Archive for October, 2008
Flare Up Plan For Pain
Flare Up Plan For Pain
1. Firstly- don’t panic
Stop what you’re doing and take charge of the situation. STOP all those
negative thoughts. I am in charge here. I know what to do. I can cope
with this situation with my flare-up plan.
2. Your breath is the key to pain relief. Slow, regular breathing from the
abdomen is calming and relaxing. It helps to release tension and pain.
3. Focus on the positive aspects of how to help yourself. Change negative
thoughts into positive thoughts.
Acknowledge that you may feel bad, but you know it will pass and you can
cope.Repeat affirmations- read or make affirmation cards. Use them hourly.
4. Be patient . Stop battling. Accept the situation and allow it to take
course.
Go with it………..drift through time…..time heals.
5. Prioritise your tasks. Pace yourself. Break up tasks into small
segments. Rest in between. Cut down activities until the flareup settles.
Be kind to yourself. Sat “no” to any excessive demands upon you until you
are feeling better.
6. Make time for extra relaxation,visialisation and/or meditation sessions.
Find suitable tapes.
7. Talk yourself through the situation and idnetify your fears. Write them
down and rationalise them. Talk it over with someone else…talk to your
friends. Lie down no longer than 18 hours. Bed rest weakens muscles.
8. Only go to bed if absolutely necessary and if the pain is so severe you
can stay up.
9. Have hot baths if they help ease the pain. Use alternate hot and cold ice
packs on the painful site.
10. Void resting to much and keep active as possible.
11. Try to stay involved in the day to day activities in your household.
focu s on what you can do and not what you can’t do
Elimination Diet-Interstitial Cystitis
Grains:
Only fresh whole wheat bread with no preservatives (got it at a bakery thrift shop-they made it for a healthfood line) it goes bad quickly, as it only had the wheat, salt, water and honey.
Product 19 Cereal
Imported Italian pastas
(I still can’t eat american pasta, it is so full of preservatives it makes the water brown!) Steamed Rice
No Fruit was tolerable at all
Any fresh vegetables, which I bought at a natural store to avoid chemical enhancers
(If you live near a farm, get the following there:)
Farm Fresh Eggs
(my farmer gives the hens all natural grain with marigolds) Farm Fresh Milk
(in the bottle, my farm only puts vitamin A and D in it, the cows have not antibiotics and their utters are rested periodically, they actually rotate and have vacations, lol) Butter
Cheese
(no artificial fillers, try Kosher cheese, it is the least contaiminated)All Natural meat (the same friend with hens gives me fresh beef and chicken, free range)
Olive Oil
- imported Most natural herbs
I ate nothing out of a box (except the imported pasta and product 19) I ate nothing out of a can.
Water
(measure your own threshold, mine was low, couldn’t drink too much)Even though I have been in remission alternating with periodic semi-remission stages during stress, I still never, ever eat any American canned tomatoe product. I still can’t eat vinegar, citrus fruit, apples and bananas, and yogurt. I try one and a while and immediately flare.
I kept thinking I could cheat in the beginning, but then would flare for days. I finally realized that I had to eat that way. I didn’t eat deli meat for ten years, but recently have reintroduced a few. I would never had eaten them if I had any pain.
I think my medications, stress reduction and yoga in conjunction made me get well. This isn’t going to be fun, and you will lose weight, but believe me, if you are like me the pain won’t stop until you find your own triggers. They may be different than mine.
My favorite meals
*A large baked sweet potato (1 hr at 450) with butter
*Imported penne pasta with sauted fresh veggies in olive oil (peppers, onions, broccoli, zucchini, summer squash, etc.)
*Homemade broccoli and cheese
*pasta and cheese
*Spinach and cheese quiche
*Salad with olive oil and herbs
Of course, over the years, I have began to tolerate more. I think and IC bladder needs time to heal. My elimination diet took 15 months, i stuck to it for five years and still use it as the basis for most of my meals.
I hope my info helps you, but remember, we are all different.
Causes of Disease
Causes of Disease
by Anna Selby
According to Chinese pathology, there are three principal causes of the
disharmony that brings about disease: external factors, emotions, and
irregularities in day-to-day living.
External Causes
External causes embrace a range of environmental conditions: wind, cold,
fire, dryness, dampness, and summer heat.
Wind causes movement and change. It invades the body to cause dizziness,
twitching, stiffness, and convulsions. When combined with cold, it engenders
colds, chills, flu, and fever. It is related to the liver and can cause
epilepsy and stroke. Its effects are thought to be strongest in the Spring.
Cold constrains movement and warmth, often leading to stagnation. As well as
possibly causing colds and chills when combined with wind, it can affect the
lungs, resulting in expectorated mucus, and also affect the stomach and
spleen, leading to vomiting or diarrhea.
Fire dries and its associated ailments include fevers, inflammations,
constipation, and infrequent urination. Psychologically, it results in
irritability, lack of concentration, delirium, and manic behavior. In
children it can sometimes result in hyperactivity.
Dryness has a similar action to fire but with a tendency to dry body fluids.
Symptoms include dry skin, cracked lips, a persistent cough with no phlegm,
and constipation. Dampness brings feelings of heaviness and sluggishness.
Typical symptoms include headaches, lethargy, bloating, nausea, and stiff,
swollen, and aching joints.
Summer heat causes heatstroke, exhaustion, and dehydration. It can result in
fever and nausea.
Internal Causes
The importance of a balanced state extends to the emotions and mind as well
as the body. An excess or a lack of emotional expression can lead to a
disharmony that will manifest itself in both emotional and physical symptoms.
No particular emotion is regarded as good or bad — any imbalance is seen as
a potential cause of illness.
Joy in excess leads to over-excitement or agitation, injury to the heart,
insomnia, palpitations, and hysteria.
Anger causes resentment, frustration, rage and bitterness, injury to the
liver, headaches, high blood pressure, menstrual problems, and ailments of
the stomach or spleen.
Sadness affects the lungs and the heart and also causes breathlessness,
fatigue, lowered immunity, and insomnia.
Pensiveness is caused by mental overwork or intellectual overstimulation and
may lead to obsessiveness. It affects the spleen and also causes poor
concentration, lethargy, loss of appetite, and anemia.
Fear affects the kidneys, causing incontinence in adults and bed-wetting in
children. It also reduces fertility, libido, and general immunity to
infection.
Shock affects the kidneys and the heart. Imbalances also lead to
palpitations, insomnia, and fatigue.
Lifestyle Causes
The Chinese desire for balance in all things naturally includes the way we
live our lives. Again, excesses or deficits are seen as generators of disease.
Diet is very important in traditional Chinese medicine. A good diet is the
foundation of good health and many ailments are cured simply by addressing
basic nutritional imbalances. The ideal Chinese diet is comprised of food
which is slightly warm to slightly cool in energy, such as fish, chicken,
pork, beef, grains, cooked vegetables, and certain fruits. Certain hot foods,
especially fried foods, and drinks such as coffee, tea, chocolate, as well as
cold foods, including salads and frozen foods like ice cream, should be taken
in very limited amounts. Salt, sugar, caffeine, and alcohol are regarded as
toxins.
Exercise supports the flow of energy. Without it, the Qi will stagnate.
Excessive exercise, however, will lead to lowered immunity. In Chinese terms,
exercise takes the form of techniques such as Tai Chi and Qi Gong (pronounced
chi kung), which focus on balance and concentration, the movements of the
body being informed by both mind and spirit. Energetic exercise, for example
aerobic exercise, has no role to play in the Chinese philosophy.
Excessive libido and repeated childbirth can damage the health by sapping Qi
energy. They can also result in lower back pain, and failing hearing and
eyesight.
Patterns of Disharmony
Disharmony may be caused by external and internal factors or the excesses and
deficiencies of an unbalanced lifestyle. Depending on the nature of the root
cause, a pattern of disharmony is set up within the body and mind. It is the
diagnosis of this underlying pattern that is the basis of the Chinese
physician’s treatment.
There are numerous patterns of disharmony, many of which overlap, but most
Chinese herbalists work from approximately 75 patterns, with innumerable
further variations on these. The patterns themselves rest upon the Eight
Principles: yin and yang, interior and exterior, cold and heat, deficiency
and excess.
Yin and yang make up the basic guiding principle for diagnosis. Yang embraces
exterior, heat, and symptoms and conditions related to excess. Yin embraces
interior, cold, and symptoms and conditions related to deficiency. There are
four potent imbalances: yang excess exhibits itself in fever, impatience, bad
temper, headaches, rapid pulse, and high blood pressure. Yang deficiency
often shows itself in night sweats, exhaustion, constipation, backache, and
impotence. Yin excess, which is very rarely seen, manifests itself in
lethargy, aches, shivering, fluid retention, and excessive mucus occurring in
the lungs and nasal passages, in the bowel and as a vaginal discharge. Yin
deficiency is exhibited in nervous exhaustion and tension, hot flushes, and
fevers.
The words ‘interior’ and ‘exterior’ refer to the location of the ailment.
Exterior conditions are caused by external factors and affect the skin, nose,
mouth, and hair. Symptoms include colds and fevers, injuries, sweating and
skin problems. They are usually mild and often relieved by inducing sweating,
Interior conditions are more severe and are usually caused by emotional and
lifestyle factors. There is a range of symptoms, depending on the organ
affected, including constipation, diabetes, infertility, impotence, lowered
energy, and heart problems. Treatment depends upon which organ is affected.
Bladder Shrinking interstitial cystitis
| 271. My urologist says my bladder is shrinking. Is this part of my IC? Is there any way to stop the shrinkage?A decrease in bladder size is often seen in IC. If your pain is under control, you may want to try the bladder holding protocol. Using a voiding log, you determine how long you can last before the urge to void occurs. You then try to hold your urine for fifteen minutes longer. Every few weeks you add an additional fifteen minutes and eventually you will have increased your functional bladder capacity. Robert J. Evans
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Pepperoni Pizza And Pelvic Pain
Article Date: 14 Sep 2008
What’s the worst that could happen after eating a slice of pepperoni pizza? A little heartburn, for most people.
But for up to a million women in the U.S., enjoying that piece of pizza has painful consequences. They have a chronic bladder condition that causes pelvic pain. Spicy food — as well as citrus, caffeine, tomatoes and alcohol — can cause a flare in their symptoms and intensify the pain. Researchers had long believed the spike in their symptoms was triggered when digesting the foods produced chemicals in the urine that irritated the bladder.
A surprising new discovery from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine reveals the symptoms — pain and an urgent need to frequently urinate — are actually being provoked by a surprise perpetrator. It’s the colon, irritated by the spicy food, that’s responsible. The finding provides an explanation for how the body actually “hears” pelvic pain.
The discovery also opens up new treatment possibilities for “painful bladder syndrome,” or interstitial cystitis, a condition that primarily affects women (only 10 percent of sufferers are men.) During a flare up, the pelvic pain is so intense some women inject anesthetic lidocaine directly into their bladders to get relief. Patients typically also feel an urgent need to urinate up to 50 times a day and are afraid to leave their homes in case they can’t find a bathroom.
“This disease has a devastating effect on people’s lives,” said David Klumpp, principal investigator and assistant professor of urology at the Feinberg School. “It affects people’s relationships with family and friends.” Klumpp said some women who suffer from this become so depressed, they attempt suicide.
Klumpp conducted the study with postdoctoral fellow Charles Rudick. The paper is published in the September issue of Nature Clinical Practice Urology.
The Northwestern researchers discovered the colon’s central role in the pain is caused by the wiring of pelvic organ nerves. Nerves from this region — the bladder, colon and prostate — are bunched together like telephone wires and plug into the same region of the spinal cord near the tailbone.
People with interstitial cystitis have bladder nerves that are constantly transmitting pain signals to the spinal cord: a steady beep, beep, beep.
But when the colon is irritated by pepperoni pizza or another type of food, colon nerves also send a pain signal to the same area on the spinal chord. This new signal is the tipping point. It ratchets up the pain message to a chorus of BEEPEEPBEEPBEEP!
“It was known that there was cross talk between organs, but until now no one had applied the idea to how pain signals affect this real world disease, how the convergence of these two information streams could make these bladder symptoms worse,” said Klumpp, who also is an assistant professor of microbiology-immunology at the Feinberg School.
The findings suggest the bladder pain can be treated rectally with an anesthetic in a suppository or gel. Another possibility is an anesthetic patch applied to pelvic skin. Studies in back pain show anesthetic patches applied to the skin can reduce back pain, Klumpp said.
“We imagine a similar kind of patch might be used to relieve pelvic pain, which might be the best solution of all,” he noted.
HOW THEY “CAUGHT” THE COLON
For the study, Klumpp and Rudnick created a model of a mouse that mimicked an inflamed bladder with pelvic pain. Then they injected lidocaine into the bladder. The pain vanished. Next they injected lidocaine into the uterus. There was no diminishment of the pain. Lastly, they tried lidocaine in the colon.
“In the colon it knocked down pain just as effectively as if we put it in the bladder. We thought if the colon can suppress bladder-associated pain, maybe it can make it worse in the way that foods irritate bladder symptoms,” Klumpp explained.
So, Klumpp injected a small dose of red pepper into the colon of a normal mouse. The injection didn’t provoke any pain. But then he injected a small dose into a mouse with pelvic pain. The pelvic pain worsened.
“We likened it to what happens to humans,” Klumpp said. “Pepperoni pizza does nothing to most people other than heartburn, but when you give it to a person with an inflamed bladder, that will cause their symptoms to flare because the nerves from the bladder and bowel are converging on the same part of the spinal cord.”
MEASURING PELVIC PAIN IN A MOUSE
When pain emanates from a visceral organ, the pain message is delivered to the spinal cord and bounces out to the corresponding skin surface, called the dermatome. To measure pelvic pain in the mice, Kumpp prodded their pelvic skin with nylon filaments of varying thickness and stiffness, beginning with one that was as thin as a human hair. The more pelvic pain the mouse was experiencing, the more sensitive its pelvic skin to even the finest filament.
