WARNING: Hippy-allergic, run and hide; I'll come get you when it's over.
Josh, can you guess?
How is it that whenever we yak, we yak?
Yup, the sychronous orbit continues...
I completely lost the use of both hands due to RSI in my first job.
I put it down to lack of rest and overdoing it.
3-4 AM bedtimes after gigs and 6:30 AM starts in a factory stacking 140 tonnes of fruit juice a day seemed to do the trick.
For three years I was opening doors with my elbows, etc.
I've fought tendonitis since age 13, when I had to give up my swimming career.
After having won 12 solo golds in 12 state champ events, 6 in South Africa and 6 in Australia after only 18 months' training, in my mind I was on course towards becoming the "greatest" swimmer of all time.
The top (now TV) sports doctor in the country, Dr. Peter Larkin, couldn't help other than to offer Cortisone injections directly into the tendons.
Voltaren was new on the market back then, but it didn't enable me to get back in the pool.
You can imagine how it hurt to have my dreams swept out from under me.
If only the doc had asked about rest/sleep.
I'd just moved to Melbourne, and straight away the cold kept me awake.
We're talking 2-3 in the morning bedtime, getting up at 4:15 for the first of 2x2.5 hour sessions totalling 17+kms a day in which, according to all my coaches, I trained harder than anyone they'd ever seen. (We're talking olympic coaches).
Couple this with the pressures of early high shool and you had one stressed out dude.
I'm telling you this stuff so you can see the underlying environment responsible for both the tendonitis (swimming - shoulders) and RSI (140 tonnes of work - hands).
It seems to me the most critical factors are rest, water (hydration) and minerals.
Some will say rest cured 'em.
Others will say colloidal minerals did the trick (a classsic for tennis elbow).
Others still, although a minority, might say they dissolved acid crystals or mineral deposits by drinking lots of water or eating fruit.
When tissues are stressed and not given sufficient time to recover, the body sends toxins to the area concerned.
This is a strategy of the body in which infection and inflammation are used to increase the likelihood of a lesion occurring.
If you continue to facilitate the process, the inflammation and infection will work together until a crisis is achieved.
Think about it: What happens when you scratch?
The more you aggravate an area, the more toxins are sent there, the more inflamed, oxygen-starved, acid and infected it becomes, the more likely a lesion to the outside world is and instant detoxification possible.
Think pimples, rashes, boils, swellings, insect bites, user-induced stress-points and anything ending in "itis".
All these things provide a quick-release opportunity for the unloading of (unbeknowns to the owner (renter?) of the body) life-threatening (or at least shortening) toxins.
It pays to remember that the body takes a long-term view of our health, comfort being the least of its considerations!
Posture plays a role, as I think Spikey said. I'll bet something's changed here recently.
You may find the pain/numbness disappears as fast as it, well, appeared.
FWIW, due to heavy metal poisoning etc., my absorbtion of minerals has been compromised.
Due to insomnia, my rest has been too.
As you'd therefore expect, I'm still recovering from both injuries.
As you also might speculate, it doesn't take much to push me over the edge in any area of the body.
Lactic acid will build up quickly after only a few repetitions of a muscle action, anywhere in my body.
In this (tendon/carpel/joint) area as well as many others, I'm a walking bloody litmus test.
Lastly, as usual, I'm reluctant to panic or rush off to jump on the "professional health" conveyor belt.
If it's permanent solutions and strategies you want, you must start as one should with any health condition: Pinpoint where you're going wrong and correct it.
After all, that's the purpose of all health anomolies; they're messages from the body that we're not respecting its ways and imposing our own upon it, to its detriment.
Josh, I can't talk fast enough to convey all these priciples effectively, let alone type and make proper sense.
Central to it all though, is the assumption that you're designed perfectly, and only need feed your body the vibes, nutrition, rest and excercise it requires to get its job done.
Healing is part of that job! It wants to and attempts to daily.
We've just gotta get out of its way.
No "professional" solution I'm aware of for any ailment quite has this approach.
At best they may say,"We help the body to do such and such".
Er, the body doesn't want or need this help for its long term strategy; it simply needs the sufferer to get out of the way.
Another way of saying this is that it's not what you do, but what you don't do, that'll allow more of the intricate, little-understood processes to take place.
Man thinks he's so clever that he can somehow second-guess his own body's needs.
The more you discover about our design, the more absurd this approach and attitude reveals itself to be.
Remember: Don't panic. It achieves nothing, and isn't what your body's asking you to do!
Good luck and hang in there, man.
Nicky the hippy-hairy-howlin' monkey.
PS: PM me for more hippy-nonsense should you require it.
Will this synchronous, um, sync ever end?
Is it perma-sync?
PPS: For those who're alarmed at my apparent lack of faith in medicos and the like, consider that I've been through the ringer and the rounds to no avail.
Certain conditions prevent the addition of artificial chemicals to the body.
As this is basically the only means by which they can treat, not a single one has been able to help me through countless (many hundreds) illnesses, injuries and conditions, wildlife attacks(!) and deficiencies.
Bottom line: When you're
really scraping the barrel, those folks will kill you.
Hippy-allergics, it's safe to come out now. Carry on.
- but I do remember getting some numbness myself ..... and pins and needles, but for me it was mainly a sudden (almost overnight) complete loss of strength in hands.
is out of control. I am trying to feed two little kids on $60,000 a year in northern california. Basically I am the WORKING POOR.