Archive for the 'Pain Relief-Muscle Relaxers' Category
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GENERAL CARE OF THE ADULT SPINE: MECHANICAL STRAIN ON THE NECK (REPETITIVE STRAIN INJURY) – USING COMPUTERSWhen using computers to excess you soon get degeneration of the discs -degeneration of the joints takes place much later. And it can be prevented. If you use a computer for more than six hours at a time you should try regularly, at least every other day, to massage the neck area and I would suggest that you yourself massage the jaws, the temples and the neck muscles. You have to do it on a regular basis. There is no way of avoiding this. Otherwise the problem just accumulates. People get panic attacks, terrific neck tension, they get tremendously stressed, all because of the tightening of the neck. Even the vertebral arteries, which feed the subconscious brain, can become restricted, causing what has come to be known in my clinic as the Ali Syndrome. This is a recognisable set of symptoms including fatigue, blurred vision, dizziness, nausea, short-term memory loss, confusion and lack of verbal expression, tinnitis, autoimmune disorders, loss of libido, menstrual dysfunctions in women, depression, disturbed sleep, craving for sugar, hyperventilation and palpitations, burning mouth syndrome, mood swings, allergies, poor immune system with frequent coughs and colds, impotence … Need I go on? You don’t want it, do you?*102\330\8*
It has to be said straightaway that any medical treatment for period pain will vary according to the doctor or clinic treating you and according to which particular hormone they think is causing the trouble. It would be lovely if someone could discover a magic pill, or’ one easy treatment that would just stop the pain wherever it was or whatever was causing it. But our body systems are just too complicated for an easy solution like that; so complicated in fact that we’re only just beginning to understand how they work. When the late great Dr Winnicott was asked what he thought about sex education in schools, he replied, ‘But we don’t even know why girls have periods.’ And he was right; we don’t. But at least, we are beginning to find out how we have them. And an intriguing business it is, with chemical messengers, or hormones, racing around our bloodstream virtually all through the month. The trouble is that there are so many of them, all different and all with a different part to play in the whole process. And any one of them could be at fault when the system goes wrong.
If we’re to understand what sort of treatments are currently being offered by doctors and clinics, it’s helpful to know a bit about how our systems work. Or at least to be able to identify the hormones doctors think are causing the trouble. So the next section is a potted history of what goes on inside a woman, month by month. If you’re squeamish, or you would prefer not to know, then skip the next bit. But if, like me, you’re fascinated that we should carry such a delicate, complicated, finely balanced miracle inside us — read on.
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It’s very upsetting to wake in the morning and find you have become a different person. Or to start the day feeling your usual self and then sense a horrible change taking place. Some women find that they are suddenly furiously angry with everything and everyone, including their husbands and children; others are irritable and snappy and find fault with everything, even things they know are trivial. Some are suddenly so tense, and have so much nervous energy, that they don’t know what to do with themselves. They can’t relax, sit down or stop for a minute; others are miserably depressed and withdrawn, with no hope and precious little energy. Whichever way your particular mood swings, the effect is to change your personality, which is very difficult to contend with. As one woman put it, ‘It’s like being bewitched.’
The sad thing is that it happens to so many women. And until quite recently, unless they or their relations happened to notice that their mood swings coincided with the approach of their periods, they often had the added misery of not knowing what on earth was the matter with them. Back in the sixties doctors were often unsympathetic to women patients who went to them asking for help because they were depressed or inexplicably irritable. They were told to ‘snap out of it’ or to ‘pull themselves together’—which was the one thing they couldn’t do. Fortunately, the climate of medical opinion is changing, due to the work of Dr Dalton and others, and there are now hospitals and clinics where you can get various medical treatments if your symptoms are very severe. So you are not so likely to be told that it’s ‘all in your mind’. And I hope you wouldn’t, take any notice if you were. There’s nothing the matter with your mind. You are certainly not mad, nor are you abnormal. You are not even unusual. There are thousands of women like you—about forty per cent of all women in Britain between fourteen and fifty-five years of age—if one excludes those on the Pill.
Steady relaxation can be the answer to mood swings, but I should warn you it rarely effects a miraculous cure overnight. It’s more likely to improve things by gradually cutting down the number of days when you suffer from your particular mood swing. You’ll probably improve month by month as the off days get fewer and fewer. In the meantime though, you and your partner, friends, relations and colleagues still have to live with your moods, if only for a little while. How can you cope?
For a start, take up the offer of any activity that sounds fun. So many of us think that play stops with our childhood, which is a great pity and can make for a dull life. This is the time of the month when a surprise outing can do you the most good; the time when we most need to dance and sing or play games or get out in the country for a day. The more pleasure there can be in your life, the better you’ll be able to cope with your moods.
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