Pain, Pain, Go Away!

How do you recognize a bad situation when it's like the air you breathe? Literally is the air you breathe? A couple of really bad days, years apart, finally clued me in that cooking fumes were giving me sinus headaches, which led to neck pain. So I ordered a range hood and stopped cooking onions in the meantime. Sinus problems and neck pain--absent. To the best of my recollection, no house I ever lived in (until last week) had a properly working range hood, or any range hood. My previous house had a small, east-facing window next to the stove that might have helped. But when I lived in a dorm, I don't think I ever had a cold, and the only sinus pain I remember from that time was during a bad allergy season. I put in a range hood last weekend. It's ductless--it doesn't vent to the outside, but filters the air through charcoal filters and recirculates it back into the kitchen. For its maiden meal, I sautéed peppers, onions and zucchini. I could smell the peppers cooking,...

Sometimes it takes a lousy day to make you figure out what's wrong. And today was a lousy day. First, it took an half an hour to get through the line at the understaffed Kroger. When I came home, the house still smelled like onions from canning chili the day before, and my headache and sore neck started getting worse. I ate some leftover chili and roused myself to go shop for a new washer, since mine is leaking from the bottom, as the plumber I called for a clogged drain discovered. An appliance repairman on YouTube said washers are badly built nowadays; I bought a brand unlikely to break down for a good seven years or so. It set me back three times what I paid in the 90s for a Kenmore that lasted at least 20 years. There was no use shopping for a used one here in Indianapolis: people here use appliances until they're worn out. By mid-afternoon, I was back home and took some Mucinex for my sinus pain...and realized I'd felt OK while I was out shopping. It was like Christmas...

Dr. Google--or rather, Dr. YouTube--has come to my rescue again. This morning I was in terrible pain at the base of my skull. I don't know what caused it, but I was miserable and nothing was helping. Finally, I did what I any sensible person should do: google it.  Up came a 10-minute video from a chiropractor promising instant relief. What? Chiropractors normally schedule several visits. Nevertheless, I got a spoon and some lotion and got the promised relief.

I may have found a reason I have a lot of ups and downs in how I feel: energetic sometimes, then sluggish; feeling great, then slowed down by stomach aches, neck pains and headaches. It reminds me of when I felt so awful I ended up in an ambulance after drinking almond milk that had carrageenan . Carrageenan is a emulsifier. I looked at the cream cheese I'd been using to make cheesecake. (I love low-carb--dessert for breakfast and dip for dinner.) It all had locust bean gum: an emulsifier.  I didn't feel anything until I'd been eating the stuff for a few weeks, and then every time I had some cream cheese, it felt like it was sitting on my stomach and I didn't feel like doing anything. So maybe it's cumulative. After a few days without it, I'm starting to feel back to normal.  These are your guts on emulsifiers. Photo from Pexels . Dr. William Davis says, "Emulsifiers are added to processed foods to keep the ingredients mixed and to prevent separation....The...

I'm still in the middle of insulating my parents' attic. I've spent so much time at my parents' house that my father thinks I live there. It's a slog, but I'll say one thing for it: it's a grueling workout, and after doing it Tuesday and Saturday, along with yoga on Monday and karate on Friday, I felt wonderful Saturday. It's like the exercise does something renewing, anti-depressing, like I'd spent a day in the sun. Then came Sunday. My neck hurt, even after six aspirin. It was time to start working smarter on the attic, not just harder. The hardest part of insulating the attic is getting the second layer of insulation going crosswise over the first layer. Another problem is that the attic's trusses are 24" apart, not the usual 16," which is about how wide the insulation is. Lying in bed (where Madonna says she gets her best ideas), I wondered if I could lay down insulation between the joists and then lay down a solid layer on top, ...

This past month or so, I've had TMJ headaches in the morning, along with some mild stomach issues and acne the past week or so. I think it's muscle memory from years ago, back when I wore a night guard for TMJ pain. Since getting my braces off and getting dental implant in early June, I've been wearing an upper retainer at night. When I wear it to bed, it reminds me of the old upper retainer I used to wear when I was grinding my teeth some years ago after a car wreck. I think I've started grinding my teeth at night again. I wasn't grinding my teeth just before I got my implant, when I was wearing a retainer during the day. I'm not grinding my teeth now, wearing my retainer after dinner and before bed, as my orthodontist recommended. Since I haven't worn my retainer for a few nights, my headaches and neck pain are gone. My skin is clearing up, too. (Inflammation can become systemic and affect other parts of the body.) ***** The toe I stubbed a month ...

As of this month, I've been wheat-free (for the most part) for a year, and as of February, low-carb for one year. I'm also approaching another important anniversary: on February 8, it will have been one year since I saw a doctor for a medical problem. Coincidence? No. Up until mid-February last year, I saw my chiropractor for aches and pains in my neck and shoulders. A couple of weeks after my last appointment, I was well enough to skip the treatments for good. I recently thought of seeing my chiropractor again for a minor neck injury. While lifting weights, my neck felt strained, but being stubborn, I kept on and ended up in pain. There was a knot on my spine and a dip just above it, like a vertibrae had tilted on the x axis. It was painful to look left, tilt my head or do the Indian dance move where you slide your head left and right. Having had good results with my neck and shoulder healing on their own after I changed my diet, I decided to see if this injury would do the ...

What if you had severe, chronic neck pain and your doctor didn't have a clue what to do for you? That was the place I was in during my early 30s: typing was agony, I couldn't press the Dictaphone buttons with my left hand hard enough to engage them, and I was too stiff to shimmy in dance class. Most of what I recall of an outdoor performance of a Shakespeare play of that time (the one where they were stuck on an island) regards squirming around trying to get comfortable. (If you were sitting behind me, I apologize.) A friend referred me to a chiropractor, who diagnosed two pinched nerves in my neck and between my shoulders. Nothing was torn or fractured, and IME, when that's the case, doctors who practice traditional Western medicine won't be able to diagnose anything. That's not to say you shouldn't see an M.D. If something is torn or broken, they can help where a chiropractor and the treatments I'm going to talk about cannot. After several chiropractic tre...

Years ago, I had suffered such bad and frequent headaches that I saw a doctor--something I rarely did. He asked me what my complaint was, I said it was headaches, and he referred me to a hospital to get a $700 scan. Not having $700 or health insurance, the headaches continued. I've since read that some doctors get a referral fee from hospitals when they send patients there. I suppose that even making a pretense of trying to diagnose the cause of my headaches might have cost him his kickback. I've since found five causes of my headaches, though I doubt anything would have turned up on an MRI. Sinus pressure. Sinus headaches are behind the eyes, in the cheeks and sometimes in the upper teeth. I take Sudafed PE for these, as often as directed. Acupressure at the points beside my nostrils helps, too. TMJ. This can feel like a sinus headache. If relaxing my jaw for a few minutes helps, I know it's at least partly from carrying tension there. I put in my splint, take ibuprofin, ...