Fit at 50 and Beyond – Aches & Pains

About 2 months ago I was ou  fishing on a rocky creek. I slipped on rocks and hit my knee, giving it a bruise on the bone. No ligament damage, just a bruised bone. I kept up my routine of jogging my 3.75 miles every other day, but I found myself getting fatigued after this bruise. My left leg was working harder – I could tell as it would be sore from overuse the next day. And bruised bones take a few months to heal. I am just now starting to feel less fatigue as I run.

What occurred to me was that my body was out of whack from the overuse of the left leg. And, this imbalance, in addition to an imbalance created by all my garden digging, just plain messed up my back muscles as well. And this does seem to be more a muscle problem and not a nerve-induced sciatica problem. I don’t get the sciatica tingling, just a back pain in my lower right side if I sit in an overly soft chair.

If you have any thoughts, please post. Or send me an email at feedback@sciaticabackpainrelief.com .

Well, actually the fork isn’t causing the back pain in my lower right side, it is what I am doing with it! When I use it for a few hours, turning soil or loosening soil to pull up weeds, I will get this back pain in my lower right side that can wake me up or make it tough to sleep. This is not sciatica, but rather just muscle strain.

What to do? One thing I have tried that seems to help is change hands. It seems quite awkward, but if I grab the handle with my left hand in stead of the right, I can even out some of the muscle strain and thus reduce specific strain in an area.

Another solution? Get one of these. My uncle who is about 85 years old and grows produce to sell owns one of these. I think he has the right idea!

Cause of Tension Headaches
I get what many refer to as “tension headaches”. These are headaches that (for me) are caused by the following:

• Too much computer work resulting in tightness around the eyes, neck, and shoulders.
• A lot of stress, causing overall muscle tightness.
• Getting chilled while sleeping in my neck and shoulder area, resulting in tightness.

I think you can see the pattern here. Tightness of muscles in the neck and shoulder area causes these headaches.

Treatment of Tension Headaches: Remedies
Here is what I need to do in order to (hopefully) rid myself of these tension headaches:

• Apply an analgesic rub to my neck, head, and shoulders. Icy Hot works but an even better rub is one produced by Arbonne that contains hot garden pepper.
• Get some exercise or go for a jog after applying the rub. This will often loosen everything up nicely.
• Take a few ibuprofens, as a last resort. I try to avoid this if possible as ibuprofen does a number on my stomach and can give my a stomach ache to compliment my headache!

How to Prevent Tension Headaches

• Take breaks when working on a computer to give you eyes a rest.
• Avoid having a fan blow cold air over you when sleeping. Also, cover up your head and shoulder area with a small blanket.
• Avoid excessive amounts of caffeine.

I got an email from a fellow describing his back problems. He had a ruptured disc and stated he had spent over $3000 on medical treatments. He said it was hard to stand or sit for more than a few minutes without extreme pain. He decided to get the Trueback device and also told me about a product called the BackJoy orthotic support that he decided to try out. This is a device, that when you sit on it, rocks forward and supports both your back and buttocks muscles, resulting in a better seating posture. The person emailing me stated that he could now “sit for about 20 minutes with the backjoy with almost no pain”. This would be especially handy for chairs at an office or other place that offer no lower back support. Also, sitting on a bench at a school event, for example, can be hard on the back.  This device might help. At any rate, the person emailing me said it was very helpful to him when sitting.

I checked around a little to see if I could find any other unbiased opinions. At this backpain forum post on the BackJoy, a poster states “my lower back doesn’t have that achey feeling I used to get after sitting for a longish time”. So it seems like this device would be worth a try. Brand new, this Back Joy goes for about $80. There is no legitimate BackJoy Coupon that I could find to save you money on this price, but I did see this product listed at ebay for about $40.

This month’s Reader’s Digest featured an article titled Cancer Screening: Doing More Harm Than Good? that caught my eye since I have a 3rd cousin and an uncle in-law with stage 4 and stage 3 cancer. The gist of the article is that many cancers that are discovered early and treated were not of any danger. In fact, some disappeared on their own according to the article as they state: . . . screening tests raise red flags about cancers destined to loll about quietly, causing no problems. But there’s more. They also blare the alarm about cancers that would actually go away on their own — because, in fact, some cancers simply disappear. Another article on this subject is found at low risk prostrate cancer patients overtreated.

Wow!  This begs the question in my mind: Is it possible that the “successful treatments” touted by the medical community are simply over-treatments of cancers that posed no threat? And can one even theorize that the medical community, the pharmacuetical manufacturers, and the equipment manufacturers all have an interest in this? I know, it almost sounds like a nutty conspiracy theory, but logically it makes sense since there is a lot of money involved. Truthfully, I am not looking to spread bad rumors. Rather, I just want to know what to do in the event that myself or a family member gets diagnosed with cancer. After reading some of this information, I am thinking a second opinion would be of great value. Also wondering if I should go ahead with my colonoscopy scheduled next month.

Do you have any information on this?  Please comment.

Well, I knew that my back-pain-free days would end sooner or later. I now have a slight lower back pain on my left side. It is not sciatica however as it only resides in my lower back and does not run down my leg the way sciatica does. Also, it is on the side opposite side of where I always got sciatica.

I may have gotten this by sledding with my 6-yr old daughter. There were some bumps and we literally flew through the air on a few of them. Not the best for the back for a 50-year old man like myself! The pain is really not bad – I only feel it when I am walking about on our field through the snow where there is uneven footing. And I can still run my 3.75 miles just fine and have no problems sleeping.

Advice to those with back problems or anybody 50 or older – don’t go sledding down a hill with jumps!

Sometimes I just go a bit nuts.

Well, my sciatica back pain seems to have vanished entirely as of late. No self adjustments, no pain after driving (although I have not driven more than an hour at a time lately), no need to use my self-adjustment device. And even though I am not doing things like turning up a garden in these cold winter months to cause flare ups, I still do things like split wood or carry wood. And today, I hauled a bunch of 4″ diameter logs, two at a time over my shoulder. No problem.

I don’t know what is going on, but I am glad. The lower back pain is gone. For now.

A few weeks back I posted about my short-term memory tests and my switch to One-a-Day Vitamins that contained Ginkgo Biloba for “memory support”.  Shortly after doing the memory tests, I got my first cold in 13 months. Nothing serious – just a mild cold that lasted about a week. I can’t really say  that I know for sure that the switch in vitamins was a factor, but to be on the safe side, I switched back to Centrum Silver vitamins. I never had a cold while taking the Centrum Siver vitamins, and they are recommended by a lot of different people I talk to.

In another month or so, I plan on taking a Gingko Biloba supplement in addition to the Centrums and do some additional memory tests. The Centrum Silver vitamins do not contain Gingko Biloba.

It is interesting to note, this CNN Article  recommends that you stick with mainstream vitamins and they mention Centrum Silver as a good brand. Also, I have read that a Consumerlab.com study found that Centrum Silver was one of ten out of 21 brands tested that met quality standards and satisfied claims.

Introduction
I had been taking Centrum Silver Vitamins for quite a while but noticed the the One-a-Day Vitamins Men’s 50+ Advantage vitamins were on sale so I decided to give them a try. One of the ingredients of these One-a-Day’s that the Centrum’s did not have was “Ginkgo Biloba For Memory Support”.  To test whether or not this ingredient Ginko Biloba truly helped with short term memory loss, I decided to do my own test.

The Short Term Memory Test
Before starting on my One-a-Day Vitamins containing Ginko Biloba, I did a series of memory tests where I studied lists of random 2 digit sequences ranging in value from 11 to 99 for 1 minute and then took the lists away and tried to remember as many of the numbers as possible in any order. The lists were generated using the random sequence generation tool at random.org. I did this for 5 different lists before starting on the Gingko Biloba, and then repeated the test three weeks later with 4 new lists and a repeat of one of my first lists. In the three week period, I did not miss a single day without my Ginkgo Biloba.

Results of Short Term Memory Test
There was no difference in the before and after. None! In 5 tests conducted before and after, I remembered an average of 5.8 numbers per list on both! In fact, for the second set of trials, on the list repeated from the first trial I remembered the exact same number of sequences.

Typical List of 2-Digit Numbers

With respect to the “placebo effect”, I was actually hoping there would be improvement since I would very much like to be able to help combat memory loss. In spite of my hopes for some improvement, none was to be found.

Conclusions and Recommendations
My conclusion is that Ginkgo Biloba was not helpful in enhancing my short term memory, at least not in a 3-week time period of use. I will repeat these tests after a 3-month period of time to see if longer use of Gingko Biloba has any effect on short term memory loss.

It would be interesting to test long-term memory, however devising such a test might be a bit more challenging. The act of recollecting events that occurred long ago would affect the results.

Another test that might be interesting would be to see how memory of sequences or names a day after studying them is affected by the use of Ginkgo Biloba. This would duplicate the experience of forgetting a phone number or name the day after learning it. Such a “mid-range” memory test would be fairly simple to devise.

Other Memory Tests Done
Comprehensive Ginko Biloba memory tests done on 85+ year old test subjects,  documented at Science Daily, show mixed results. There was a slight improvement in memory, but not statistically significant. Also, Ginkgo Biloba seemed to slightly increase the chance of a mini-stroke. You can read about the Ginkgo Biloba Memory Loss Tests here.

You Are Officially Old Now!

Just 3 days ago I turned fifty. There were no sudden aches or pains nor did I suddenly get grey hair or lose my hair. Rather, those aches and pains and hair loss have been creeping up for many years now. What did happen on queue however was that my invitation to join AARP arrived in the mail, just hours after turning 50!

I am thankful that I still have very good health. I can run nearly 4 miles at a fairly good clip, even breaking into a sprint at times. What makes this good health so worthwhile is the fact that I can keep up with my kids and even play outdoor physical games with them.

In this last year, several close acquaintences have developed cancer. Also, one of my best friends passed on from Leukemia just a few years back. All of this makes me think I need to do all I can to keep up my immune system. It seems that cancer is just waiting to strike down many of us. Specifically, I am striving to get good nutrition, get plenty of exercise, try to sleep, and keep my stress down as much as possible.