Friday Tidbits: IV Nutritionals and Chelation

The good old James River, full of so many toxic heavy metals.

Do you remember when you were a kid and your parents told you that if you couldn't find something good to say about someone or something, you were to keep your mouth shut? (Hopefully, the parents said it nicer than that, but you know what I mean - or so I hope!) 

It was really good advice, especially when we don't have all the facts and are so tempted, at times, to say something just to say it. (Come on, admit that we're not all perfect angels all the time, no matter how much we try!)  Remember, too, when the media made fun of ME/CFS by calling it the "Yuppie Flu"?  Remember when comedian Al Franken spoke of CFIDS/ME/CFS in a demeaning and derogatory way?  Well, that was back in the 1980s and things haven't changed much, unfortunately.

Recently there's been a bit of hoopla about celebrities getting intravenous vitamin treatments as if they were doing so as a fad or for some trivial purpose.  But how quickly people are to judge!  The benefits of IV vitamin therapy have been known for decades and shouldn't be discussed in a negative manner by reporters who simply want ratings at the expense of people's health and lives.

Here are a few facts that should be considered:

• There are many patients whose illnesses have resulted in their using up their body vitamin stores, leaving them with a vitamin deficit or deficiency.

• Many people do not get adequate nutrition from the foods they eat and, when confronted with an acute injury or illness, need IV vitamins to help them heal.  A popular example of this is when the Emergency Room doctor orders a "banana bag" to be hung as part of the IV treatment for an ER patient. The multi-vitamins infused make the IV bag turn yellow. If you don't believe me, watch some old episodes of the TV show ER.  
• As we age we tend to absorb less and less of the nutrients in the food we eat. This, in addition to the fact that many of our foods are not as nutritious as they used to be, may lead to someone becoming vitamin deficient. 
• Ever heard of "leaky gut syndrome"?  (Of course you have!)  Perhaps we who have CFIDS/fibro are especially prone to becoming vitamin deficient and thus need to get our vitamins directly into the blood stream with an IV, as opposed to the good old fashioned way, by eating nutritious meals.
• What is wrong with getting vitamins intravenously anyway?  The down side is minimal and the upside is enormous.  

I've written before that at one point in my life - back in 1997-98 - I went to a holistic clinic run by a doctor who'd been treating fibro and CFIDS for 50 years, referred to as "Adrenal Exhaustion" back in the day before we became plagued with the ever-so-popular name of "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" - that's a bit of sarcasm, incidentally, the part about the popular name! (Clarified for novices to this blog!) 

I arrived at the clinic almost at death's door. (How I came about going to this clinic - quite by extraordinary circumstances - is described here.)  It was perhaps the worst period in my life, a life in which I was spiraling downward at an alarming rate, with new, major "things" going awry almost weekly.  Something had to be done if I were to continue living. 

After a few weeks of numerous therapies such rolfing, acupuncture, acupressure, applied kinesiology and other therapies which escape me at the moment, IV nutritionals were introduced once a week and then chelation therapy was later added.  These treatments really made me feel better than I had in 20 years, quite the achievement.  Even my sleep, my severe insomnia, was helped to a great extent.  My local GP was so impressed with my progress that he infamously said, "I don't care if they tell you to wear cow manure on your head.  It's working, so keep it up!"  Quite the statement!  

From one of the best therapists at the clinic, I was told many months into it all that "I never see someone so dead still alive," discussed here in "Perils of Exercise."  He'd spent years in a North Vietnamese POW camp, in a tiny cell where he could not extend his body all the way in order to sit nor lie down (described to me by his sister) so that really "impressed" me! The dude knew what he was talking about!  Now he knew death!

But getting back onto topic....

I must add that one can't go willynilly into the world of IV nutritionals - also known by some as a Myer's Cocktail. Or perhaps I should say it was a version of a Myer's cocktail - in my case - since it was tailored to what my particular deficiencies are/were and cutting back when I had reached the proper levels, not an easy thing to establish due to many factors, too much to go into at this point.

Vitamin levels were taken and revisited, relatively often.  Before chelation (nutritional IV with EDTA added to chelate out the heavy metals) I was tested to see if I did indeed also have heavy metal toxicity.  As an example, I was found to be off the charts in about 10 or more metals, including alumnium, arsenic, lead, mercury, antimony, bismuth, cobalt, copper, iron and so forth. 

I was found to be off the chart in all but one or two heavy metals, but especially completely, and insanely, off the chart in aluminum.  When my local GP saw the results he was shocked. He'd had a patient who had documented aluminum toxicity - from working in an aluminum plant. This man had around 4 stars on the chart. I had 30!  Yes, 30!  Hubs laughs and calls me the "walking toxic waste dump."  Funny chap that husband of mine!  Yes, he thinks he's so very amusing!  Please tell me, someone, why I married the fellow?  

And sorry, but another aside, though important.  As a child I used to visit my childhood BFF and we would swim and fish (and then eat the fish) from the James River, right next to Reynold's Aluminum plant, where we loved to watch the (VERY contaminated) waters coming out of huge drains (a la The Shawshank Redemption type), as seen in the above picture!

To give you a sort of example as to the necessity of having levels checked for vitamins and so forth, my rheumatologist/immunologist/pain specialist gave me a pretty good analogy: if you ask someone for directions to a particular location but the starting point isn't known, you are probably not going to get very far. The same is true for vitamins, supplements, hormones, etc. It's imperative that you know where you are starting from. That is, you should know your baseline level in order to know what dose (if any!) of any particular substance to take.  

It's also important to consult your physician about this!  In just the last few days I've come across two or three people who had bad reactions to magnesium.  But hey!  They didn't get tested to see if their levels were low. If you recall, I even wrote that you must get the RBC magnesium levels checked (here and here), not the way most doctors (who don't understand nutrition) test magnesium levels normally.

This may sound a bit harsh and perhaps too direct and maybe I could spend a bit of time trying to be a bit more diplomatic.  However, I'm feeling cruddy and just don't have too much diplomacy in me tonight.  But more importantly, I want people to understand that I'm not fooling around - and that seems to be achieved by being direct - since I've said often enough that levels should be checked.  As the cell phone company ad goes, "can you hear me now?" 

But getting back to the "making fun of IV vitamins."  People who don't understand how and why the intravenous delivery system of anything, including vitamins, works really should hold their tongues and try not to judge others.  Even if the celebrities are getting IV vitamins as a fad, it doesn't mean that IV vitamins don't have a place in the treatment of sick people.  

Some may say, "but it's so old fashioned to do nutritional IV's."  Well, that's like saying aspirin is old and so it doesn't work, or that putting a cast on a broken leg is old so let's do something else.  Worse, if one's IN PAIN and magnesium is shown to be low - as an example, mind you - you don't put that person on Cymbalta or narcotics. How crazy would that be?  The magnesium wouldn't suddenly get elevated with Cymbalta.  Your brain chemistry is being changed by meds like Cymbalta!  Mind you, pharma would like to convince you that the "pain meds" are better.  And the vitamin world at large is not exactly without faults either. They'd have you taking supplements, etc, out the wazoo and not mention testing levels.  I was shocked, dismayed and "devastated" when I discovered that the humdinger baby daddy of Kourtney Kardashian, Scott, is a spokesperson for GNC. Wow!  How did THAT become a good way to go? 

Finally, I'm not sure many doctors would argue that not establishing deficiencies is the right way to go.  

Those very individuals who insulted extremely ill people by trivializing their problems with the disparaging phrase, "Yuppie Flu," should have learned by their mistakes.  But that would have taken integrity and intelligence, two attributes sorely lacking in our ratings-based reporting.

As always, I hope everyone's doing their very best - only better!  Ciao and paka.



Note: the vitamin info here is pretty well-known and documented but I'll leave a couple of references just for the fun of it. Their bibliographies are a treasure trove of useful references. 

Gaby, A.R. Alternative Med Review (2002) Vol. 7: 389-403 link
Massey, P.B. Alternative Therapy Health Med (2007) Vol.13: 32-34. link

Yes, yes, I realize the references are not MLA handbook approved but then I'm no longer the person who used to do that sort of thing! 

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Friday Tidbits: Chronic Pain & Magnesium

"I won't let it go until I understand why...."

Are you always searching for different ways to deal with the pain factor in your life?  Recently, a reader asked if I could write a post dealing with how to handle flares. I did so and mentioned that taking frequent baths with salts which contain magnesium are quite helpful.  

I think a vast majority of those of us with painful conditions already know that magnesium does a lot of good, but do we understand why?  Well, today I thought I'd try to explain some of the reasons magnesium is such a powerhouse in the CFIDS/CFS/ME, fibromyalgia, myofascial pain and lupus departments.  I don't know about you, but skeptical me always finds explanations fascinating, not to mention that I follow these hints much better if I understand, at least partially, the reasoning - the why or how.  The SOMETHING!

As we all know, patients with CFIDS/ME/CFS (very) obviously have problems with fatigue and decreased stamina.  While researchers don't have all the answers regarding the causes of these troubling symptoms, an article in a British nutrition journal may give a clue as why these symptoms occur.  

If  you think I'm a skeptic?  Try the medical establishment.  Considering the doctors/researchers don't ever believe one another and find that they just have to experiment for themselves to see if they can prove "otherwise" than what someone has just found, believe me, then you can get some high drama, not to mention better understanding. (Whoops! Too obvious?)  

In 1994 researchers found that patients with CFIDS/ME/CFS had low levels of magnesium.  However, they used a particular test to determine this.  As opposed to the usual serum magnesium test, they decided to use the Red Blood Cell (RBC) magnesium tests.

Most doctors, when measuring a magnesium level in a patient, will order a serum magnesium level and this is unfortunate.  The serum magnesium level test is not as accurate in determining the amount of magnesium in the muscles and other tissues as with a RBC magnesium test.  The authors of the study found that the RBC level of magnesium was significantly lower in the CFIDS/ME patients than in controls. Because fibro and CFIDS often occur in the same patient, one researcher wanted to know if patients with fibro, but without CFIDS, were also low in magnesium.
  
My rheumy told me that when the observation that RBC magnesium levels were low in fibro patients was first presented at a medical meeting, the finding was met with some skepticism.  That led to another researcher looking into this issue and much to his surprise, he came to the same conclusion.  

However, instead of doing a direct measurement of RBC magnesium, he performed a "magnesium loading test."  This involved giving a lot of magnesium intravenously to the patient and then collecting urine over the next 24 hours to see how much magnesium was in it.  Lo and behold!  There was no magnesium in the urine specimens.  Those fibro patients sopped up the IV magnesium like a sponge because their bodies were just that deficient (low) in magnesium.  

Over the next few years, four more studies were done, two by each researcher, examining the magnesium status of patients with other chronic conditions aside from fibromyalgia - such as lupus, myofascial pain syndrome and the Eosinophilic Myalgia Syndrome. (Yes! Lupus!) The researchers took great care in making sure that none of those patients had fibromyalgia.  What all these problems had in common was chronic pain. (Yes!  Lupus!)  Therefore, a link between chronic pain and magnesium was established.  

What is even more interesting is that another study showed that pain threshold is proportional to the magnesium level.  In other words, the lower your magnesium, the more you are going to hurt.  

Thanks to these skeptical and competitive researchers, we now know that magnesium is necessary for proper muscle function and is a co-factor in the synthesis of ATP, a chemical that is directly associated with the energy level in the cells and in the body as a whole.  (This is only a Cliff Notes version re ATP!) 

So, what are those of us suffering chronic pain and/or lupus to do? 

• Know your RBC magnesium level. (And yes, that means the RBC level of magnesium!)
• Understand that your level may be in the "normal" range, but that "normal" range may not apply specifically to you since the range is a statistical construct based on the general healthy population.   
• If your RBC magnesium level is below average you might want to discuss this with your doctor (ASAP).
• Be careful what magnesium pills you take since magnesium is a component of many laxatives, including Milk of Magnesia.  (Duh!- re the Milk of Magnesia!)  Taking a sustained release (or slow-release) magnesium preparation is probably the best way to go if you are going to take magnesium supplementation. 

Patients with CFIDS, fibro, myofascial pain and lupus often have little control over their illness but the body's level of magnesium can be something that you can control and improve if necessary.  By rectifying a magnesium deficiency you can have some control over the pain and fatigue that accompany these illnesses. It's not a cure, but it can improve quality of life in some patients.

As always, hoping everyone's doing their best, only better!  Ciao and paka! 


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My Bodycare Supplement Routine

OK, I know it'll never happen in THIS lifetime! But one can dream?

It was back in August that I swore that I'd write a post about a vitamin/supplement routine I'd been on for what seemed like "forever." And yet I've hesitated to write about it. Why?

I suppose my hesitation to endorse this line is because I hate sounding as if I've bought into yet another doctor's line of supplements. I've taken enough of them over the years and have very mixed feelings about the whole issue of doctors selling or endorsing products. I know, call me old-fashioned, but I do remember when doctors couldn't even advertise. Yep, that's the way I like my doctors: unadvertised and without commercial. Furthermore, I HAVE tried various doctor's lines of vitamins and supplements and they've never done me a bit of good, other than to throw away good money.

But about a year ago, I started taking Murad's "Firm and Tone Dietary Supplement" daily packettes.  I'd seen them advertised and turned my back on them until I got to the point where I thought, "I really DO need to start back on a good vitamin and supplement regime."  (Yes, I've started talking to myself: it's a genetic thing!)  

I've done vitamins and supplements over the years in a major way, sorting them into those pill boxes, carefully investigating everyone's opinion, reading all I can get my hands on as to what is good or helpful, especially for the person with CFIDS/ME/CFS and/or fibromyalgia.  At different stages of my life, I've taken up to 50 pills/capsules a day, not including my prescription meds.  I've fine-tuned according to my needs, with supplements such as CoQ10, milk thistle, enzymes and the list goes on and on.  At times I felt as if I were spending my life keeping up with filling those little Sunday-Saturday, 4 times a day compartments pallettes, in plural.  I always felt better, but it was a royal pain in the behind, not to mention awfully time-consuming and expensive.

Somehow I conveniently fell out of the vitamin and supplement habit but after the near-fatal and also long-term damage of the "compartment syndrome surgeries" episode of a year ago, I knew I had to fight back in a major way.  After all, I'd had fluid around all my major organs (abasarka), had renal failure, had come close to pancreatitis (jury is still out on that) and the brown stuff in my urine bag in the hospital was the tissue breaking down and leaving my body (rhabdomyolysis).  It took two blood transfusions to save my life.  

When I finally arrived home, I knew that I needed to start taking care of my body in a serious way.  The plastic surgeon, a gentle, jolly bear of a man, found nothing amusing at all with my situation and since he was a surgeon, had no way of comprehending all the stuff that was going on with me aside from the surgeries he'd performed to save my arm/hand and life.  He flatly told me that he could never understand all the mysterious goings-on with the CFIDS/ME/CFS and fibromyalgia and all THOSE issues.  He just knew that I'd had a close call and could see that somehow I wasn't getting the message that my health and what had transpired was no laughing matter.  Bummer.  I really like to make people laugh, but he was in no laughing mood when he'd see me.  When I joked that he must see this stuff - the acute compartment syndrome, etc. - every day, he looked at me seriously and said, "No, thank God, I do NOT see this sort of thing often.  And you don't have an easy road ahead of you."  Gulp.  Killjoy!

So, I thought I'd slowly go back to taking vitamins and supplements.  I knew I wasn't up for the charts I'd made for all the complex plans I had before of not over-dosing on too much of one thing and not enough of another. Therefore, when I started seeing the Murad line of supplements being touted, I thought, "here we go again. SUCKER!"

Imagine my surprise, when I discovered that they were actually making a difference!  My legs were getting a bit veiny (understatement) since there was so little muscle to hold those veins in place.  My skin tone, which had been problematic only in the upper arm area, was now an issue all over.  It was extremely difficult for me to breathe after all the stress on my heart and lungs. I was bloated but my skin was dehydrated.  As if I hadn't had enough issues, I now had so many more.

I felt like a fool.  I cringe saying that I even tried the program.  If anything, the descriptions all over the box are as silly, blatant and worthy of the best headlines that New York Daily News (famous for its cheesy headlines) could come up with.  It was better than anything that the Kellogg and Battle Creek people from the beginning of the 20th century could come up with when they tried to get Americans to start eating healthy. (We've been a country of unhealthy eaters for much longer than we think!)

After a week or so of taking the Murad supplements, I thought that surely the positive results I was seeing were a figment of my imagination.  It had to be ME being a sucker.  How in the world could my skin actually start firming up in just a few weeks with no exercise to go hand in hand?  How could I be eating less and my appetite be under better control within just a few weeks?  Even the Murad people weren't claiming that I'd want to eat less.

And just as I was telling myself I was a Madison Avenue ad executive's dream come true, I happened upon Caroline Hirons' blog and after reading some of her posts I found that she too was puzzled about the sudden fullness of appetite she was experiencing.  Now, Caroline Hirons is one of those women who has a bunch of credentials as well as street cred when it comes to the beauty world and especially the skincare world.  She's completely irreverent (which I love) but so spot on.  Her blog is one I have on the sidebar as a blog I follow - or at least try to - because anytime I remember to check her blog out, I come away with tons of knowledge or validation I strongly need.

So, when I saw that Caroline Hirons was endorsing Murad, I thought, well, I suppose I'll buy another supply of those boxes of packettes and give it another month's try.

What do they include?

• A multi-vitamin (absolutely essential but I always forget!)
• Connective support complex supplements (now we're talking business!)
• Essential Fatty Acids (which help skin cells attract water)
• Cell Energizers (be still my heart -well, not TOO still!)

Why do I love them?

First, I've made it pretty clear that I'm awful about taking any of my meds in a timely fashion.  I either can't find them (and they're laid out in a dish next to my bed as of 6PM each evening!) or I can't find the little Sunday through Saturday pill box (in yellow so it doesn't blend in with the bed linens) that hold my ONE thyroid pill for the AM.  If I need to go on an antibiotic four times a day, all bets are off.  I can't do ANYTHING every day - other than eat - much less a few times a day, so we're not doing well in the thyroid department. I'm an all or nothing person: either my life is nothing but taking supplements and meds all day and nothing else gets done, or my life is reading/watching TV and no meds or supplements get taken.  I know.  It's time to get over it, but I'm a very OLD dog!  New tricks are hard to learn, and if it hasn't happened in the last four decades, I'll venture to say it'll never happen.

With the Murad "Firm and Tone" ... Ok, I have to stop. Can ANYONE out there say that with a straight face?  I mean, really?  Why not just tell us we can take supplements and our faces will look like Elizabeth Taylor's reincarnated at the height of her beauty?

So, getting back on track (and yes, it took me five minutes to stop laughing enough in order to continue)...

The packettes are divided into four "compartments," two of which you take in the AM and two you take in the PM.  Well, that's never going to happen in my lifetime!  (That's what all the ABOVE stuff was about: to make you understand how hopeless a case I am!)  

The first month I ended up with a bunch of PM's and finally decided that I'll just take both AM and PM supplements in the late afternoon.  I know, you should probably take some before eating, some with a meal, some after a meal.  However, I finally decided that my life is too short to get that straight.  Like I said, it's never going to happen.  So which is best?  No supplements ever or all at some point?   Yes, I think you see my point.  All in one go it is.

The only precautions I do make?  I don't take the supplements around my thyroid AM med taking - whenever that might happen to be because of my sleeping "issues."  I understand that there may be a calcium issue (if it IS indeed an issue: I've yet to talk to my endocrinologist about timing of food, etc.).  I also don't take the supplements close to "bedtime" because one of the PM meds I take is Neurontin.  Neurontin and magnesium cancel each other out.  Other than that, I'm just glad I can take something with a minimum of effort and a minimum of worry.

So, yes, I've been back on the Murad for the last two weeks and they are as great as I remember them.  I'm probably on my fourth or fifth box of them now.  I've gone off of the Murad for periods and then back on - it's one of those "out of sight, out of mind things" with me, as well as "am I imagining this?" and yes, I can definitely see a huge change in my skin tone. 

Just a few of the improvements I've seen thus far, as of my January 1 resolution in terms of weight and all that "nonsense":

• my skin's elasticity has improved (big time!)
•  my sore throat, lymph node problem and mouth sores seem to have improved
•  my posture has unexpectedly improved
•  my muscles have strengthened

That's it so far, and this from a person who never really notices things unless they are drastic and you'd have to be a moron not to notice.  Honestly, I'm truly impossible.

However, yesterday I got off the sofa by my bed without touching the arms of the sofa, just my legs lifting my body up, the way things used to be in the "old days."  It was purely instinctual, not at all premeditated.  And please keep in mind that just a month ago, hubs was having to push me towards the middle of the bed each night, with me howling at him to get his filthy paws off of me - OK, I slightly exaggerate about the "paws" thing.  However, for some odd reason (?), hubs didn't want me falling out of bed yet again.  But I didn't like the manhandling and I was just too weak to be moved from the edge of the bed.

So if for no other reason than marital bliss, I highly recommend this supplement routine. Forget the Madison Avenue bull.  Just consider taking the supplements and see if they work for you!

As always, I hope everyone's feeling their very best, only better.  Ciao and paka!

When Will I Be Strong?

Putrajaya, Malaysia, all beautiful at night....

I do have to laugh at myself. You see, as soon as I make a list of things to do, I am doomed. Doomed, I tell you!  Nothing ever goes according to plan.  And if you recall, I actually made a list the other day on how I would start to work my way back to feeling better, fool that I am!

These last few days have been particularly bad days, perhaps the worst I've had in years, bar the first couple of weeks after my November/December surgeries.  I know part of it is the Herxheimer-type reaction: I'm having a huge reactivation of whatever virus caused this stupid illness in the first place, a vicious full-blast reactivation most likely caused by the stress of my trip, and it is, paradoxically, getting worse as I try to get myself back on track to the place where I feel my best.  That's not asking for much, except it obviously IS in my case.  It's all coming at a price.  I feel as if what I'm going through is much like what I've read it must be like when a drug addict tries to detox.  I want to crawl out of my skin.   At other moments, I feel as if my skin is turning inside out.

All of this has been further complicated by the fact that when I get too sick and am in too much pain, I forget that I need to take my pain meds. There's always a price to be paid if the pain gets to be too bad, when you end up "chasing" the pain.  This is so well known and understood that it was THE reason I was such a ferocious lioness during the weeks my daughter was at the "major medical center," so often and for so long: the pain she experienced was off the charts and I knew first-hand how hard it would be to get back to a place of tolerable pain if and when she was given her pain meds even ten minutes late, much less a half hour to an hour late.

So, it's ironic that I forget to take pain meds when I most need them.  Usually, this isn't a problem because hubby comes home, sees me and knows I need to take my pain meds, or my daughter will call, hear something off in my voice, and immediately becomes all bossy-like, instructing me to take my pain meds.  My doctor gets frustrated with me that I don't take my pain meds as often as I should. Deep down inside, I think that a part of me feels that when I take pain meds, I'm accepting defeat, a very wrong way to think, I know!

At any rate, there were entirely too many days in Malaysia when I didn't take my pain meds, after hubby flew home, because I was in too much pain to realize I needed them and then during the various flights heading home it was just so much easier to skip too many doses.  All of which is to say, my body has been chasing the pain big time, and obviously too long.

I need to find/remember all in my arsenal for improving. I had forgotten, for example, all about my nutritional IV's and need to go that route for a while. I need to remember to take my AM magnesium (not in the PM as it counteracts the Neurontin). I need to work harder at trying to establish a sleep pattern, which is also ironic: I'm just too sick right now to work so hard at falling asleep.  To me, sleep is major labor.  I don't have it in me to work that hard at the moment, but I know I must.

Now gee, this was a cheerful post! So, if you've made it this far into my complaints, here are three rather random tips that work for me that I think can help anyone:

1. Consider using an air cleaner in your room. I have been using these for years - but of course had forgotten about them in the last couple of years of our familial insanity. I need to dig one out, pronto. The unit I like to use in my bedroom is portable and I can immediately feel that I can BREATHE. It also cuts down on environmental pollutants, as well as dust, etc.  (The filter is absolutely disgusting when you change it.)
2. Check out your Vitamin B-12 level as well as your magnesium levels. With the magnesium, make sure your doctor uses the RBC (Red Blood Cell) test.  I'll be discussing this in future posts.
3. Get yourself a notebook for lists. Just because I've been struck with the "list curse" doesn't mean the rest of the world has been!

And here's to all feeling the best they can be, only better!  Ciao and paka!

My favorite of all the air cleaners in the house, the Sun-Pure.

Friday night beauty pampering...

Nothing like a good soak on a a Friday night...or do I need a life?

Finally, the week is over and about half of the population will be celebrating the end of the week by going out, while the other half lies on a coach and is exhausted, happy to finally have a break.  For those of us in the US, it's a three-day weekend, Monday being Memorial Day when we remember and honor those veterans who died in wars fighting for our freedom and in protecting our freedom.  We salute them.

At the same time, we plan our barbeques, picnics and/or hit the stores for the Memorial Day Sales!

And then there's "us," the ones with CFIDS/ME/fibro, who feel weary and exhausted (what an understatement... so sorry!) and pain so strong and killing that it feels as if it can send you straight through the roof.   For "us," I'm going to suggest a few products that some call the "ultimate" in end-of-the-week relaxation and perhaps a bit of a reward for getting through the week, the good old-fashioned bath experience of lying back, relaxing and letting your pains and woes float away - OK, only in a movie, but even in real life, the bath, with something special added can help, especially if you can talk someone into running it for you and all you need to do is step in....

People with CFIDS/ME/fibro, rejoice! Just a couple of weeks ago, I was finally able to christen my new bathtub with a truly indulging treat!  I christened it with:

• Elemis' "Skin Nourishing Milk Bath."  What decadence.  I even indulged myself more by adding three capfulls, instead of two, because...well, I was spoiling myself!  Because of remodeling I'd not been able to take a bath in a year and my skin has been so dehydrated that the words "prune" and "raisin" come to mind.  Hospital stays and almost dying, I suppose, are not kind to the skin.  So, I'm working hard on plumping up the skin, all the time trying to lose weight, of course.  Crazy, no?  Your skin is softened and washing it with a nice body wash leaves it feeling indulged. Anyway, I'm simply in love with the milk bath - insanely in love - and will reorder as soon as my finances look like they can handle it.

The next time I plan to melt away the aches and pains of the day, I'm going to add a real favorite:

• Ahava's "Juniper Mineral Bath Salts."  I've used these in the past, the Dead Sea Salts are heavenly and really do help melt away quite a bit of the aches and pains going on in your body.  I tend to think that the magnesium in the salts have a lot to do with the success of alleviating pain.  I'm not saying it's the answer but I find that they give me a bit of a break.  The smell is that of most therapeutic salts.  This is not a luxury item in the sense of the milk bath (which reminds me of Cleopatra) but the results are so amazing, the skin so soft. And I do really love the sensation of floating in the water.

And while I was in the tub the last time, I tested out my:Liz Earle "Energizing Body Scrub."  First let me just say that there is nothing energizing at all in this scrub for this CFIDS'er, so I'm not sure you need to fear that it's going to energize you just as you want to start working on falling asleep.  The ingredients include  Damask Rose Flower Water (and I love anything of quality that smells of roses, very cliche of me, but true), Sweet Orange Oil (clean smell and feel), 8 essential oils (unnamed) and Vitamin E, all with ground-up olive stones.  I'm not sure that the ground olive stones were a selling point with me other than that they ARE natural, and the Rose and Orange together are bliss.  My shoulders and upper arms were especially rewarded with this scrub and it's a real keeper.  In fact, thinking ahead (really, Irene?) this would be a nice Christmas present...or birthday gift.

And finally, just because my eyes have been giving me such a hard time lately:

• Liz Earle's "Eyebright Soothing Eye Lotion."  I pour a bit onto two cotton pads and let them soak onto/into my eyes for about 15 minutes.  Eye drop do me no good: I contend that it's because the eyeball itself is so hard, perhaps from dehydration, perhaps from inflammation, I have no idea other than it's as about as porous as a marble.  These soaked pads are the best relief I've had for my eyes. I'm not saying this is the answer, but again, I'll take relief where I can get it.

I hope everyone has a really wonderful long weekend, that everyone stays safe and that everyone feels good.  Till next time!