[AE.Mailbag] When you twist, and then shout...
It's Friday, Friday, and as the song says, "gotta get in touch with community members, it's Friday." Yep, it's another mailbag.
The topic I put forth for this week was about the other kind of growing pains, the kind you get for growing old rather than growing up.
I only have one letter from someone willing to be on the record here this week. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that people are a bit more private about medical conditions than they were RPG experiences, but to be honest, I was surprised at how many people were willing to share on that one.
I did have a number of people who wanted me to know about arnica as a topical application, and I'm happy to say that I have been trying an arnica-based product and the results so far are pretty good. I wouldn't care to name a product until I've been using it longer, but I do want to pass that along to anyone else with muscle and/or joint pain who may be looking for solutions.
The one letter for this week comes from Michelle [she/her]:
I know this won't be the end of the story for most people-- but I may be able to provide hope to a few with a Simple! Life! Hack!
Over about 6 months in 2021, I began to find I was waking up with back pain. Pro-tip-- don't Google "back pain at night" unless you absolutely have to. It's all v v alarming.
Instead of making appointments with 53 medical specialists, I decided/fervently hoped that perhaps I was just getting old (43) and, like Alexandra said, this "sleeping injury" was the proof. My abs had become old-fashioned pull taffy since the pandemic started, and were never in great shape beforehand, so... QED? Back pain?
Then, while perusing a message board, I happened to note one titled something like, "New Mattress Saved My Back!!!" or something. I clicked and read a story similar to my own. 40-something woman thought she was getting old/had inoperable fatal backatitis or whatever BUT THEN slept on a hotel bed or some such and thought, "Maybe I just need a new mattress?" Got a new mattress, no more back pain.
The ensuing conversation brought up the "fact" that you're supposed to buy a new mattress every 5-10 years. At this, I balked. My grandmother has perfectly functional 30-year-old guest bed mattresses, and aren't mattresses in general supposed to last, oh, IDK-- 20 years at least? Clearly this "fact" was propaganda from Big Mattress. Lather, rinse, repeat, indeed.
My husband and I had bought our mattress in a fit of practicality for our first milestone (5th) wedding anniversary, when I realized that 1) it would cost the same as the romantic long weekend I was considering and 2) we were still sleeping on the mattress he had purchased from a grad student for $20, and the springs were beginning to literally poke me in the a$$.
And it still felt great! The new mattress, I mean, in 2021. Not the butt-poking one from years past. No, the mattress we were sleeping on in 2021 was still really comfy when you tucked yourself in for the night. It looked great, too. And after all, it wasn't THAT old. Let's see. We got it for our 5th wedding anniversary, and in 2021, we had just celebrated our... 23rd.
Oh.
Well.
I did some Googling, avoiding any site that was actually selling mattresses, and found that the recommendation from doctors and Good Housekeeping, in fact, was to replace your mattress at LEAST every 10 years, if not more like 5-7.
Thanks to my 2nd grade teacher, I was moderately confident that 23-5 > 10.
And reading the thread about this Mattress Miracle reminded me that I had actually felt no back pain for the recent week I had stayed with my parents-- the first time sleeping in a non-my-own-bed since the pandemic started.
Long story only slightly less long:
Got a new mattress, no more back pain.
Thank you for raising that topic, Michelle! I hadn't thought of it, but it's advice I can fully cosign... my recent spate of sleep injuries notwithstanding. I got a new mattress a little earlier in the year, and it did wonders for my back. While it did hurt when I woke up Monday morning, that was because I'd managed to twist around in a weird way, and it was done bothering me by the next day, whereas I've still been nursing my arm along.
So, that's actually it for the ol' community squawk sack this week, and thus also it for the newsletter today. I'll aim for a less sensitive topic next time.
Happy weekend, and stay comfy!
-Alexandra