that's b/c you slept not comfortably on your pillow and strained your neck muscles, we call it 'goeodox'
i usually advice against using pillows
so the cure is to kneel before a beautiful representative of the opposite gender and touch their knee by your forehead, there should be a popping sound in your neck and you are painfree
/humorous cure, but sometimes it helps
Heebie, there is no right or wrong on this issue. Trust your gut on whether it is whiplash.
Somewhat off topic, but I think that the debilitating effect on women's bodies of pregnancy is exaggerated too. Oldtime women with very large families were often undernourished and, in addition to receiving only rudimentary medical care.
WAY off topic. I had two threads open.
I could be wrong, IANAD etc., but I always thought that was just impinging a nerve -- you twist wrong, pinch the nerve, and get that funnybone type tingling...
I used to work for a chiropractor, and the literature there all agreed that an actual pinched nerve is very rare. It's more likely muscle strain.
the cure is to kneel before a beautiful representative of the opposite gender
I suggest this to women with all manner of ailments. Hasn't worked yet, but I still encourage it.
Oldtime women with very large families were often undernourished
Oldtime women with very large heads were often dealing with neck pain.
Practicing chiropracty without a license is probably legal.
One of the chiropractors said he would teach me to adjust if I wanted. They had already taught me how to analyze x-rays -- I could've gone to chiropractor school and been a superstar! I guess it's not too late.
One of my routines involves holding a dumbbell to each ear, and doing (neck)turns.
See! You couldn't do this with barbells or that fancy exercise machinery.
I get this all the time, or something similar: turn the head, hear a pop, shooting pains down the side of my spine and arm and can't turn my head for hours or days.
In my case, it's caused by a muscle spasm. For whatever reason, tense muscles on that side periodically freak out more than is their right. I've found that yoga helps (downward dog), plus, anything that stretches or relaxes the neck muscles.
Cala, have you tried taking a magnesium supplement occasionally. They can help with cramping and spasms. There's a powdered one called "Calm" that's supposed to be pretty good.
Isn't chocolate supposed to be high in magnesium?
I get what Cala describes one a year or so, usually when I'm backing the car. I try to avoid having to parallel park to avoid it.
13: You know, I haven't. Maybe I should. I don't cramp up anywhere else, though, but it's worth a shot. The usual way I deal with it is to wait for it to go away, or if it's bad, get some of those horse-pill muscle relaxants. Which probably is contraindicated for heebie.
Muscle spasm is the most common thing, I think. I get it occasionally in my neck, but more often in my mid-back [I have a minor but annoying back injury]. Bugger all really seems to work apart from waiting.
See! You couldn't do this with barbells or that fancy exercise machinery.
Depends on the fancy machinery. The gym at my high school had a station on a universal machine with this bizarre helmet contraption that applied resistance to head turning and rocking. Probably for football players.
One of my routines involves holding a dumbbell to each ear, and doing (neck)turns.
If you wanted a really strong neck, why not just practice the wrestler's bridge?
D-squared, how many times have you gotten a severe, whiplash-like pain in your neck while watching the markets over the past two weeks or so? How many times do you expect to get such severe pains in the future? Can you share with us your comprehensive theory as to the causes and possible cures of such pains?
Which probably is contraindicated for heebie.
I love the word "contraindicated".
My neck's been fine, but every time I post something on Crooked Timber, I am beset by a million and one pains in the arse.
I used to just be a cunt. I've been demoted.
i forgot to add that should be someone unfamiliar to kneel before, otherwise it wouldn't work
the stress it causes i suppose makes one to move more like gracefully, which means naturally and whatever was displaced pops naturally into its place with stretching the neck on the attempt to touch the knee with the forehead
/rationalization of that superstition, so don't use for other ailments
Practicing chiropracty without a license is probably legal.
The reason I could never be a chiropractor is that it's so ungrammatical. What do they call their discipline? Not "chiropracty", not "chiropractics", but "chiropractic". "I have a degree in chiropractic." "We have specialists in acupuncture and chiropractic." GAAAH! So annoying.
why not just practice the wrestler's bridge?
Because I don't know what that is? Will google...
I did grow up with wrestlers and football linemen, and I do remember they had a football helmet with a bar attached to the top for weights...
The wrestler's bridge is an intense exercise meant to develop the neck muscles and strengthen the back and spine. It is not, however, to be taken lightly. This exercise should only be attempted by already advanced athletes, who are coming into the exercise with profoundly strong neck muscles Furthermore, this pose should only be performed under expert supervision because a badly-performed wrestler's bridge can serious injure the neck. Read on to learn how to do a wrestler's bridge.
You mischievous Welsh debbil, you ain't trickin' me into quadriplegia.
Don't be such a ponce, Bob. It's nothing like as dangerous as that.
The head can usually be popped back into place.
Cala, read this New Yorker article's end about mirror therapy. It's possible that you can train your brain to de-recognize these muscle spasms and what you're regularly getting might have a neurological basis.
What's up with weird pains in general? Everyone gets those, right? Very rare, but sometimes just out of the blue there's a sharp, shooting pain in your arm or leg or side...something like that. It's there for a few seconds, and then gone forever.
Just you, Michael. What you're talking about is unrecognizable for us.
What's up with those weird worms in general? Everyone gets those, right? Very rare, but sometimes just out of the blue there's a small, hissing worm shooting out of your arm or leg or side...something like that. It's there for a few seconds, and then gone forever.
Been googling for stills, Chris Penn spent most of the obscure Cameron Crowe movie Wildlife with like thirty pounds on his head and finishes the film by bulling thru three apartment walls.
I might exaggerate.
I got a goodenough neck. Of course, at my age, with cartilage loss, every movement is accompanied with pops & snaps and crackles.
From the Critic's link:
One morning, after she was awakened by her bedside alarm, she sat up and, she recalled, "this fluid came down my face, this greenish liquid." She pressed a square of gauze to her head and went to see her doctor again. M. showed the doctor the fluid on the dressing. The doctor looked closely at the wound. She shined a light on it and in M.'s eyes. Then she walked out of the room and called an ambulance. Only in the Emergency Department at Massachusetts General Hospital, after the doctors started swarming, and one told her she needed surgery now, did M. learn what had happened. She had scratched through her skull during the night--and all the way into her brain.
OMFG
Is this the medical complaint thread? I have a terrible head cold and an infection in might right eye that leads to blurred vision and extreme light sensitivity. I'm done with classes for the day, so I'm considering three options.
1. Suck it up. Drive to the nearby strip mall by Visine and decongestants, and go back to grading.
2. Drive 20 minutes home and take a long nap.
3. Just curl up here on the office floor and take a little rest and figure out what I really should do later.
Option (3) is the most tempting right now, which should give you a sense of how I feel.
OK, that apparently real story is much worse than my comment.
Contact Jimmy Carter about your worms, pdf. And don't let them escape into the water supply or cesspools.
Could be pinkeye, rob. Get the medicine.
Another possibility is that while in your mother's womb you absorbed your twin, and his DNA, which lives on in you, has infected your eye's proper function.
Most depressing link ever.
I once worked with a patient for whom everything had gone wrong: HIV, unwanted pregnancy, destitution, homelessness, mental illness or nearly, felony charges, bankruptcy, unemployability. She was very quick and articulate (albeit Caucasian) and totally hostile. Any given problem was managable, but the ensemble looked hopeless, even for Jesus.
by "the medicine" I meant the medicine for pinkeye, really, which requires a visit to the doctor. So I was actually advising option 4, go to the doctor.
Unless, of course, you've had pinkeye before and know that this is not it.
37
4. call taxi, get home and take a long nap
nothing cures like home walls
I actually know where the eye infection came from, and already have antibiotics for it. I poked myself in the eyeball with scissors trying to cut a stray eyebrow hair. (Don't laugh.) The nick healed, but got infected.
well, before going home you can go to pharmacy and get some eye drops
While heading home, stop by the pharmacy and buy some tweezers.
Don't laugh.
Can I giggle derisively?
What's up with those weird worms in general? Everyone gets those, right?
You've been drinking that African river water again, haven't you?
The linked article in 30 makes my limbs numb.
Has anyone else looked at Standpipe's About page? Why is it blank? Is there some joke I'm not getting?
I poked myself in the eyeball with scissors trying to cut a stray eyebrow hair. (Don't laugh.)
not for real, right? otherwise you could have that, sympathetic blindness already
but maybe you poked not deep enough, so got safely just some conjunctivitis
well, feel better soon
ok, so really, no one else ever gets a weird pain out of nowhere? I don't believe you.
Standpipe is powered by movable type, JRoth. What else do you need to know?
Though scratching can provide momentary relief, it often makes the itching worse. Dermatologists call this the itch-scratch cycle.
This must be why dermatology is the most respected of medical fields.
weird pain out of nowhere
sounds like MS, i also have those sometimes but don't pay attention
I occasionally do, probably a few times a year. Sometimes I get a muscle twitch that goes haywire, keeps getting more and more frequent over the course of a minute or two until it's a constant contraction. A spontaneous cramp. I only think that's happened like twice.
For real, scissors touched eyeball, but the doctor has looked at it and said it healed, but got infected.
One time it happened to one of my quads. That's a really big muscle to be twitching.
I get weird pains all the fucking time, but I'm aged. I know the reasons for some but not all of them.
56 gets it right. I get those in my eyelids and shoulders.
As for sudden shooting pains, I don't know. Except for when I am unable to re-bend my leg after straightening it out again and I feel like only death will relieve my agony.
When I'm very stressed, I will sometimes wake up unable to put any pressure at all on a random joint without excruciating pain. If it's a shoulder, I can usually make it through the day without using that arm. But if it's a hip, it really, really sucks. It's so random, I know it's not arthritis. And it's total -- either complete pain or complete absence of pain, and usually for a whole day. It hasn't happened in a few years, but in 2005, I think, was when it happened pretty regularly.
If I yawn too big, my jaw will lock open and go into an incredible amount of pain. I've taken lately to forcing it closed. It seems to make the pain go a way a few seconds earlier.
Obviously, 61 is psychosomatic. But knowing that doesn't make the pain go away. I just have to make a pretty serious effort not to let myself get too worked up about things, and my body is good to me.
There's a bundle of muscle fibers in my leg that aren't connected to any nerve due to a ruptured disk damaging the nerve. Usually they just sit there and do nothing, but every so often they cramp up. Sometimes they manage to recruit my entire calf into a huge cramp that makes my calf completely rigid, like it was carved out of wood. It's kind of cool, apart from the agonizing pain.
Has anyone else looked at Standpipe's About page? Why is it blank? Is there some joke I'm not getting?
Standpipe is the Empress Wu Zetian.
50 is a question for Standpipe's blog.
Now I itch all over after reading the article linked in 30.
Heebie,
For me it was a pinched nerve in the neck. Big time surgery time. Do you have any numbness or tingling or weakness in your arms or fingers or a zing down an arm?
But since I doubt you played tackle football and you would recall if you were in a bad car accident of fell off a ladder I'm guessing you are pulling a muscle in your neck, or maybe even straining a ligament in your neck muscles.
One muscle fails to completely relax and the opposing muscle pulls it. This can hurt like the devil. The neck seems to have pretty good sensation, probably for survival reasons.
Either way conservative treatment is ibuprofen and some ice, heat after 24 hours. Long term good posture helps. Keep your chin in and your head vertical. Many people hang their heads forward like a vulture which is tougher on the neck.
So Mom was right, stand up straight! It is good for you.
Oh, and personally I do NOT recommend a chiropractor for neck problems. A twist they might try, when done incorrectly, could tear open a carotid artery. Not good.
I do NOT recommend a chiropractor for neck problems. A twist they might try, when done incorrectly, could tear open a carotid artery.
Also, they believe little elves live in your spine which can heal your whole body if the spine is aligned just right.
For me it was a pinched nerve in the neck. Big time surgery time. Do you have any numbness or tingling or weakness in your arms or fingers or a zing down an arm?
Oh, mine is no big deal. It's extremely sharp and fades after a few seconds. It happened a lot when I was growing up, so when it happened today it was more like, "Oh yeah! I forgot about this!"
How the FUCK does one scratch through one's skull????
Also from that article
Aquagenic pruritus is recurrent, intense, diffuse itching upon getting out of a bath or shower, and although no one knows the mechanism, it's a symptom of polycythemia vera, a rare condition in which the body produces too many red blood cells.
Fucking marvellous - I get that (so does my mum, so does my youngest daughter) - all these years I've thought it was just annoying, or sensitive skin, or something and now I might have a DISEASE?
(Although I have been cheered up by being reminded about those crazy worm people.)
Heebie, perhaps your neck thing is to do with pregnancy, ligament-relaxing hormones and so on.
(Was going to make flippant comment about how a termination would probably cure it, but felt too guilty.)
now I might have a DISEASE?
Maybe someone bit your torso.
||
JRoth, do you check your flickr email?
|>
It happened a lot when I was growing up, so when it happened today it was more like, "Oh yeah! I forgot about this!"
Interesting. I get the same thoughts every time I conk my head real hard. Kinda like "Oh yeah, I remember getting my bell rung." Then "ouch!"
Yes, this explains a lot. I know.
Michael,
What's up with weird pains in general? Everyone gets those, right? Very rare, but sometimes just out of the blue there's a sharp, shooting pain in your arm or leg or side...something like that. It's there for a few seconds, and then gone forever.
I've been professionally trained to fake some spinal symptoms so medical students can practice on me. In that respect I've probably had over 100 neurology exams, although performed by medical students under the watchful eye of a neurologist. I've also had my share of 'stingers' when playing football. What you describe sounds like pains caused by pinched nerves, usually at the spinal root.
I'm not a doctor, of course, but shooting pains down the arm or leg sure sound like a nerve is involved. When do these happen to you?
JRoth, do you check your flickr email?
Well I do now.
Actually, funny enough, I was just there for the first time in a month or two.
Never let it be said that Tripp is not talented.
I've been professionally trained to fake legal problems so law students can practice on me.
BTW, on-topic, I got a back spasm this morning that sent me to my knees - incredibly sharp and fleeting, but with aftershocks. Within a minute, I was back on my feet with no aftereffects. I've had something similar happen exactly once, a few months ago.
Also: no headaches in the last month. Apparently my brain was just tricking me into visiting my doctor for a tetanus shot.
I'm professionally trained to grow my hair so that hairdresser students can practice on me.
How the FUCK does one scratch through one's skull????
energetically? with dedication?
I've been professionally trained to procrastinate on the internet.
I've been professionally trained to fake being a robot so internet trolls can practice on me.
I swear I will never eat at Burger King again.
I'm a professionally trained alcoholic. I taught me sister all she knows, except what she learned from her sociopath husband.
88 - hmmm, I do fancy a Meat Beast Whopper. Friday night it was only the fact that we don't have a drive-through that stopped us getting one.
I swear I will never eat at Burger King again
i swore too last spring, when chicken in the chicken sandwich tasted as if it was broiled in fish oil
I think what did it for me was getting like two or three batches of french fries that tasted as if fried in rancid oil. Can vegetable oil even be rancid?
A lot of the protein in the chicken nuggets and other chicken whatchamadooches comes from fish. Bonito, I think. Like the fish paste in miso soup it is a good source of MSG/umami/savory flavor, making the chicken taste more meaty. And more fishy.
The article the Critic linked to back at 30 is one of the most interesting things about the brain I've ever read. The first half, about itching, is hard to take without getting all itchy yourself. The second half, about treating phantom limb pain, is fascinating.
OK, that apparently real story is much worse than my comment.
I liked the worm comment!
heebie, I know just the neck pain you're talking about and OMG does it hurt. I feel like the ligament or whatever it is in my neck is about to snap, which would be both horrifying and a blessed relief.
I refuse to admit that 30 exists. I cannot live in such a world.
96: That reminds me of when bodybuilders lift too much weight and their tendons snap, leaving the muscle disconnected. Eww.
A legendary Turkish / Bulgarian weightlifter crushed a vertebra during training, and it was replaced with a steel vertebra. A very high pain threshold may be the secret of his success.
re: 72
That type of pruritus is quite common. I get it. It's worse in winter. They just recommend avoiding prolonged contact with water or strong soap.
You know what's annoying? Tachycardia. Which I don't normally have, but have at the moment.
[pointless ailment-related google proofing]
Lush's Karma Kream is the quickest thing I've found for soothing it. (Itchiness after getting wet, not tachycardia.) I'm pretty sure my red blood cells are normal.
I get a sharp shooting pain fairly regularly. The most disconcerting thing is that it's in one of my breasts. Sometimes it goes on for hours of individual stabbing sensations about one minute apart. I had my GP look at it a few years ago but he couldn't find any lumps or anything else sinister. It seems to vaguely correlate with probable hormone changes (happens around ovulation and/or menstruation, and it started around when I came off the pill).
101: Have you tried Ogged's finger-thingy?
re: 104
No but it's worth a go. It's mild anyway, just annoying.
72: My father had that. The docs used to bleed him every once in a while. It's worth asking about.
103---What's your caffeine intake like?
103---What's your caffeine intake like?
Have you tried Ogged's finger-thingy?
Ogged's thingy is bigger than a finger. Trust me.
This thread was like totally broken when I double-posted.