Don't Take Sleep for Granted

Today I went back to the rheumatologist, where I found out I don't have an inflammatory disease. No Lupus, no rheumatoid arthritis, sjogrens, etc.

So that's good.

What it all seems to boil down to is sleep-deprivation. All the 3 or more months of "not good" sleep took its toll. The sleep problems were probably caused by pain I was having from a couple of injuries. Since I'm not much for taking over-the-counter pain relievers, I was just "gutting it out." The problem with that is the body is on alert all the time, stressed by the pain. This keeps you from sleeping deeply, which accumulates to exhaustion and then of course, you still have the pain.

I've been taking Tylenol or Advil at night before going to bed if I have any pain at all, no matter how slight. I've been doing that for about a month. I've been waking in the morning refreshed and the pain and fatigue has gradually disappeared as I've gotten more rest. At Adam's suggestion, I've also been taking some mega-doses of vitamins...D, Flax Oil (I'm changing that to Fish oil now because it has DHA & EPA, which have been shown to assist with inflammation), Magnesium and a multi-vitamin. All of those have done a lot to reduce inflammation in my body. I have what is called a "strongly positive ANA," which means I have positive anti-nuclear antibodies. Those antibodies go into overdrive and attack the body's own tissues. According to what I'm just beginning to learn (the hard way), when the body is not rested adequately, not fed properly, not assisted with injuries, not exercised regularly, then it goes into an "alert" mode. The body's immune system kicks in to help deal with whatever is wrong. But it can also go too far working on the bad stuff and start in on healthy tissues and systems, causing chronic pain and fatigue.

That's apparently what happened to me.

And I apparently accidentally fixed it. I corrected my sleep position by changing to a different pillow(Many, many thanks to Sarah for giving me her very expensive Tempur-pedic pillow! Only cost me a couple bottles of wine!). I calmed the body down by further decreasing my already fairly low intake of refined sugar and grains, fed it mega-doses of multi-vitamins, laid down when the body said to, and took anti-inflammatory medication at night for any pain, no matter how slight. I stuck with jazzercise, doing low-impact as much as needed, and added yoga and Qigong, as well as casual strolling walks with the dog.

So there you have it. It's all good!

Now. Learn from this. I’ve done all the hard learning for you!

Sucking up the Pain

I had an epiphany a few days ago. About pain. I read somewhere...and then right around the same time a friend told me...that I should not just suck up and deal with pain. It needs to be treated. The body is under stress when there is pain. Not just the mental stress, but also physical stress. If you let the body continue in pain it pretty much just wears it down.

I really should try to figure out where I read that.

I have never been one for popping pain medications like ibuprofen or Tylenol or anything else. It's not that I have any particular resistance to them, but I guess I think our society overuses them and I never want to be average! I've always held the belief that one should correct whatever it is that is causing the pain and then the pain will go away. And one should just deal with it until the correction is made.

But in the case of inflammatory pain, you really should take some medication for that.

Here's something I just figured out a couple of nights ago. I was telling my chiropractor that I like my new pillow with the sunken spot in the middle (it's for sleeping on your back, which I'm trying to teach myself to do), but I can only use it some of the times because I have this pain from the pressure on my spine from lying on my back. We both just went 'hmm...'

So Monday night I lay down on my back, a pillow under my knees, like I do every night and immediately the back pain just got too distracting. Instead of just swapping the pillows back out and turning to my side, I got up and took two Tylenol tablets.

Slept like a baby! And woke up refreshed, which I haven't in many months now. Apparently the pain in my body, while it hasn't been severe at night, has been enough to keep me from sleeping deeply enough to awake refreshed.

So last night I just popped two ibuprofen when I went to bed and here I am, feeling pretty good again this morning!

DUH!

Not Nuts

Call from internist's office. They are referring me to Rheumatology.
I had two very slight abnormalities on the blood work, which they might not have necessarily been concerned about, but with the symptoms I’m experiencing it’s wise to have a visit with a specialist. The two tests are for Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate(ESR) and Antinuclear Antibody Test (ANA).

Elevated ESR is an indicator that there is inflammation present. They put blood in a test tube, add something to keep it from clotting, and then wait to see how long it takes the red blood cells to separate from the plasma and fall to the bottom of the tube. If certain proteins cover red cells, these will stick to each other and cause the red cells to fall more quickly. So, a high ESR indicates that you have some inflammation, somewhere in the body.

ANA- First off, antibodies are proteins, produced by white blood cells, which normally circulate in the blood to defend against foreign invaders such as bacteria, viruses, and toxins. Autoantibodies, instead of acting against foreign invaders as normal antibodies do, attack the body's own cells. Antinuclear antibodies are a unique group of autoantibodies that have the ability to attack structures in the nucleus of cells. The nucleus of a cell contains genetic material referred to as DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). An ANA (antinuclear antibody) test can be used as part of the diagnostic process to detect certain autoimmune diseases.

Now, what does this mean? Not a lot at this point, except to say that if the ANA test were negative, we’d be very very sure I didn’t have Systemic Lupus Erythematosis (SLE). That’s because pretty much NO ONE with SLE has a negative ANA test. But about 95% of SLE patients have positive ANA tests

With positives on these, and with the symptoms, there is a POSSIBILITY of an inflammatory illness such as rheumatoid arthritis, SLE, or other autoimmune disorders. But it’s NOT ABSOLUTE. False positives can be caused by medications, although he did not ask me to change any of mine.

So. There you have it. I think I’m just relieved I’m not nuts. Or lazy.

Sucking my Blood

The visit to my internist yesterday went so fast my head almost spun. I described the pain, listing the various adjectives for different parts of the body. He manipulated a couple of my joints and sprung into action.

This morning I go in for blood work. He'll test for vitamin deficiencies, check my lipid profile, C-reactive protein (this tells about inflammation), and also look for any signs that the pain might be caused by my medications. We should have results next week.

If all of that checks out, then we'll explore the possibility of an inflammatory condition such as arthritis.

Fibromyalgia? "That's just a word used to describe anyone that has a lot of pain all over."

Vitamins

Today, with the chiropractor's advice, I am starting the following vitamins and these dosages:

Multivitamin-2/day
Vitamin D-4000 mg/day
Magnesium-400-1000 mg/day
Flax Oil-3000 mg/day

I'll write more about this tomorrow. Or the next day. Or whenever. (That's how this blog works) There's an expert and a theory behind it all.

Could There Be Something Else?

I'm hoping that by this time tomorrow I'll be writing here what a silly person I am. I'm hoping that in 24 hours I will have some questions answered and some concerns addressed.

I've been in nearly constant pain of some sort or other for several months now. It seems to have begun when I strained a muscle in my shoulder in October. Since then it's been pretty much one thing after another. But right now it doesn't seem like anything is strained or sprained or broken. Instead everything feels inflamed and ache-y. A deep, bone ache. An all-over inflammatory feeling in my joints and muscles. Waxing and waning. Mild and then severe. In more than a couple of areas.

I'm beginning to wonder if we should explore the idea that I might have an inflammatory condition like fibromyalgia or rheumatoid arthritis or lupus or something.

When I look back, I've even wondered if all that muscle tension I complained about last spring might have been the beginning.

So I've made an appointment with my internist again. I'll go in there and say, "I'm here to ask this question. It's a question I'm asking, but also my friends and family. Should we consider that I might have something other than menopause going on? Something in addition to menopause?"

And then we'll talk.

More thinking...

So. I've been thinking that I need to start being aware of depression stuff. Like the sleeping too much. During the day. Since I doubled the dose on the 3rd, the nighttime sleeping has improved. If I wake up in the night I drop right back off. I'm going to go back to half a dose of the Trazadone now because I suspect that I was so sleepy all day yesterday because I've been taking the full 50 mg each day since Christmas. I started out with half a dose when he first gave me the scrip, and only increased it to the full dose whenever the cyclic fatigue was coming on. But because I never seemed to snap out of the fatigue, I just kept taking the full dose. Now I'm starting to wonder if that full dose is contributing to my daytime fatigue. I took half last night and slept well and do feel less dopey today. But my body is tired.

I talked to a friend about the depression some more. And how worried I am about all the daytime napping I'm doing. Depression people do that. I've been doing that. But she reminded me that I was bonking around Christmas, then at New Year's I had this gastro-intestinal virus, and then last Thursday I doubled the anti-depressant. "Remember you were pretty tired and sleeping all the time when you first started taking that medication last March," she said. "Maybe you are reacting to the higher dose."

AHA! That's a lightbulb moment! And besides, my stomach is a little queasy too. So hey...I've decided to give myself until next Friday, Jan. 18 to sleep and rest and lay around all I want. If I'm still kind of out of it, I'll call for an appt with the doc.

It's good to have a plan. And friends whose brains you can borrow.