Electro-Shock Therapy

I may have overdone it yesterday, demo day at the new house. I took two sleepers and woke up feeling better, but today was still a day of limited movement. It didn't help that my goal today was to hang six blinds, overhead, while standing on a footstool, and the window frames turned out to be not quite square....

So pain relief.

I know bourbon works for about an hour, but the pain comes back with a vengeance afterward.

Advil, Exedrin, NSAIDs, acetominabphin, none of these OTC pain pills do much of anything for me unless I get the PM version and fall asleep afterward.

Hot soaker baths and heating pads work, but slowly and incompletely.

Massages help some but I can't get a massage from my S.O. very often.

So, I decided to try something new today -- TENS or Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation. A little $50 battery powered unit with two sticky pads you attach to your skin. When switched on, a series of tingly pulses and short jolts of electricity flow between the pads and stimulate the muscles between the pads (they caution not to put your heart in the pathway).

I was skeptical naturally, but the sensation was surprisingly strong. After one 15-minute cycle -- several different pulse patterns -- my back muscles feel somewhat numbed. Maybe not pain free, but definitely less bothersome. Considering I could barely stand beforehand, this is an improvement.

Will report more later after additional testing. Anybody else try this?

I haven't tried that. I just stick with my tried and true snake oil.
I use the snake oil to wash down the vicodin.

Mixing pain meds with alcohol is supposed to be a sure ticket to trouble. I try to avoid it.

My niece-in-law has chronic back problems and gets OTC meds in Canada which are ten times stronger than US meds. I tried one once, when I threw out my back, but it sent me into about 14 hours of dreamless sleep. I don't want/need that much relief!

NoCoPilot wrote:

My niece-in-law has chronic back problems and gets OTC meds in Canada which are ten times stronger than US meds

The only difference between meds bought in Canada and those bought in the US is the price.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Mixing pain meds with alcohol is supposed to be a sure ticket to trouble.  I try to avoid it.

You say trouble, I say tomato.

I was reading something the other day about how Tylenol is basically worthless as a painkiller, and aspirin and ibuprofen aren't a whole lot better. In fact, all of the OTC pain meds mostly rely on the placebo effect when it comes to pain moderation.

I would be interested in reading that article. I can accept that for some cases, the placebo effect is in play, but I do not believe that all of those drugs are ineffective at some pain relief. (Even if is only the placebo effect, if it kills the pains then it's working. )

Talk to people who suffer from chronic pain and you will get a different report. When one tries different meds until finding one that works, I would discount the placebo effect.

_Howard wrote:

Talk to people who suffer from chronic pain and you will get a different report.

My niece, for one.

She's a licensed EMT and a 20-year medical assistant at a cancer clinic, so she knows a thing or two about pain management.

She says all OTC meds are basically placebos, the limits on the bottles on how many you can take and how long you can take them are all off by a factor of 3. She gets her meds semi-illegally from Canada (they're OTC up there, but are supposed to be surrendered at the border).

Tried the TENS on my knee, which was hurtin'.  It caused the muscles to twitch, visibly as well as feeling it.  Since my knee pain was mainly the knee joint, not the muscles, the improvement was pretty muted.

But weird watching my knee twitch like a plexor test.

OK, I think this was the article I came across accidentally. Looking at it again, the researcher's comments are a lot more nuanced than I recalled. As usual, people's reactions to drugs vary, so he's talking about the percentage of the population that experiences relief, the dosage, and the type of pain. So when the wife says that Tylenol is worthless, that may be true for her but not true for somebody else, and when I take 3 or 4 or 6 ibuprofen instead of 1 or 2, that may be what I need compared to somebody else. So, none of them completely useless, just a lot less effective than (probably) most people believe.

And like any foreign substance long term use can cause kidney damage.

The pads are barely audible (what's the word for being able to feel something?) on my feet.

I think the word you're looking for is tactile.

My right hand has been tingly and numb, and my knuckles are starting to show signs of arthritis (can't make a fist) due to hours of pounding away with a hammer. I decided to try the TENS on it last night.

Placed one pad on my palm and the other on the back of my hand. The result felt like somebody massaging my hand with a half dozen pencil erasers. Not entirely unpleasant, but not exactly soothing either. After a fifteen minute cycle my hand felt thoroughly worked over.

I'll have to try it a few more times to see if it has any long-term effect. Short term, this morning, nada.