This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3771 from Monday, 16 January 2023.
Today's show is entitled, How I Eliminated Pain Naturally.
It is hosted by Paul Corp, and is about 20 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is I describe how I managed to eliminate pain from carpal tunnel syndrome
and ask to your arthritis.
Today's show is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution non-commercial, no derivatives
license.
Good day, good listener of Hacker Public Radio, and welcome back to the Paul Corp show.
I'm Paul, and I will be your host.
It's been a while since my last podcast on HPR, but I'm thankful to all the contributors
who have kept it going for nerds like me.
Today, I'd like to talk to you about my journey with pain.
I'm in my 50s now, and having been diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome in my 20s
and osteoarthritis in my 30s, I'd like to share with you how I managed to overcome these
naturally and without surgery so that today, I live completely free of physical pain.
Now, before I get started, I'd like to share with you my views of what pain is.
We live in a culture of where we believe pain is bad and needs to be avoided at all costs.
This feeds into the natural response of being fearful of pain.
However, I have come to learn that pain is simply the body's way of telling the brain
that there is a problem.
Quite often, the first response to pain is to take some sort of drug or medication
to make the pain go away.
Now, while I agree that pain is not enjoyable, I think the overuse of pain killers
is the folly of modern medicine.
Because I believe that sometimes pain is an early warning sign that means
I need to make a lifestyle change to steer my body towards better health.
This isn't always easy, but our understanding of this has grown and changed significantly
over the past century.
In the 1990s, I was a technical support technician and a cobalt programmer,
so I spent a lot of time with a keyboard and a mouse.
This led to a diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome by my doctor in my mid-20s.
Not wanting to rely on drugs or surgery, I looked for a natural solution.
I started with researching keyboards.
Most ergonomic keyboards of that time are prohibitively expensive except for one.
The Microsoft Natural Keyboard.
The first generation of Microsoft Natural Keyboard was released in 1994.
It was designed for Microsoft by Ziba Design and Manufacturer by Ketronic.
I was glad I bought my keyboard when I did because Microsoft replaced it with the inferior
Natural Keyboard Elite, which did not include a riser for negative tilt,
and they shrunk down some of the keys.
Today, my keyboard a choice is the Microsoft Natural
ergonomic keyboard 4000, which I consider to be the only ergonomic keyboard worthy of succeeding
the original.
You would have to pry it from my cold, dead, carpal tunnel syndrome free hands before I'd
part with it.
The other thing I changed in my desktop environment was to stop using a mouse.
Today, my pointing device of choice is the ergonomic trackball that uses my thumb to move the
ball.
I learned that my thumb was much stronger than my fingers, having more muscles that are shorter
in the ergonomic design of these trackballs allows my hand to rest in a neutral position,
which can be difficult to achieve and pushing a square box around a desk.
Also, it didn't matter that my Microsoft Natural Keyboard took up so much
desk space anymore as a trackball doesn't need much desk space.
I actually used two ergonomic trackballs.
I used the Logitech M570 for my right hand, which usually travels with my laptop computer
in the LKOM EX6 for my left hand.
I think being ambidextrous with my trackballs also helped to alleviate issues with carpal tunnel syndrome.
I also learned to be ambidextrous in other tasks as well, such as using tools.
It can be frustrating at first, but learning to perform tasks equally well with either hand
as probably helped as much as a use of an ergonomic keyboard and trackball.
When I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis in my 30s, I was an incredible pain.
The act of standing up from a chair was nearly impossible some days, and I required the assistance
of a cane most days just to function. I inherited this terrible condition from my mother's
mother's side of the family, which explained my so many ants, uncles, and cousins use
canes and did not live very long into old age, as the medications both prescribed and over the
counter tend to have negative side effects on the organs after used for an extended period of time.
Surgery options are invasive and radical, and do not necessarily restore ones standard of living.
While the pain might be relieved, it can come at the cost of mobility and flexibility
and can put stress on other joints. I was determined to find a natural solution.
The first thing I considered was what had changed in my lifestyle. I had to admit I was not
making time for exercise as I did when I was younger. The link between exercise and pain relief,
especially when it comes to conditions like osteoarthritis is demonstrably true.
My mother's mother, who had a stroke in her early 50s, and lost over half of her heart capacity
due to this, was possibly the only person on her side of the family to live independently into her
90s. After retiring at age 65, she got rid of her car and sold her bungalow to live in a house
with stairs with them walking distance of the shopping mall so that she would force herself
into walking a good distance every single day. She lived with the pain I'll be at a low level.
I wanted to take this a step further and get rid of it entirely, and thanks to a modern invention
called the elliptical trainer, I have done just that. The reduction in pain by exercise is called
induced hypoelgyzia. According to Wikipedia, hypoelgyzia occurs when painful stimuli are interrupted
or decreased somewhere along the path between the impact in the places where they are processed
and recognizes pain in the conscious mind. The mechanisms behind exercise induced hypoelgyzia
are still poorly understood, but it has been shown that the triggering mechanism is caused by
the increase in blood pressure that accompanies a good workout. The body senses the increased blood
pressure and the hypothesis is that endogenous opioids are released. Other research also suggests
that the endocannabinoid system is involved. This is what gives runners their high.
The problem with traditional exercise such as running is that such exercise can cause further damage
to the part of the body that is causing the pain in the first place. This means that a good run
might eliminate my knee pain today, but things could be worse when I wake up tomorrow.
The inventor of the first version of the elliptical trainer, Larry Miller, shared this concern,
and so the elliptical trainer was designed to provide all of the benefits of running with none
of the impact. Later, hand grips are added, making the modern elliptical machine a modern
miracle of medicine that delivers a zero impact full body workout. I say medicine because it is
the machine of choice for many physiotherapists today to help their patients recover mobility
from strokes and accidents due to its success rate. If the elliptical machine were made into a
pill, it would be the best selling drug of all time in the world. The hardest part of using the
elliptical trainer is being motivated to use it. What I had to do was to set up a routine first
thing in the morning. This was the only time I could do it reliably. I can't do it at work.
And when I get home from work, I'm too exhausted to do anything, and I'm often too busy
taking care of the necessaries of modern life and getting ready for the next day of work.
So what I decided to do was to go to bed earlier so I could wake up earlier.
My routine is to get on my electrical trainer at 5 o'clock in the morning,
usually motivated by some good music, or maybe listening to an episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I do the interval training program for about half an hour. Then I have my shower,
I get dressed, then I get ready for work. This represents my baseline for fitness,
and as all the exercise I need to do that day to keep the pain away. I feel my exercise with
a bowl of oatmeal, topped with cinnamon, a handful of crushed walnuts, and blueberries,
which means I usually wake up before 4 o'clock. This is made easy, since I developed the habit
of keeping an early bed time, and it naturally exhausted by 8 o'clock PM anyway. Then I reward
myself on the weekend by sleeping in until 6, and enjoying a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and hash browns,
and then enjoying a ride on my bicycle, or a hike with my beautiful wife.
Now I admit, at first it was an easy. For the first week, I could only do 20 minutes on the
electrical trainer, and my brain kept questioning why was I putting myself through this torment.
But every day, by the end of the exercise, I was glad to have done it. By week two,
I had those negative thoughts about exercise for the first 10 minutes. But once I got past the 10
minute mark, the exercise induced high-poiled jeezy a kicked in, and it was no longer a hardship.
By week three, I woke up looking forward to my morning workout. After week four, and every day
since, it's been as routine as taking a shower and brushing my teeth, and nothing stops me. Now
I don't think the benefits of the electrical trainer can be understated. I went from having trouble
standing up and needing to walk with a kid in my late 30s and early 40s, to running a half
marathon in Montreal just before my 50th birthday. Now I'm not saying it made me a Superman.
I certainly didn't break any records that day, and I can still blow out my knee easy enough if I'm
not careful. But I can walk long distances and up and down many flights of stairs,
without any hardship whatsoever. It might recovery from injury is a lot quicker.
I can now just walk off a rolled ankle that would have laid me up for at least a couple of days,
10 years ago. You see, it's not just the exercise induced high-poiled jeezy,
that's helping me. The electrical trainer is a trainer, and it helps to develop muscle tissue
around the joints and strengthens the tendons. Since this is a podcast, I will let you hear what
my knee sound like when I do a squat. Now if you're squeamish, you might want to skip over the next
five seconds of this podcast, starting in three, two, one.
Now, you can hear that my knees are still a mess, but I experienced absolutely no pain performing
this squat. By exercising every day, the muscles around my knee joints have taken much of the stress
off of the actual joint. To help keep the stress on my knee at a minimal, I also watch my weight,
sticking to a balanced diet of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and natural needs and nuts.
Of course, when the weekend comes, I eat whatever I want, even fast food and alcohol if I feel like it,
but Monday through Friday, I keep things pretty strict. The benefits of daily use of my
electrical trainer have gone well beyond relieving the pain of my arthritis however. It has improved
my overall well-being. I find I am more relaxed and calmed during the day, and I'm much better
able to manage stress. My mood stays positive, even on bad days when nothing seems to be going
right. I sleep a lot better and tend to be more alert when I'm awake. It has been transformative
in every respect of my life with no physical or mental downsides. Like everything else in life,
there are good electrical trainers and there are garbage electrical trainers. Chances are that
if you go to a store like Walmart to buy an electrical trainer, you'll be disappointed. One of
the things that's important to me is that the electrical trainer can provide interval training.
According to Wikipedia, interval training is a type of training exercise that involves a series of
high-intensity workouts that are at or close to anaerobic exercise. Interest bursts with
rest or relief periods. It's important to achieve anaerobic exercise as this is a type of exercise
that breaks down glucose in the body without using oxygen. Since I could only commit
half an hour per workday to exercise, I want to get the greatest benefit from that time,
and that to me means interval training. A good elliptical will have a built-in computer
that can automatically vary the resistance and slope throughout the half hour of training
complete with a warmup and cooldown period. Now, if you've never used an elliptical before,
I recommend going to a gym that has one and asking someone who works there
to show you how to use the interval training on that machine. You will also find these kinds
of elliptical machines at hotels and resorts, possibly in your condo if you live in a condominium unit,
and the instructions on how to use the interval training program can usually be found online.
This is so important to me that I actually bought my own light commercial electrical trainer
and dedicated a whole room in my house to it. I bought the sole E98 sold by Costco, which is a
light commercial elliptical, usually found in hotels and condominiums. I personally prefer
commercially equipment to residential grade because it tends to hold up better over time and
is serviceable using ball bearings in place of bushings. I would also consider using
news or refurbished commercial gym equipment, but the new price of the sole at Costco is very
competitive with those used prices. The last thing I can think of is to remember to stay hydrated.
When I started using an elliptical trainer, it was easy to forget to bring a water bottle with
me because the exercise doesn't seem that difficult. However, after 10 minutes of interval training,
I start to work up a sweat so keeping a bottle of water with me on the machine is key for
enjoying my workout so that I can rehydrate after periods of anaerobic exercise.
Traditionally, I like to end my podcasts with some music that I found in the creative
comments. Unfortunately, it was too difficult for me to find something appropriate in the creative
comments to end this episode of Hacken Public Radio. I wanted something energetic so that you,
the listener, could include a neural nexerciser routine. So I decided it was up to me to lay down
some beats on my trusty Casio tone CTS-300 at 128 beats per minute. It's about four minutes long,
and since it was created by me, it's licensed under the same creative comments license as the
rest of my podcast. If you liked this sort of thing, let me know in the Fediverse at Quirk
at MasterDone.Social, and maybe I could be motivated to make an entire half hour of these tracks.
If you would like to read the transcript of this podcast and see the accompanying pictures,
you can do so at my website at piquirk.com.
Thank you for listening to the Paul Quirk Show on Hacken Public Radio today. As always,
do remember to drive safe, stay active, and have fun.
You have been listening to Hacken Public Radio at Hacken Public Radio.org. Today's show was
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