For the past few months i’ve been dealing with a rather nasty case of piriformis syndrome, leading to pain and numbness from some rather pissed off sciatic nerves. Last night, the pain was so bad that i just couldn’t sleep at all. It’s been years since i’ve had pain that ferocious.
I’ve known a fair number of people with back pain, and one of the more common successful methods of relief/treatment involve traction – hanging (often upside-down) off the ground to take the pressure off of your spine. I’ve envied the people who could afford all the toys involved in this process – gravity boots and inversion tables.
Now, a pair of gravity boots (without the frame) will run you around $60 – not including the frame. The frame is only gouda-knows how much, depending on whether you get a free-standing frame or a bar to put at the top of a doorway. An inversion table goes for roughly $150-$350. And then you’ve got to figure out where to put all this stuff. The table requires no small amount of room/floor space; a doorway frame for some boots requires faith in architecture (hard to come by in older houses, eek).
But a pair of crutches? Only about $25 on amazon.com – and you can stow ‘em in a corner of your closet. Hell, if you’re as clumsy and accident-prone as i am, you may already have a pair lying around the house somewhere.
A few years ago, i had a rather unfortunate mishap and found myself on crutches for two (almost three) months. During that time, my chiropractor was amazed at how well my back was doing. Seems that the regular traction from swinging around on crutches really did wonders for my spine. It also was pretty awesome for my upper body strength, lol.
Just now, i just spent about five minutes swinging back and forth on my old crutches. After about two minutes of that, i felt a pop in about five different places on my back, all at once. I even got something of a head rush; yay for increased blood flow to the brain. Holy sweet cheeses and mother of gouda, i haven’t felt this good in i don’t know how long.
Now, time for anti-inflammatories and a good twenty minutes with an ice pack. I foresee that as being Incredibly Good Times.