• Lower right side back and hip pain is gone. It disappeared shortly after I started taking these supplements.
• My sleep problems seem to have vanished. Read my sleep problem posts to see what I am talking about here.  No stiffness in the mornings. No early morning aches or pains to wake me. No problems sleeping on my shoulder.
• Little or no back pains of any type. And I have done some sort of foolish things (for a 51 year old) in the last 6 months, like play full-court basketball with 16-year old kids for 2+ hours or move a tree weighing hundreds of pounds by myself. We will see if this holds up over the summer.

Interestingly enough, I recently read an article in Reader’s Digest titled 5 Vitamin Truths and Lies where the only vitamin they suggest has any merit as a supplement is vitamin D. I disagree with their conclusion that Vitamin C has no value in preventing colds as Vitamin C continues to help me avoid colds that every other member of my family of 7 gets. It is almost 3 years now that I have observed a greatly reduced frequency of colds coinciding with my taking Vitamin C in both natural and supplemental form. I would agree with the article’s conclusion that taking mega-doses of Vitamin C after one already has a cold is fairly useless since I had tried this myself with no success years back in my “sick days”.

My recommendations: Take a Calcium and Vitamin D supplement daily. Also, exercise daily, eat healthy, take a multivitamin, and keep swigging down the orange juice.

So what happened?  All I can think of is that I have not been sitting in my basement office chair for long periods like I was last year and even last summer. My work assignment was a special project that I worked on from home. Now, I am back at the office, commuting, sitting in my office chair, and also doing a fair amount of moving around and standing. So I go through a variety of sitting, standing, and walking motions rather than sit, sit, sit in the same chair. Actually, I believe I have read that it is a good idea to take breaks from constant sitting in the same position, so perhaps this new variety of movement and sitting position is helping.  As a side note, my running is going better than ever as well. I run 3.75 miles every other day at a pace of between 7 and 8 minutes a mile.

So if you are having back pain, try a variety of chairs, and take frequent breaks. It could prove to be quite helpful.

So what is in these beans? According to whfoods.com, green beans have Vitamin K, Vitamin C, Manganese, and Vitamin A in fairly large quantities, as well as a whole host of other nutrients. Furthermore, whfoods.com states that these vitamins are at optimum levels in beans that are uncooked.

Vitamin K, at least at this source, may possibly be linked to sleeping better. At any rate, fresh green beans provide an ample supply of a good variety of natural vitamins while resulting in very few calories added to your diet.

So grow some beans in your back yard or patio! Pole beans can be grown in a very small area with several hills providing enough fresh beans for all your needs. All you need to do is get a bag or two of compost from your home store that you mix into the ground or very large planters, sow about 6-12 pole bean seeds in each hill, water, and provide climbing poles or a trellis as the beans get larger.

Rubbed my back with Arbonne Herbal Muscle Massage Gel, which contains menthol, capsaicin (hot peppers), methyl salicylate and eucalyptus. This is basically Icy Hot with a hot pepper kick. (I don’t sell Arbonne by the way!)

Also, I used my Trueback for a few minutes. Read here about how I use the True Back decompression device.

The result was I had no stiffness at all for the next few days! And the next night, I slept 9 hours! (9 hours beats 5 any day)

So which helped? The back rub cream, or the Trueback? I suspect what I have going on here in my back is just simple old age stiffness (arthritic?) and the back rub cream is helping. But just to know, I will try the back rub cream alone and also try the Trueback alone the next time I get a stiff back in the morning – somehow I know that there are more stiff back mornings to come.

The stiffness and soreness persisted, even after taking a few ibuprofens at about 9AM. So I am thinking this was not an inflammation pinching a nerve, but just simply some stiffness. It was extremely damp – dew was forming on the trees and falling off like rain. In fact, I thought it was raining while sleeping in the tent. Would the dampness cause this? At any rate, the stiffness went away by early afternoon, and last night I slept fine back at home.

Our friends camped in a pop-up camper in nice dry beds well off the ground. Now I know why.

I am not sure what caused this: I slept on my stomach, which is not a natural way for me to sleep. Also, however, I played several games of volleyball yesterday evening, going for broke as usual, so perhaps that was the cause.

At any rate, I do not believe that I could have slept through the night on a regular mattress. The 4″ foam/memory foam pad came through again! And I did not take any pain killers or ibuprofen today – the stiffness and pain quickly left on its own.

Get this pad if you can’t sleep. Seriously!

It’s like sleeping on a cloud!

What muddies this whole issue however, is the fact that I also started taking vitamins on the same day I got the mattress pad. And, I feel better overall, night and day.

The mattress is here to stay. And, I will continue with the comprehensive Arbonne vitamins, taking only 1 of the recommended 2 packs of 6 vitamins per day. As a side note, I have only been taking 1 of the suggested 2 vitamin packs from the start.

So, my wife and I picked up our “Anniversary Present” yesterday. A 4″ thick mattress pad made up of 1.5″ of memory foam and 2.5″ of regular open cell foam.

After 1 night I slept a little better. Still tossed and turned but at least did not wake up with the aches in the shoulders. Hoping this can combat the sleep deprivation I have been experiencing.