Our bodies are good at doing what is tasked but loves external support to ease the load. These supports can keep the body from doing tasks that would negatively affect functionality. One simple aid is the use of a contour pillow, which provides a great support to the neck and shoulders during sleep.
Contour pillows are rounded on both sides, hence the word "contour." The rounded areas support your neck whether you sleep on your side or back (sleeping on your stomach and ‘corkscrewing’ your neck is a no-no!). By supporting your neck and removing pressure from the head and shoulders, contoured pillows help give you correct orthopaedic support and alignment, leading to a comfortable and truly rejuvenating sleep and reducing pains throughout the body.
Each person differs in terms of shape and size: Some of us have long necks, some short ones. Shoulder depth, neck shape and curve also vary. To meet these variables contour pillows come in low, medium and high profiles. As a guide:
• Low: Designed to support children from 5 years and adult back sleepers;
• Medium: Suits average physiques and those seeking a 'normal' sized pillow;
• High: Suits side sleeping, broader shouldered physiques.
Latex contour pillows are also a healthy option because bacteria and mildew can't live in the foam.
Showing posts with label pain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pain. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Action Change
These wise words from Bonnie Boots of www.painhealthnews.com:
Last month I unwisely did some yard work that would have been better left to a backhoe and managed to reanimate old back and knee injuries. The last month, then, has been one long battle against that dangerous part of myself that wants to slip into total immobility, swathed in heat packs and soothed with muscle relaxants.
I have a terror of that side of my self. Once before it lured me into letting 2 years of my life slip by.
All of us have that side. Pain, both physical and emotional, is the incantation that conjures it up. Once aroused, it begs us, even orders us to retreat, to cower, to give up and give in.
Consider this news story from March 2008: a 35-year old Kansas woman sat on the toilet at her boyfriend's house for two years until he finally called police for help.
Police said the boyfriend claimed the woman had gone into the bathroom, then refused to leave. He brought her food and water and begged her to come out, but she would not. He couldn't explain why he'd waited two years to call for help.
A police spokesman stated they found the woman, clothed in sweat pants and top, seated on the toilet with her pants down around her ankles. She was disoriented and her legs appeared to have atrophied. Because her skin had grown around the toilet seat, the seat had to be taken to the hospital with her, where it was surgically removed.
If you read this story in your newspaper, you may have shaken your head in disbelief or laughed at the incredible circumstances. How can we explain the actions of these two people, the woman and her boyfriend, going on this way, day after day for two years?
I don't believe this couple planned to spend two years of their lives waiting for her to come out of the bathroom. I imagine something happened that had her very upset. She ran to the bathroom and slammed the door and refused to come out. And an hour passed.
Then another hour passed, and before long the day was gone and evening came. Then it was late at night, and the man and the woman still waited, waited for something to happen. Waited for things to be different.
But the next day, things were still the same, and they were still waiting. Two years, waiting, while the sun rose and set seven hundred and thirty times, for things to change.
Here's one thing we know for sure about this incredible story-things only changed when the boyfriend overcame inertia and took action, when he finally picked up the phone to dial the police and ask for help.
It seems totally weird and incomprehensible. And yet how many of us are living our lives exactly the same way?
We may not be stuck on the toilet seat, but we're stuck on something that holds us back and keeps us from getting on with our lives.
And we're waiting, waiting for something to happen, for something to break the spell of whatever holds us back.
When I first became a pain patient, I was stuck in that strange state of suspended animation. Pain medication robbed me of my normal high energy and made me passive, and I passively waited for someone, some doctor or nurse or therapist, to make things different. I waited for two years.
I know how easy it is to get stuck, like a fly in amber, as days and then years pass and nothing ever changes. So I know this very well-- things only change when we overcome inertia and take action.
When I overcame my inertia, when I stopped waiting for someone else to make a difference in my life, I discovered something amazing. The person I'd been waiting for was me.
I got off the pot, so to speak, and kicked butt. I stopped taking narcotics and got out of the fog. I stopped being polite and passive. I changed doctors. Then I changed doctors again. And then I changed doctors again until I found professionals who could actually help me make progress.
I read everything I could find on pain and healing and I tried, within budget and reason, anything that promised results.
I don't know your story. I don't know what you're stuck on that holds you back. But I do know that if you want something to be different, if you want things to change, if you don't want next week or next month and next year to be just like today, you have to take action.
You have to do something different, talk to someone different, read something different, try something different. Commit yourself to change and change will come.
Takng sustained action will generate a wave of change, a wave that will pick you up and sweep you away from whatever it is you're stuck on, until one day you find yourself standing on a new shore, seeing the sun rise on a new day: a day unlike any you've ever lived. And everything will be different.
Resource: Bonnie Boots
http://www.pain-health-news.com/September-2008.htm
Last month I unwisely did some yard work that would have been better left to a backhoe and managed to reanimate old back and knee injuries. The last month, then, has been one long battle against that dangerous part of myself that wants to slip into total immobility, swathed in heat packs and soothed with muscle relaxants.
I have a terror of that side of my self. Once before it lured me into letting 2 years of my life slip by.
All of us have that side. Pain, both physical and emotional, is the incantation that conjures it up. Once aroused, it begs us, even orders us to retreat, to cower, to give up and give in.
Consider this news story from March 2008: a 35-year old Kansas woman sat on the toilet at her boyfriend's house for two years until he finally called police for help.
Police said the boyfriend claimed the woman had gone into the bathroom, then refused to leave. He brought her food and water and begged her to come out, but she would not. He couldn't explain why he'd waited two years to call for help.
A police spokesman stated they found the woman, clothed in sweat pants and top, seated on the toilet with her pants down around her ankles. She was disoriented and her legs appeared to have atrophied. Because her skin had grown around the toilet seat, the seat had to be taken to the hospital with her, where it was surgically removed.
If you read this story in your newspaper, you may have shaken your head in disbelief or laughed at the incredible circumstances. How can we explain the actions of these two people, the woman and her boyfriend, going on this way, day after day for two years?
I don't believe this couple planned to spend two years of their lives waiting for her to come out of the bathroom. I imagine something happened that had her very upset. She ran to the bathroom and slammed the door and refused to come out. And an hour passed.
Then another hour passed, and before long the day was gone and evening came. Then it was late at night, and the man and the woman still waited, waited for something to happen. Waited for things to be different.
But the next day, things were still the same, and they were still waiting. Two years, waiting, while the sun rose and set seven hundred and thirty times, for things to change.
Here's one thing we know for sure about this incredible story-things only changed when the boyfriend overcame inertia and took action, when he finally picked up the phone to dial the police and ask for help.
It seems totally weird and incomprehensible. And yet how many of us are living our lives exactly the same way?
We may not be stuck on the toilet seat, but we're stuck on something that holds us back and keeps us from getting on with our lives.
And we're waiting, waiting for something to happen, for something to break the spell of whatever holds us back.
When I first became a pain patient, I was stuck in that strange state of suspended animation. Pain medication robbed me of my normal high energy and made me passive, and I passively waited for someone, some doctor or nurse or therapist, to make things different. I waited for two years.
I know how easy it is to get stuck, like a fly in amber, as days and then years pass and nothing ever changes. So I know this very well-- things only change when we overcome inertia and take action.
When I overcame my inertia, when I stopped waiting for someone else to make a difference in my life, I discovered something amazing. The person I'd been waiting for was me.
I got off the pot, so to speak, and kicked butt. I stopped taking narcotics and got out of the fog. I stopped being polite and passive. I changed doctors. Then I changed doctors again. And then I changed doctors again until I found professionals who could actually help me make progress.
I read everything I could find on pain and healing and I tried, within budget and reason, anything that promised results.
I don't know your story. I don't know what you're stuck on that holds you back. But I do know that if you want something to be different, if you want things to change, if you don't want next week or next month and next year to be just like today, you have to take action.
You have to do something different, talk to someone different, read something different, try something different. Commit yourself to change and change will come.
Takng sustained action will generate a wave of change, a wave that will pick you up and sweep you away from whatever it is you're stuck on, until one day you find yourself standing on a new shore, seeing the sun rise on a new day: a day unlike any you've ever lived. And everything will be different.
Resource: Bonnie Boots
http://www.pain-health-news.com/September-2008.htm
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Tears Can Provide Powerful Pain Relief
If you suffer with chronic pain from any source, crying about it may offer a fast route to temporary relief.
You'd be surprised to see how many people cut themselves off from their emotions and refuse to cry. It's easy to understand this of men who grow up hearing "Big boys don't cry!" so steel themselves against tears, even during excruciating pain.
But it's also common in women, especially women who held jobs with managerial responsibility. That's because women who run their own business or have management positions in corporations often feel the same pressures men do to suppress honest emotions.
Suppressing emotions can cause problems-especially for people with chronic pain. Stress builds up. Muscles tighten. And pain increases. Cry, and the stress is released. "Tears," said author Albert Richard Smith, "are the safety valve of the heart when too much pressure is laid on it."
But don't brush this off by saying it's "just" stress relief. Crying is one of the systems nature gives us for reducing pain and the way it does it is so multifaceted as to seem almost magical.
The human brain is capable of releasing uncounted numbers of chemicals, and to release them in combinations that may number into the thousands. Crying is one of the signals that tell the brain it's time to begin releasing chemical compounds. And the compounds it chooses to release actually depend on the reason you are crying!
That's right-tears of joy actually have a different chemical composition then tears of pain.
Tears of pain induce the brain to release chemicals that help us relax, reduce stress and decrease our sensitivity to pain. That's why we often feel so much better after we cry.
There's a reason children sit down and sob when they cut a finger or scrape a knee. Children, still unshaped by social pressure, do what comes naturally. It's only as adults that we learn to let our conscious minds stand in the way of our unconscious and very instinctive abilities to heal ourselves.
Next time you feel the grip of pain, or feel overwhelmed by the havoc that pain has brought to your life, sit down and let yourself cry. Nature wants you to.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bonnie_Boots
You'd be surprised to see how many people cut themselves off from their emotions and refuse to cry. It's easy to understand this of men who grow up hearing "Big boys don't cry!" so steel themselves against tears, even during excruciating pain.
But it's also common in women, especially women who held jobs with managerial responsibility. That's because women who run their own business or have management positions in corporations often feel the same pressures men do to suppress honest emotions.
Suppressing emotions can cause problems-especially for people with chronic pain. Stress builds up. Muscles tighten. And pain increases. Cry, and the stress is released. "Tears," said author Albert Richard Smith, "are the safety valve of the heart when too much pressure is laid on it."
But don't brush this off by saying it's "just" stress relief. Crying is one of the systems nature gives us for reducing pain and the way it does it is so multifaceted as to seem almost magical.
The human brain is capable of releasing uncounted numbers of chemicals, and to release them in combinations that may number into the thousands. Crying is one of the signals that tell the brain it's time to begin releasing chemical compounds. And the compounds it chooses to release actually depend on the reason you are crying!
That's right-tears of joy actually have a different chemical composition then tears of pain.
Tears of pain induce the brain to release chemicals that help us relax, reduce stress and decrease our sensitivity to pain. That's why we often feel so much better after we cry.
There's a reason children sit down and sob when they cut a finger or scrape a knee. Children, still unshaped by social pressure, do what comes naturally. It's only as adults that we learn to let our conscious minds stand in the way of our unconscious and very instinctive abilities to heal ourselves.
Next time you feel the grip of pain, or feel overwhelmed by the havoc that pain has brought to your life, sit down and let yourself cry. Nature wants you to.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bonnie_Boots
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