good days, bad days, and some days.
Well, my overall pain level and inflammation has gone down considerably, but it takes daily diligence to my anti-inflammatory routine to keep it going. What’s working for me, eating an anti-inflammatory diet. Some foods are known to increase inflammation, others to decrease it. I’m eating a really health clean low glycemic diet with fairly restricted calories and it seems to help a fair bit. I’m averaging anywhere from 900-1400 calories a day, and focusing on high protien and nutrition packed options, as well as supplementing when I need it. I’m taking omega 3 and 6 oils, flax seed oil as well. Also ginger tablets for inflammation.
The other thing I find key to managing my inflammation and pain is keeping my muscles and joints warm. We bought a heated mattress pad, which is nice because it has separate controls for both sides of the bed. I was using a small heater previously and it wasn’t working for us because Wolfe was getting too warm. Now my side of the bed can be cranked to the maximum to keep my joints and muscles toasty hot, and he can remain comfortable. It’s cut down on my needing to have a super hot bath right before bed, or sometimes getting up in the night to super heat myself.
The other major help has been sleeping through the night, which I chalk up to two things, keeping my body heated up quite hot with the mattress pad, and taking an ativan before going to bed. I had read a lot with fibromyalgia that there was a connection between sleep and pain, and I know I’ve been most nights waking up several times in the night with stiffness, pain, and discomfort. Using the heat, and knocking myself out for the night, seems to make a huge difference. I’ve been waking up with much less stiffness and pain.
I’ve now cut out all narcotic pain killers, and only have to take an anti-inflammatory rarely.
The other big critical key to managing the pain and inflammation seems to be gentle non joint stressing exercise, the more the better. Again, this is commonly found with fibromyalgia sufferers. I’ve been spending much more time at the gym/pool. I try to go everyday, and I always swim a minimum of an hour of laps, followed by a good heating up in the hot tub and sauna. Some days I swim up to 3 hours of laps, taking a break in between the hours to sauna for 15 minutes and keep my body hot. I used to have pain with walking, back pain from my muscles and joints in the back getting stressed and inflamed, and my ability to walk seems to be improving now too. Yesterday I walked the 3 kilometers to the pool. I used the elliptical trainer in the gym for 20 minutes, swam and hour of laps, and then did some resistance exercises in the pool for another half hour. Then I managed to browse Value Village for an hour after that! Though I didn’t find a thing to buy.
The good news, I can actually get about and do things off my couch and out of my bed, if they’re the right things, nothing that stresses joints or if I’m not having much inflammation that day. It’s a matter of listening to my body in the moment, and keep strengthening my supporting muscles around my joints while avoiding things that cause inflammation and pain.
The bad news, my IBS is acting up again, and I’m blocked up like crazy. Constipation… sucks. I barely respond to stool softeners. It seems when it gets bad like this I have to resort to extreme measures, high volumes of stool softeners, docusate sodium and lactulose… combined with massive amounts of natural fiber.. I eat a cup of berries everyday, sometimes 2 or 3 cups, as well as various other fruits, and usually fiber filled fresh veggies. I had beet soup the other night, and still, nothings moving. It looks like I’m going to have to step it up to the next level and do a regime of enemas and high fiber fruits, veggies, and juices and no other foods for a few days to see if I can clear things out and get things moving again.
My body, is a lemon.. lol, It has all kinds of imbalances and issues going on. My brain doesn’t create enough of the right hormones to keep my mood stable, so I have to take anti-depressants to normalize my chemistry. I’ve had to have my uterus removed the other year. I now have something going on with my auto-immune system, something causing nasty rheumatoid symptoms that don’t fit nicely in one category having the experts suspect I may have one or more related conditions, reactive arthritis and fibromyalgia topping the list. Then there is the IBS, irritable bowel syndrome that I’ve had for years. Which in years past would include horrible gut wrenching unbearably painful spastic cramps that would send me to emerge.. thankfully that symptom has passed, but now I deal with chronic constipation.
So, the body, clearly a lemon. I have to take the very best care of it, of my body and mind as I can, carefully maintaining balance with chemistry through proper medications and a really clean diet and strict exercise program. It’s become all consuming right now, focusing on ’self care’, but the reality is, if you’re body and mind aren’t working properly, if you don’t attend to that first, then nothing else can happen anyways.
I’m still going to miss facebook terribly. The timing’s bad. Wolfe just started working, meaning I’m alone at home more, and I don’t have a ‘hang out’ place online to go to… and I still don’t know if I want to pick up another one. We took on the kinkBC website, but can’t seem to do the maintenance needed to keep it up and running, maybe if that gets fixed, I could use that as my new hangout… after all, if I own the place, I can’t really get banned from it.. lol. Times like that where I wish I had more computer skills, but I am totally lost with that stuff.
Well, that’s it from me for today, today I’m struggling with facing the day.. a big part of me wants to just go back to bed and try to force sleep the day away, not a good thing to do. It’s cold, cold in the house for me, even though the heat is on and I’m dressed, too cold outside to try to make it to the gym on my own. the pain in my body hates the cold. If we had a hot tub, I’d be sitting in it right now.
I think I’m going to have a ‘poor me’ day, eating a bunch of inflammation causing maple fudge for breakfast, and see what’s on the television… some days, you’ve just got to be bad.