ScienceDaily (Feb. 25, 2009) — Using sleep or napping to cope with chronic pain caused by tension-type headaches could lead to chronic insomnia according to a new study by researchers at Rush University Medical Center. The study, published in the February 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, found that napping to relieve headache pain could serve as a behavioral link between headache and sleep disturbance. 

The study compared a group of 32 women who were confirmed to have tension-type headaches, as classified by the International Headache Society System, to a control group of 33 women who experience minimal pain.

Eighty-one percent of the women in the headache group reported going to sleep as a way of managing their headaches; this method was also rated as the most effective self-management strategy for pain. 

Principal investigator and lead author, Jason C. Ong, PhD, assistant professor of behavioral sciences at Rush University Medical Center, said the extent to which the headache sufferers rated sleep as being an effective method for coping with pain was somewhat surprising.

“Insomnia is a common complaint among headache sufferers. While napping may relieve pain, it may also decrease the brain’s need for sleep at night, leading to reduced ability to initiate and maintain sleep at night,” said Ong.

The study found 58 percent of those with tension-type headaches reported sleep problems as a trigger of headaches compared to 18 percent of those who only suffer minimal headache pain. Similar studies have found that sleep disturbances, which include difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, have been identified as a risk factor for developing chronic headaches.

Women in the headache group also reported a significantly higher rating of pain interfering with sleep compared to the control group. No significant differences were found between the groups on use of medication to relieve headaches.

Ong encourages further behavioral treatment studies to examine alternative coping strategies for pain that do not involve sleep. He notes that clinicians should be sensitive to the dilemma of managing pain and sleep disturbances.

In addition, the study concludes that medical experts should assess daytime napping behaviors among individuals who report insomnia and headaches. Such an assessment may be important for developing behavioral sleep interventions.

The study involved 65 women recruited from undergraduate psychology courses at a university located in the southeastern U.S. The average age of members of the headache group was 21.9 years, while the average age of the control group was 18.9 years.

The average time since the first headache of any type was 9.4 years for participants in the headache group, with an average of 8.11 headache days per month. Participants reported an average of 12.2 tension-type headaches over the past year, and 2.1 tension-type headaches in the past month, with a median duration of 2.0 hours. The average tension-type headache intensity rating using a 0-to-10 scale was 5.6. Six participants in the headache group also met criteria for migraine disorder.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090215151753.htm

Hi All,

After a couple of weeks of not having the energy beyond work I’m back with a new post. I’m still struggling a bit heath wise, but this turn round the wheel is past the worst I feel, so hopefully the website should have a bit more activity soon. Apart from spending a lot of time learning cover songs on the guitar (and even writing a new song myself, which I’m quite pleased with) I managed to write up another post at For The Hole Inside Everyone called ‘Just Enough Pain‘.

I’m kind of pleased where this blog is going. I now feel it has a real theme that has evolved slowly over time and it’s been rather therapeutic to be able to write about my experiences and pass on the reflections that I know have changed me in some way. I’ve also noticed that I was going to leave this blog as a low proirty in my Resolutions for 2009 , but having taken the pressure off me to write, going through the emigration process and the never ending cycles of my health, it has been of some importance in a way that I hadn’t noticed. (See: The Need for Something Needless)

I would also have to say the same for the guitar. I’ve reached a point now where I can pay some of the acoustics covers well enough to really let go of the technique and throw myself into the song. That liberating process is something I’ve been missing lately and I remember again why I used to play everyday as a teenager.

Anyway, thanks to all those who drop by and leave comments about my blog. It really does encourage me to keep going and I’m glad that some of you have enjoyed what I’ve had to say.

Peace, Niamh xxx

A Johnson City, Tennessee, man has learned the hard way that, not only is it a bad idea to try to buy drugs from an undercover cop, but that when you use counterfeit money it’s best to be sure that the money is at least printed on both sides of the paper.

Investigator Frank Rogers said the officer met with several people at a mobile home park and arranged for Kochelek and another man to come to Unicoi to buy 76 OxyContin pills for $4,875.

Officers say it was “obviously bad money” with some bills printed on just one side.

via  The Tennessean.

As you may know things have been rather quiet for me lately. I’ve been low, in pain and fatigued. Just like a bus that comes in threes, so are my symptoms it seems. As ever, I learn something every time I fall into this cycle. This time I learned that having no pain is just as bad than having too much.

As with a lot of things, balance is everything. I’m starting to see how the Buddha’s wisdom of the middle way applies to so much more than I’ve been led to imagine.  Let me offer what happened to me me the last two weeks as an example:

When my ankles kicked off and I had to use the stick indoors for the first time in a while I was in a fair bit of pain as well as the muscle weakness. I had just managed to see my doctor for the first time so I finally had a prescription for my strong medication (well the Danish equivalent anyway). I had used the last of my English meds a couple of weeks beforehand and I knew just how strong they where, because they were basically out of my system and I knew I had to take them 14 hours before I was due to get up otherwise I would be groggy all day and my mind would wake up late.

I have a choice each night. I can risk it and hope I don’t develop any more pain or set my mind off by over stimulating another way. Music, poker, TV, a writing idea,big fix, or any stray random thought can set my mind off on a second wind, usually requireing 4-6 hours to wind down. If it starts late at night this can mean I’m not back in bed until 4am (like last night as a matter of fact).

So when I work I can hope that doesn’t happen and therefore don’t have to call in sick the next day (having to make the call often just after I’ve finally gotten to sleep) or I can take a pill just after dinner and know both my pain will go and that once I settle down for the night I will pretty much stay asleep until the alarm goes off.

As you can probably guess after last week, which was very difficult, I took the pills; 5 nights in a row in fact. Well Although I was groggy for most of this week and still a little low, the pain was gone and I was catching up on my sleep. This, in combination with adding another bus onto my route to work to reduce the walking, was helping to reduce the ankle issue and the hyper-sensitivity.

I’ve since calculated that the number of days in a row taking the pills is the number of days it takes to ware off. Yesterday it hit me. I was feeling better as I wasn’t so cloudy in my head or lethargic, then out of nowhere my sciatic nerve flared up around my right hip and thigh. Being in pain again (but this time without muscle fatigue) showed me for the first time that week I was over doing it.

I had stopped using the cane inside because I didn’t feel the pain, but I was obviously still over doing it as I spent a good 2 hours in pain. This is when I realised that for me to properly manage the fibromyalgia, I have to be able to feel just enough to know where the line is, but not enough that it makes everything else impossible.

With a week of feeling low but not in pain, when the pain returned I also noticed how the looping of thoughts in my mind that I couldn’t get to shut up all week, was being distracted by the pain. The pain was actually taking my mind of the depression, like how I use work to distract myself from the pain. I found another loop in the vicious cycle.

Since then I’ve had a similar twinge in my foot and my wrist. However after just an hour, even without the weak pain meds, they went because I listened to my body and stopped doing what was triggering the twinge. I could feel the warning signs before they started shouting at me. I needed just enough pain to find the middle way.

I offer thee words for reflection…

Last night I had two successive dreams about nuclear explosions.  I don’t know what happened that lead up to it, but each dream was similar.

In the first one, I was in my apartment in a big city. There was an alert telling us to leave our homes and go to shelters, which I did.  I felt extremely bad because I left my dog in the apartment. When I got to the shelter, I saw the explosion off in a distance and felt the ground tremble. What was odd was that the shelter was in a glassy highrise!

I woke up, kind of, but went right back to sleep. Instead of continuing the same dream, I had sort of a “do-over.”  In the next dream, we got a “blue and red alerts” warning and were told to leave.  I was already in a shelter, which was a lot like a luxury hotel.  I had brought my dog with me, and he was in a kennel in the facility. When the alert was sounded, I was in a room with a woman I don’t know.  She was explaining a device to me that would show the amount of fallout we’d be exposed to.  We felt an explosion and looked at the device, and saw that the display was smokey and gray.  That meant we’d get radiation sickness and die.  I told her, “we might as well go out into it and enjoy what we have.”  I decided to go to the kennel and get my dog.  They presented him along with some bottled water and a huge (probably 50 pound) bag of dog food.

My plan was to take my dog and enjoy some time with him and then take some xanax and give him some so we could go to sleep and not wake up, so we could avoid the impending suffering.  I was glad that I hadn’t left my dog behind and that I somehow had a bottle of xanax!

What do you suppose these dreams are trying to tell me?

NARCONON SUCCESS

Here is another Narconon success story.

Each step of the Narconon drug treatment program unfolds a new realization and another step towards full recovery from drug addiction.

“I had a huge realization today. I use an inhaler on a daily basis and after three years of smoking crack, inhaling, holding it in and then

blowing it out I realized that my inhaler would remind me of getting high.Anyway, I guess probably for the first month and ½ , every time I

would use my inhaler it was the same thing – being reminded of smoking the pipe Finally I am out of the habit of doing that and I owe it all

to Narconon and the most amazing supervisorsAfter three months of being at Narconon, my life has definitely changed for the better.

I have never felt better in my life.”

It is not unusual for our students to realize the day to day things that contributed to their past drug use. Just realizing what these things are can weaken the power

they have over the individual.

Whether a person is using crack cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin or Oxycontin, Narconon is the New Life Program that will lead them to a new life.

877-413-3073

What does it take to be an upstanding citizen in today’s economic crunch?  No outstanding tickets to municipalities, having car insurance, being able to afford food?  In this world, it is becoming harder and harder to walk the right line.

                I am not sure of how I got into this position but I have been driving without car insurance for a month now, I have outstanding tickets I cannot afford to pay which will eventually lead into warrants for my arrest.  I apply for about ten jobs a week but cannot land one (Fortunately, I work part time at a bar and deal cards on the side).   Why has this great country gone the way of the whigs?

                I am not saying that I am the most qualified person in the world, but I am not dumb.  Most people I know do crazy prescription drugs like xanax, percocet, and oxycontin.   If not, coke and heroin are all the rage.  I keep myself on the level and do not mess with any of these things.  Still I am having problems just making the basic necessities to live. 

                Is it that hard out the today for someone that wants to work seven days a week but cannot find work?  Is it that hard to reward people that try to do the right thing or are we all just bred to become criminals in one way shape or form?  I hate life right now…

Ugh, lack of posting.

Not a whole lot has happened since my last post. There was a good amount of Studio Drama in several different ways but it’s all been resolved and I think we’re back to being our happy little Studio Time bubble of crazies.
I mean really, there’s only so long you can work with people before something happens. I have to say, we’re a good group of crazies, though. We bounce back, we forgive, and we move on.

I’m going to Famous Footwear tomorrow to buy a pair of fur-line clogs (my old ones from a year and a half ago went to The Great Closet In the Sky, no more treads and you can only superglue them so many times…) because I can’t bend over to tie my shoes and all I have are ballet flats.  I wore them today and they were fine until the temperature dropped about 15 degrees and I thought my feet would fall off by the time I got home. So clogs it is, and Mom thinks that it’s a good idea.

Also, I’d like to get this out:

I want to apologize to anyone that feels that I might be being a crappy friend or that has caught me in one of my mood swings.  Chronic pain is a beast (that will hopefully be tamed soon, I hopehopehope it will).  I don’t expect many people to understand the pain, necessarily, but rather that if I do get irritated or I don’t look happy, it probably has nothing to do with you.
My pain gets worse as the day wears on. I am physically and mentally worn out by about 5pm.  I don’t know how many are familiar with the pain rating numbers (rate your pain, 0 being no pain at all, 10 being the worst and unbearable) but by mid-day and evening, it’s usually around a 7 or 8.  I consider my episode of Christmas Eve to be a 10, which I know doesn’t give much of a perspective to most, but that’s how I try to judge it.  And why am I even thinking about it this way?  I’m supposed to keep some of a record for my appointment next week so that they can assess what needs to be done.
This turned out to be much more of an explanation than I planned, but I’m hoping that it will help people understand that it’s not really anything I can control and that as much as I hate it, it does put me into a not-so-great mood at the end of the day.  I am trying–and getting better about it, I hope–to not take it out on/at others.
I realize that I might not be the most pleasant person to be around lately, and I really do feel bad, and for that, I apologize.

I need to be knitting more.  It’s meditative and puts my mind to something positive. I think I’ll start trying to put aside a bit of time each day to do it: it’s because much more than a hobby now.

On a completely unrelated note, I got to see Clayton today.  I realized the other night that I haven’t seen him in a few weeks, so we met up after I was done with work and went to Caribou.  We talked about a lot and I think that I’m in a better mindset now about a few things.

And! Last thing: I think that tomorrow I will upload the production projects that I have done so far this semester for WCRX. They will be here soon, I promise. (:

This past week has been out to get everyone. March (and warm weather) needs to get here fast,