http://www.thestar.com/life/health_w...eir_peril.html
By: Ian Harvey Special to the Star, Published on Tue Mar 04 2014
The last thing Canada’s First Lady of the Guitar Liona Boyd expected was to hurt herself by practicing too much.
“My middle finger on my right hand just wouldn’t behave,” recalls the world-acclaimed classical guitarist.
The symptoms started about a decade ago and it took three years to get a diagnosis of focal dystonia, a neurological condition in which the signals from the brain are distorted and corrupted en route and triggered by repetition of fine movements over time.
“It was like a knife through my heart,” said Boyd who has just released her 24th album, The Return … To Canada with Love, after retraining her muscles over six years to play again, and now tours with guitarist Michael Savona. “The guitar and playing was everything to me.”
Unlike arthritis, focal dystonia is not a disease, it’s a condition and differs in that there’s no physical damage as there is in carpal tunnel syndrome.
“The fact is I practised too much,” she sighs. “I would practise scales for hours, even just watching TV, putting a tissue under the strings to mute the sound. In a way, though, it’s been good. I now write songs and sing, which I never thought I could do.”
We don’t generally think of musicians as suffering career-ending injuries from their art, said John Chong, medical director of the Musicians’ Clinics of Canada, which operates facilities in Toronto and Hamilton, specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of occupational injuries suffered by musicians and performers.
But it’s all too common, said Chong, also president of the U.S.-based Performing Arts Medicine Association, and musicians are probably their own worst enemies.
“It’s don’t ask, don’t tell,” he said. “By the time they come to see us, they’re usually in big trouble.”
Hearing impairment, for example, is a serious issue but few players will admit losing the fine pitch sensitivity so critical to their career. It’s the physical injuries, however, that are mostly avoidable. Wrist, elbow or shoulder strains in string players, back and wrist issues with pianists are commonplace.
Legendary Genesis drummer and singer Phil Collins was forced into hiatus after admitting to hearing loss, dislocated vertebra and nerve damage in his hands, which prevents him gripping drumsticks. Shania Twain thought she’d never sing again when dysphonia caused her vocal cords to spasm, triggered by the stress of her 2008 marriage breakup.
Most tragic is Glenn Gould, the legendary Canadian pianist who stopped playing and withdrawn from public life because he was stricken with undiagnosed focal dystonia.
Chong sees artists with a range of medical issues — some, like cancer or MS aren’t related to their careers — but it’s the physical injuries which are most prevalent, especially among dancers as one might expect. More ominously, there’s also the higher risk of substance abuse among artists.
Like most artists, musicians are so focused on the next performance they ignore the pain warning of trouble.
“We’re now working on raising the awareness with young musicians,” he said. “We talk with them and use bio feedback techniques to help them to relax and deal with stress.”
Prevention is better than cure and students are counselled about posture, encouraged to stretch and take a break.
“They’re putting in 70 or 80 hours a week or more practising,” said Chong adding, like everyone else they should exercise and watch their diets. “The benefit of exercise is not just aerobic, it helps with stress and mood and cleans the crap out of your body. The likelihood of an orchestral player presenting with pain or muscle-skeletal injury affecting their playing over their lifetime is 84 per cent.”
Beating those odds is the difference between the “masters and disasters” as Chong describes them and lies in the way musicians approach their work.
Those who manage their stress, eat properly and stay physically active away from the rehearsal studio and stage go on to long careers.
Former Beatle Paul McCartney is a case in point. At 71, he’s still performing at the highest level and Chong puts it down to his diet — McCartney is a hardline vegetarian — and outlook.
“His work is all about love and he really believes it,” Chong said.