least expensive course for addressing pain.”
The Addiction Born of Pain and Societal ProblemsHeather Healey, director of the Employee Assistance Program Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO, says that aside from doctors pushing opioids, our society conspires to lead people — especially women — to addictive behavior by failing to provide the support they need. Employers expect them to get back to work quickly after an injury. Insurance companies pay for medications, but often not for alternative treatments like yoga, meditation or physical therapy. And we have come to believe in our doctors as infallible.
“Everyone is put on narcotics,” says Healey, an addiction expert. “There is a time and a place for narcotics — but we don’t challenge our doctors, we just follow orders,” she says. “We’ve gotten so desensitized to taking medication. We think it’s an easy solution. But we’ve become numb to the risks associated with it.”
How Opioids Can Hurt YouOpioids attach to receptors in the brain, spinal cord, GI tract and other organs and reduce the perception of pain in the body, Volkow says. One of the main dangers of opioids is the user’s quick progression to “tolerance” of the medication.
“With time, your body gets acclimated to the effects of the drugs. You override acclimation by taking more,” explains Healey. “That’s the vicious cycle, and depending on how long you use it, it is the exact same drug effect that’s used with anesthesia. It’s how you cannot feel pain from a knife slicing you open during surgery, but you keep breathing while the operation goes on. Opioids cause respiratory depression. We don’t think about breathing on a day-to-day basis, but the number one cause of death in opioid use is respiratory depression. It causes your breathing to stop. It puts the back of your brain to sleep and literally puts your breathing to sleep.”
Protect Yourself and Your Loved OnesThe first step to reducing this problem across the country is to reduce the availability of opioids and limit their use. But Volkow points out that while efforts have begun to make that happen, the availability of heroin has been increasing.
Experts are not sure whether increased supply or increased demand is to blame. Either way, people have reported choosing heroin because it is cheaper, more available and provides an even better high, Volkow adds. “In a recent survey of people in treatment for opioid addiction, almost all — 94 percent — said they chose to use heroin because prescription opioids were ‘far more expensive and harder to obtain,’” says Volkow.
Still, if you or someone you know is battling these drugs, you can get help. Four tips:

• Recognize when you are addicted  “If you are in the cycle of taking medication and finding yourself needing to increase the dose because you’re managing chronic pain, that is a signal that you need to talk to someone who is an addiction expert to help you find ways to manage pain other than a pill,” Healey says. If you have been on your pills for more than two months, you’re moving into a dangerous situation, and should seek help from someone other than the doctor who prescribed them to you, she added.
• Seek help through your workplace  If you’re employed, check out your Employee Assistance Program to get an evaluation and understand the options available to you. Or, you can contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to get started or call 800-622-HELP 24 hours a day.
• Seek alternative treatments  Drugs such as Methadone, Buprenorphine and Naltrexone can be effective ways to wean heroin or opioid users away from the drug (when part of an addiction treatment program), according to Volkow.
• Understand that addiction is a chronic disease  You don’t go for treatment once, but rather you must commit for a long haul and be ready to face a long road to recovery.

Avoid the Opioid Trap to Begin WithIf you have chronic pain and your doctor prescribes opioids, ask about other options.
“Many people don’t think of medication as a drug of abuse,” Healey says. “They think of it as a drug of use when they are following doctor’s orders.” But the Centers for Disease Control recently issued new guidelines for treating pain, recommending that doctors start with the lowest pain relief possible.
This article is reprinted with permission. © 2016 Grandparents.com. All Rights Reserved.

Leg discomfort can knock you off your feet and it should never be ignored

• By Winnie YuHealth & Wellness Writer

Aching calves, burning legs, numbness in the feet — pain and discomfort in the lower extremities is a common complaint that sends many of us to our doctors seeking relief.
But unless the cause is something obvious, like a fall, pinpointing the source may require some medical detective work. Trying to tough it out, though, will not get you any closer to the answers.
“Leg pain that comes on acutely with a bang, is severe and doesn’t resolve within minutes probably needs to be seen right away,” as it could be a sign of a more serious condition, says Dr. Benjamin Wedro, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin and an emergency physician at Gundersen Medical Center in Lacrosse, Wis. “There’s no trophy for suffering.”
Here are some of the potential causes of leg and foot pain:
Blood Vessel Distress Pain that occurs when walking or exercising may be the result of claudication or decreased blood supply to the legs. This condition is most often a symptom of peripheral arterial disease, or PAD, a narrowing of the arteries that deliver blood to your limbs, typically caused by the buildup of plaque or fatty deposits. Smoking, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and obesity are major risk factors for PAD.
“The leg pain from PAD tends to occur when you’re active,” says John Fesperman, a family nurse practitioner at Duke Primary Care in North Carolina. “When you’re active, muscles need more blood. The lack of adequate blood triggers pain, which is known as intermittent claudication. Once you stop moving, the pain usually disappears.”
Deep vein thrombosis, or DVT, a blood clot in a deep vein that develops after extended periods of inactivity, can also cause major leg pain. Long flights or car rides make it difficult for the leg to return blood back to the heart. If that blood return slows or stops, it can create a clot within the vein. And if part of a clot breaks off and travels to the lungs, it can cause a pulmonary embolism, a serious and potentially fatal blockage of blood flow to the lungs.
DVT usually occurs in only one leg, Wedro says, causing it to swell and turn a bluish hue. “The onset of pain is gradual and tends to occur over a course of hours,” he says.
Peripheral NeuropathyIn some people, leg and foot (and sometimes arm and hand) pain can be the result of neuropathy, a disorder of the peripheral motor, sensory and autonomic nerves that connect the spinal cord to our muscles, skin and internal organs. Neuropathy can cause numbness, tingling and a heavy sensation. “It usually starts in the feet and may cause a burning sensation in the legs,” Fesperman says. In some cases, people may lose their ability to feel sensation in their legs, which can put them at risk for injury and infection.
Neuropathy can be brought on by many factors, including infection, toxins and the effects of alcoholism, butdiabetes is the most common cause. According to the Neuropathy Association, approximately 60 to 70 percent of people with diabetes will at some point develop peripheral neuropathy. It can also affect people who havepre-diabetes and may not be experiencing any other diabetic symptoms.
Electrolyte ImbalanceHealthy muscle function depends on nerves being supported by a well-balanced mix of electrolytes — minerals like sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium that have an electric charge. Electrolytes transmit signals that support nerve, heart and muscle function, and affect the amount of water in your body as well.
But certain medications; dehydration; and conditions like diarrhea and kidney disease can alter your electrolyte balance. When electrolyte levels become too low, it can cause leg pain. For example, when sodium, which attracts water to cells, is depleted, cells straining to compensate for the lack of fluid can bring on painful cramps.
Diuretics prescribed to control blood pressure are the most common culprits, Fesperman says, because they can deplete electrolytes in the blood. “Potassium and calcium mediate muscle contraction,” he says. “An imbalance in either or both can cause muscle cramping.”
By reducing blood flow, dehydration can cause electrolyte imbalance, and cramps, as well. Likewise, if you drink too much water, you can flush out too many electrolytes.
Back ProblemsConditions that affect your back often lead to pain in the legs as well. Spinal stenosis, in which the spinal canal gradually narrows, pressuring the nerves, usually affects people over 50 and can be caused by arthritis, scoliosis or spinal injury. The pressure can impinge on nerve roots as they leave the spinal cord to form the sciatic nerve, the body’s largest. The irritated nerves can cause significant pain.
Sciatica, a painful inflammation of the sciatic nerve, is typically experienced on one side of the body, and can travel from your lower back down your leg to your feet or even toes. Sciatica is difficult to diagnose and sometimes goes away on its own. It can be brought on by spinal stenosis.
“Sciatic and spinal conditions may come on gradually over time but may also have an acute onset,” Wedro says. “Over time, what had been tolerable becomes an acute issue. Sciatic nerve inflammation caused by changes in the back, such as arthritis, muscle spasm or injury, may radiate into the buttocks and down the leg.”
If the leg pain is accompanied by the loss of bladder or bowel control or numbness near the anus or vagina, seek emergency care immediately. You may have cauda equina syndrome, a rare disorder affecting the nerve roots at the lower end of the spine. Without immediate treatment, the spinal cord can shut down and you may develop permanent paralysis.
ArthritisThere are many types of arthritis. Osteoarthritis, the most common form, breaks down the cartilage in your joints, causing a buildup of painful bone spurs, cartilage loss, inflammation or soreness. Rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease, attacks the lining of the joints, also causing inflammation and pain.
Although arthritis is a joint disease, the pain it causes can be felt in the surrounding leg and foot muscles. “Any joint under stress can cause pain,” Wedro says. “The pain is within the joints. But the muscles around it try to protect it and you can go into spasms and get secondary muscle pain.”
Getting Treatment for Leg PainThe appropriate treatment for leg pain depends on the underlying cause. Diabetics may need to improve their blood glucose control to prevent diabetic neuropathy, while arthritis sufferers may need medication or surgery.
“All treatments aim for long-term control of symptoms,” Wedro says. “There may not be one cocktail that works for everybody. It all depends on what has caused the leg pain. It will be trial and error for you and your doctor to find the treatment that works.”
The bottom line? Take all leg and foot discomfort seriously. “Pain means part of the body isn’t working right,” Wedro says. “The problem might be a disaster that is life- or limb-threatening, or it may be an inconvenience that might resolve with a little time and care. But if you have pain, see your doctor. Never dismiss it.”
© Twin Cities Public Television - 2016. All rights reserved.

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