is always the hardest. This is just going to be an online diary, something I'm doing as a means of controlling both weight loss and back pain and a place to mindlessly ramble with some thoughts.
About the weight loss. Pretty typical. Starting putting weight on in college (too much beer) and then dealt with the stresses of life through eating. I have social anxiety disorder, or a form of it, going to events, even parties where I know everyone, stresses me out. I guess it's always worrying about what other people think of you, and then, in my arm chair psychologists theory, doing the things you worry people would think about you. For example, as I was putting on weight I worried about how people would perceive me putting on weight, listened to all these imaginary derogatory conversations they were having in my head and then like a self fulfilling prophecy, ate like a pig. Yeah, I am fucked up.
Anyway, I have been making efforts to lose weight for the last eight years, since my first son was born. I always find an excuse to abandon the effort. This is yet, another one. I wish I could say I am going to stick with it but only time will tell that.
So why am I writing about this. For myself really. Last year I started having back pain, I thought I injured it running. But it's chronic, it got to the point where I could only sleep in certain positions, standing long periods hurt, getting up after sitting was painful. So I started reading about back pain, good news, lots of medical technology tools, MRIs, CScans, XRays, are available to show you what might be ailing you, pinched nerve, herniated disk, bulging disk and so on. There are also pain medications you can take to mask the pain of the injury. But other than that, there's not a whole lot medical science can do to relieve back pain.
In a entirely coincidental occurrence I was reading Best Life's Jan 08 issue and there is a long article on back pain and the mind. I won't go into all the details but basically they've discovered that there are two pathways for pain in the body. The first is responsive, stub a toe and an are of your cortex responds with pain signals, this is the type doctors can treat, here's some drugs, a band-aid and an HMO bill, now you're better. The other pathway is a bit more convoluted. It's a mental problem and it has nothing to do with your injury or whatever is causing the pain.
I'll use myself as an example. I can't remember when the pain started but I do know it was after the holidays and New Year (in '07) and it wasn't cold because the first memory I have of it was hurting during a run and I was wearing shorts. Prior to this period we were considering selling our house. We have four kids and live in a 1200sf old farm house on an acre and a half. My wife wanted out of the fixer upper and into something with more space and more neighbors. I wanted to stay.
Just to reveal some more the four kids are all invitro, which is not an easy way to have a baby. And there's a set of twins. And one of the twins had a birth defect that was life threatening. They corrected it with surgery but he spent nine weeks in the NICU and almost died twice, then spend a year and a half in rehab. My wife left her high salary, emotionally rewarding job working as an NP doing heart stent work to stay home, taking part time work at night in the ER to supplement our income. After all she's been through I figure the least I could do is go along with her ideas to move us to a big, cookie cutter development.
But good timing or bad timing, depends on how you want to look at it, the subprime fiasco hit and we just weren't going to get what we needed on the sale of our house nor did she like what was available out there for us, there is something to be said about having a private acre and a half after all. So she decided to change tact and go with my plan, to build an addition.
And I think that is what is causing my stress. Before, when she wanted to move, I was going along as a team player. But it wasn't on me, if it turned out bad it would be her decision, I wasn't even commenting on the houses we looked. That made that ride easier. Not that I was going to pull a gotcha on her but her homestead happiness would be dependent on her decision. Now it's on mine. This all went down about the time my back started hurting.
I'm driving the addition plans. We have a contractor, we're looking at about $115,000 for doubling the size of the house. So I am stressed about the money and am also stressed about the making sure everyone is satisfied with it.
Wrapping this up the theory of the article in Best Life is that some back pain is really just the mind's way of not dealing with what is stressing you out. It's replacing the stress I have in regards to the home addition with an actual physical ailment.
I do still think there was/is something physically wrong with my back but I think I am making it a lot worse than it is by stressing about things. Odd as this sounds, after I read the article my back felt great. And when it starts acting up I just take a deep breath and remind myself that everything will be ok, it's going to work out and I calm down and pain subsides.
There's a book on it that I ordered from Amazon, Healing Back Pain, that I should get in a day or two. I figure that if I am psychologically hurting myself I am probably also doing the same with my weight problem. Mind over matter is my new mantra.
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