Pains from Chinese New Year- How to deal with it?

Time flies! Chinese new year (CNY) is almost ended. For many people, CNY is a season for feasting and socialising. However there are some hidden pains involved in this celebration. Today we are going to discuss the pains from Chinese New Year activities and how are we going to deal with them.

Pains from Chinese New Year Activities

Pain from Spring Cleaning

Many people have the complaints all over the body during and after the spring cleaning, especially if there are lifting, bending, twisting and reaching involved. The back and shoulder injuries are the most common repeatitive musculoskeletal injuries that could happen during the spring cleaning. This is usually due to the chores like cleaning the floor, vacuuming and wiping actions. Check out this blogpost to understand on how to do housechores pain-free.

Pain from Cooking

Feasting is another key hightlight for CNY. Some of our patients have complaint of elbow and wrist pain due to suddenly prepare food and cook for a large number of people. This would happen due to the increased intensity and higer frequency of repeated movements such as chopping, holding the heavy pots and pans and stirring the food etc.

Pain from Visiting

Although there are some COVID social restrictions for this CNY , it still allows us to have 5 visitors per visit. This gives us the chances to sit and chit chat for long hour without being aware of our sitting posture. Most of us might sit on the unergonomic chair or on the floor for long hour and this may cause the back pain during the visitation.

Pain from Playing Mahjong and Cards

Another pain from Chinese New Year is where we play games during the visitation. Aside from visiting friends and relatives, playing mahjong and cards are the common activities we all would do during CNY. Prolonged sitting and keep looking down to the tiles or cards commonly cause us to have neck and back pain during the games.

How to Deal with the Pain?

If you have already experienced above-mentioned pains from Chinese New Years activitives, we hope the below advise would work on you!

Heat Therapy

Using heat pack or hot towel on the pain area could help in muscle relaxation and short term pain relief. Another easier way is just to get yourself a hot shower! It would help to loosen your tight muscles as well.

Self Massage

Using tennis ball or massage ball to massage in your muscles can be another way to soothe your pain. Foam rolling is also good to release your muscle tension too! Check out our previous blogpost on how to foam roll your tight muscles.

Moving around from time to time

If the pain annoys your while you have been in the awkward position for hours, the easiest way is to be more mobile! Try to move yourself around is the easiest way you should practise to relieve your pain.

Koh peh chia
Rehab Pilates Instructor

Peh Chia is our resident rehab pilates instructor. A keen sportsperson, she has developed a natural interest in the injuries that come from sports. While working in Singapore, she gained valuable experiences treating professional dancers and gymnastics athletes of Singapore. While practicing in private practice, her interest in pre and post natal physiotherapy was piqued as she finds women having difficulties maintaining an active lifestyle pre and post childbirth. She then pursued a STOTT Rehab Pilates Instructor certification in order to help with this group and women and also highlight her belief that prevention is a better way to handle injuries.