Hi everyone!
We are here from Thrive Physical Therapy to help make your holidays a little more enjoyable.
We are bringing you 3 Tips to a Happier, Healthier Christmas.
Each year we have people that come into the office with ailments ranging from back pain from spending the day wrapping gifts all the way to injuries from falling through the ceiling while they were in the attic!
We want to make sure that doesn’t happen to you, and you’re able to make the most of you holidays by providing a few tips to keep you safe and healthy during the holidays!
Don’t let wrapping your gifts get you achy
Think about how you do your gift-wrapping. Does it look like you sitting on the floor surrounded by paper and packages? We sit there for hours as we try to finish decorating each package. Then, when we finally do attempt to get up from the floor, our body is filled with aches and pain, and sometimes even a bout of back pain is stirred up. Does this sound familiar?
We often have people that come into the office with back pain that started after wrapping gifts. So, here are some tips to keep it from happening to you.
If possible, use your kitchen table or a counter to stand or sit at and do your wrapping from there. If you don’t have the space to do this, that is ok. You can wrap them on the floor as usual but add rest breaks in where you can stand up and move around a little. This will keep you from getting stiff and achy.
Keep safe while getting your decorations
You may spend a lot of time on ladders putting up lights and going up and down them to get in the attic. We tend to not give them a second thought, but a lot of people are injured each year in falls either off of the ladder or even coming through the ceiling! Those large totes that we store all of our decorations in can be a challenge to get in and out of the attic.
Make sure that if you do have to go into the attic, you bring enough lighting up there so that you can stay on the right path. It is easy to make a wrong step and next thing you know, your leg has gone through the ceiling! It is OK to get help for you to bring those big boxes down. It makes things a lot easier to pass down the boxes to someone waiting below than for us to try to go down the stairs while carrying one of them.
Remember the reason we are celebrating
With so much going on during this time, it is easy for us to get distracted and miss out on the real reason we are celebrating. There is so much going on during the weeks leading to Christmas, that it is easy for us to over-schedule ourselves. Many of us become stressed and tend to not enjoy this time of year because they feel that there is always so much that needs to be done. Remember, it is OK to pass on some of the events. You can pick the ones that are most important to you and really take the time to enjoy them. Christmas is a time to be enjoyed and shared with those closest to you. It is meant to celebrate the birth of our Savior and never meant for it to bring stress and anxiety in our lives.
One thing you can do to overcome the feeling of being overwhelmed is to take a minute during the day, it’s best to do in the morning, and think about 3 things that you have to be grateful for. Gratitude is the cure for fear and anxiety. At times it is hard to remember all that we have to be thankful for when life demands so much from us.
So, there you have it. Just a few tips from us here at Thrive Physical Therapy, to make your holidays more enjoyable!