Ankylosing spondylitis flares are no doubt agonizing. The burning pain in your neck and back when those flares erupt can take a heavy emotional and physical toll on you. But you can ease spondylitis flare-ups with 5 everyday items that are in your home.
When those episodes come up, all that floods your mind is sourcing relief and you don't always have to rush on a call with your health provider. You don't have to languish in such pain, either.
In this guide, I am so excited to share with you some readily available home items you can adapt into relief therapy when those flares come around.
Heat pads can be relieving
Of course, I am acquainted with that stinging pain and stiffness in your joints when you have a spondylitis flare. In those moments, moving becomes no less challenging than acquiring an MIT doctorate degree.
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The good news is an optimized administration of heat can ease you. Such directed application of heat improves blood circulation, ultimately alleviating the pain.
Heating pads can get such a job done! These are cheap and easily available on e-commerce shops or drugstores around. But there is a more brilliant way to source heat pads at home: adapting your washcloth into a heating pad!
First, get your washcloth damp with water and place it in a freezer bag. Good job!
Now, let us keep this in the microwave for 40-45 seconds. After this, you can wrap it in a cloth and rest it gently on the pain sites. Now feel the relief gush in.
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Easy!
A ready grabber tool would help
Spondylitis flares are commonly accompanied by significant stiffness in your upper body and hip. This severely restricts your ability to move. In such situations, bending down to pick stuff can be unnerving. But you really don't have to.
You can adapt any long item or stick in your house into a grabber tool (if you don't have mechanical reachers). All you have to do is integrate a clip at the end of that elongated device (therein the stick).
With such a tool optimized for grabbing, all you need to do is royally stretch your "staff" and pick your desired item, saving you painful movements, especially when have to bend to retrieve items from the floor.
A warm bath could do the magic
There are really few things warm water can't do. Fortunately, relieving spondylitis manages to stay off the exempted list.
Immersing yourself in warm water – say in a hot water tub – significantly enhances blood flow through the pain site, particularly around the stiffened muscles.
More than that, such complete immersion also enhances the dispersion of toxins (or lactic acid) from such constricted muscles. What you get are well-loosened muscles and consequently reduced pain during such spondylitis flares.
It is no secret that spondylitis patients struggling with morning stiffness readily resort to a warm shower bath. Take note that complete immersion in hot water tubs is not advisable for those with diabetes.
Pregnant women and high blood pressure patients should also abstain from this hot tub relief therapy for spondylitis flares.
You can leverage walkers
Walkers – just like crutches and canes – can greatly alleviate movement when you have spondylitis flares.
There is not much biological explanation for this other than such walking devices transfer the pressure from your hurting joints (which could be inflamed).
Aside from relief during flares, walkers are beneficial to patients coping with movement handicaps resulting from advanced ankylosing spondylitis. Such walkers play a vital role in gait-retraining therapy, enhancing the walking capacity and stability (in motion) of such patients.
Instagram could help
The beauty of social media is that there is a diverse spectrum of receptive communities online. Take Instagram, for example. There is a vibrant fraternity of spondylitis patients and caregivers there ready to provide relief tips and emotional succor to you anytime
You can identify such communities by using specialized hashtags to access this robust digital support infrastructure when you have flares.
What's more, the emotional juice of being among "your people" when in an exclusive society of people who have experience with spondylitis. Mentally, this would ramp up your coping capacity, dissipating that notorious feeling of abandonment.
Just as a dessert to round up the dish, you can distract yourself when you have these flares. Fortunately, distraction is no longer a luxury in 2021. Just get online, and there are enough diversions online to distract you for the 24 hours of the day.
From thrilling TikTok videos to Netflix and video gaming on Twitch, there are surplus activities to engage in to take your focus off the pain.
Don't wait...go through your house to locate what you need to ease spondylitis flare-ups with 5 everyday items within your reach.
