1290 Pain

Thursday, June 7, 2007

I've mentioned before that I have fibromyalgia. That combined with old badly healed back injuries means I have a constant low level of muscle grumbling or flashing fiery nerve pain somewhere in my body, every day.

Mostly I ignore it.

Occasionally it gets insistent.

It hasn't been as bad the past ten years, which I sort of attributed to lower levels of estrogen or something, but I noticed that sometimes it would flare up again. Like right now - my left palm is on fire, there's a twisty feeling in my lower right abdomen, the left thigh burns, and my left shoulder feels full of gravel.

I think I may have made a connection.

After Jay and I had been married a while, he gradually got me started with supplements, the same things he was taking (fat lot of good it did him...). I currently take mini-aspirin, calcium + Vit D, Vit C, Vit E, fish oil, magnesium, lecithin, and a multi-vitamin without iron. It seems like ever since I've been taking them, the pain level has been reduced.

Lately I've been traveling a bit more, and sometimes I forget to take the week-long pill container with me and then I neglect to start up again when I get home, or it runs out and I neglect to refill it.

Surprise. I'm beginning to notice that after a week without the supplements, I start to hurt again. Hmmmm.

I'm pretty sure it's not the mini-aspirin, because that's the one that runs out the fastest, and I often don't buy more until something else runs out.

It's not worth experimenting to see which may be controlling the whatever goes wrong. I'll just be more careful about being consistent about the whole program.

One place I've already definitely made a connection - because I take the fish oil and lecithin, henna won't stain my skin (well, it won't stay for more than two days). A guy doing henna tattoos at Rakkasah one year told me he'd noticed that, too, that lecithin and fish oil make the skin too oily (note - not oil glands kind of oily - individual cells kind of oily!) But more significantly, my skin is definitely dryer when I haven't been taking them. I noticed my face was very dry this morning.

Excuse me while I go fill the pill case.
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