Heavens. I just soaked my achin’ bones (well, muscles) in some lavender epsom salts. This stuff is a really big deal and just doesn’t get enough use as a medical treatment.
I come from a family that believes massages are fluff, that you should breathe through the pain and not complain!!! But a little understood symptom of dysautonomia is really tense, tight, reactionary shoulder and neck muscles, and I gotta say, most days I want to scream into a pillow from the feeling.
It seriously feels like someone lit a match, blew it out, and poked it deeeeeep underneath my shoulder blades. More than that, every time I try to move my neck, It feels like I’m chewing on tinfoil if my neck had teeth. On a great day, I’m seriously stiff and seriously tight.
Holding a blow dryer and brush, pulling coarse, curly hair taught for 11 hours a day i guess isn’t the most wonderful solution, but hey, I love my job, and for right now, it’s what I do, so I want to do my best.
Not to keep harping on illness, and I certainly don’t mean ‘poor me,’ but I also struggle to maintain a blood pressure that lives above stagnant, and an increase in salts helps. Right, right, Americans get too much sodium, you say- it’s all the fast food! It’s the crap we eat! It’s bad for your blood pressure! Don’t forget that there are many salts humans need for survival, and sodium is just one. I get enough sodium, but I take magnesium and potassium in several forms, and I just feel so much better when I do. I should say I can step back from the precipice of ‘I’m going to faint/barf/convulse’ and can participate in some life. I know this is a problem from a flaw in my body and I’m not saying everyone needs more salt, I’m just saying balance and moderation is great for everyone, and health is better than non-health.
I tried to research the connection between soaking in epsom salt (which is magnesium sulfate) and relieving sore muscles and other pain, detoxifying (another popular claim), and in helping raise the blood pressure of my sad, faulty nervous system- alas, there is very little research. Not any medical proof is out there about epsoms.
I swear, I feel my shoulders unclenching their mad little toddler-tantrum fists and I feel my blood rejuvinated after using them- why? Doctors recommend external use (there is actually FDA proof of the benefits of internal use) for so many things, yet the reason for the benefit isn’t really known. They just know that over a really long history and large sample size, it’s been shown that these salts help.
Cool, story of my life- ‘take this, we don’t know why it helps, but it seems to.’
Oof, why can’t we research and support more natural treatments? Why can’t we find the proof we need so I can explain and draw all the molecules?!?!?! My sciency brain is mad at that.
At least tonight my shoulders feel better and I won’t scream, and My blood pressure seems to be holding strong. Thanks epsom salts, I think I owe you one, but I’m not totally sure.
In Gratitude,
Mopsy
For knowing more, because I always want to:
http://www.epsomsaltcouncil.org/about/
http://saveyourself.ca/articles/epsom-salts.php (I don’t know who this guys is- he does try to sell something in his article, but it’s super entertaining!)
dear mopsy, 