So last week I spoke about workplace health, well here it is a bit again. After that post, just this Thursday, I called in ill to work. Why you may ask? Quite simply I had a migraine, a very extensive painful, please shut off all the lights and if the sun had a switch I'd shut it off, kind of migraine. I thought maybe it was the heat in my apartment and that cool air or a shower might help, but no. I was in nauseating pain and even breakfast was hard to stomach. So I went to the doctor and got looked at and got a note. The doctor stated I must stay off work for 3 days, take a muscle relaxant past 6 pm and naproxin during the day, and get massage therapy because it wasn't just a migraine. No this stemmed from something else. Tension.
I was asked a series of questions and upon looking at my chart, and hearing my symptoms, he did a simple test of squeezing down on my shoulders and neck muscles and simply stated that 1. it's from work and 2. I definitely would benefit from massage therapy. Next thing I know I have a referral, an appointment and am out the door to get the note to work. Thank goodness I am not fired because I brought the note in right away. I may not have looked ill per se, but I was in enough pain that even keeping sunglasses on didn't help the light.
The good news from all this is that after speaking to HR they are going to look into an ergo assessment for my chair and back once I bring in a note. Which I will be doing by next week after I have my second session. So that means I can get some proper seating which after seeing the therapist, she totally agreed.
Now to the session. I was told to monitor how I feel throughout the week after the session, which by the way I learned some things and it felt amazing! I highly recommend it even as a gift to someone! What did I learn? Well I learned that after near 4 years at a strictly desk job this is bound to happen and is quite common and no one bothers to get help for it. I learned that the question mark shape migraine, that stems from my shoulders around into the back and base of my neck and skull and around my ear, behind my eye and into my sinuses is all because of the tension in one group of shoulder muscles. Those muscles get stuck in a certain way, even as I'm typing here, it is in that sitting, typing and mouse holding position that in fact causes it. Even right now I admit that I haven't taken the relaxant yet and am feeling a bit of discomfort in my right side where all of this is stemming. I feel the tension. I feel the muscles straining like they're tired.
She told me that when it's that much pain it's our body's reaction to it being tired and that if the body thinks that it can increase the pain, then perhaps we'll do something about it. So the earache and headache and all that suffering randomly over the past 2 years at least is a sign that I need out of a desk job! Or at least a lessening of some hours perhaps. I'm thinking that I may actually ask for a week off in December. Or a few days at least perhaps near my birthday. I just need to rest my body. It needs to do nothing but rest and not be at the computer.
The therapist also asked me a series of questions that included where I worked, how long I worked there, what I did, right down to how I wore my headset. She told me most people sit with a slouched forward position as well which is so very true, everything she described is true about me and I looked at the diagram and thought wow that is right where all the pain is!
Sitting is the next disease. It truly is. We are becoming obese, diabetic, and stressed. We have more heart attacks and heart disease etc. and women especially are at risk apparently. This is sad. We need to stop this trend. We need to have more active roles and lives like we used to. Like I used to. I used to walk everywhere, be able to lift up boxes and do laundry even without pain, without having to sit down for breath. Now I can't even do that. I try to stay active but the more I try the more it seems that work work work is holding me down.
This has made me come to the conclusion that we need to change our work habits in North America, and if not North America than Canada at the least where we do not work more than 8 hours a day and if we do and if we have sitting jobs we must have a plan or some kind of hour or two a day of mandatory working out or activity of some kind. You know, team sports or some kind of work out room installed or even some kind of just fun activity where everyone stops working and does stretches or something. The schools uses to have that and even now they don't. They've removed a lot of the essential skills and activity based education in our school systems. We don't have recess as adults, we need to. We need to have fun, destress and be active. It's not just diet. It starts there yes. But we need activity.
Now it's just a matter of how would one implement this? Who would be with me for this? I know we have busy lifestyles with going out, drinking with friends or being out and about with family and maybe you feel that no we shouldn't have an hour out of our busy work day to have this kind of activity. And maybe for some jobs there is no need you think right? But what about those people who are on their feet every day? Well those ones perhaps could be exempt if they are only working say a 4-6 hour shift and only part time throughout the week. Perhaps it would be only the 8-12 hour shifts 5-6 days a week people. Even those that work labour jobs should be subject to this, oh but it'll stop production you say? Well why not then do a half hour stretching period? Because even those at labour intense jobs require their bodies to stay active and flexible and healthy.
It's a thought. It's something that I think should be mandatory. Like the siestas in other countries. They get a nap time or they don't even work before or past a certain time because of the weather conditions and heat. I think that being healthy should be a world wide thing and in North America it's become an important and controversial topic. I'm not waging a war on "fat" people, no I am one of those people now and even if I wasn't I think back to even when I was thin and thinking that perhaps I wasn't entirely healthy then either. I was constantly sick with colds and flus etc. so therefore my immune system was waging war on me. Why, I think it's because of the environment. We can't take care of the earth so the earth won't take care of us.
No wonder we're obsessed with zombie apocalypses and viruses and such. We are one and are creating them. Soon enough with all these things we'll have wiped ourselves out.
Moving onto one more thing that comes to mind, I came across this article a few weeks back or so, Fat Letters. Yes they are making it mandatory in schools in some parts of the US that they be weighed and that there be a bmi and "fat letter" as they're being called sent home. Why? This isn't going to stop being obese and it isn't even accurate. Not to mention they are children. It is up to the household, the medical practitioner, not the school to judge who is and who isn't obese and what to perhaps do about it. How is this right? This is a war, it's discriminatory and demeaning. It hurts more of a child's self esteem and causes more bullying etc. How is this helping the problem? It isn't! Again we need more activity in our educational system and more encouragement for young children both boys and girls to be active in sports etc. If given more of an opportunity admittedly I would have perhaps joined sports teams but because of funds and because of the constant bullying for being small as well as the competition was so great, I didn't. I was discouraged in that way but I kept myself active by playing with my siblings and walking and lifting and doing other things like dancing. Yes, yes, I'm sure some of you who know me probably can't imagine me at 19, way back when, dancing in my bedroom with my sister making up choreography and loving to dance to Spanish or Celtic tunes and the love of watching River Dance etc. But I did. I did so almost every day, even when I was little we would dance while cleaning our rooms or doing dishes. One day I got so ambitious I was cleaning everything and listening to the good old tape deck and dancing and singing away (horrible voice but still!). It's things like that that can make cleaning or doing basic stuff fun.
So again I say, we need this as children, we need this as adults. And again I say that massage was very well worth it and I am excited and look forward to this Friday's session. I still hurt after, it didn't get rid of the headache entirely, yet. But it did do wonders and I can move more of my shoulders and arm than I could before. She is even going to do my lower back, which this first time around the heating pad helped significantly and I could walk much better. We shall see what happens next and of course updates will follow.
Until then everyone have a good week! Stay healthy and stay active!
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