Hello there fellow med-hivers 😊! It's time again to join the monthly prompt of one of my favourite communities - MED-Hive - and this post will be a bit different than the previous one. Why? Because @jaydr had the brilliant idea to make this month's topic about our health and lifestyle! Anyone can talk about this topic, regardless of being a health professionals or not, so please feel free to join in.

With that being said, today I'm mostly going to talk about my lifestyle, what got me to this point and what I need to change. There are so many things I could reflect and talk about from here, so many things in my lifestyle I could change for the better... _{(note to self - and yes, health care professionals also struggle with making healthy choices like everyone else 😆)} .

However, in this post, I will focus on my most recurrent health problem and the one that most interferes with my quality of life. Alongside, I'll also reflect on the different aspects of my lifestyle that might induce it as well as the things I already do to avoid going into crisis.

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As I'm sure you already guessed what my problem is, I have a tendency for acute muscular torticollis... This means that from time to time, I wake up and my neck muscles decide to make a considerable contraction making me unable to move my neck nor stand up because of the acute pain.

I think it started at the beginning of this year or so, with me having a 5/6 crisis in a row from January until April... The first time it happened I got scared because I couldn't walk and even lying down in bed I was in acute pain. Crying my eyes out with pain.

During that first episode, I had to take medication with muscle relaxants for the first time in my life to relieve the pain... As a physiotherapist, I'm not all in favour of a passive solution, like only taking pills, and my first thought was to stretch it out and keep going. However, when you have such an acute contraction and inflammation of the muscles there's really not much to do than relieving the pain. Stretching it will make it worst in these types of acute situations.

We could say that my body was telling me, more accurately - yelling at me, to stop and rest and coincidentally, it was at the same time my depression was the worst. Or was it? Well, more on that later...

The fact is that from the beginning of this year I had to take more muscular relaxants than I ever intended to in my whole life... Taking this type of medication has side effects that I'm aware of and I'm doing the best I can to prevent it when I'm not having a crisis.

So far, I've done a lot of reflection on what it could be causing my recurrent crisis... Being a physiotherapist is not easy, it means long working hours and a lot of physical effort. My day has a lot of repetitive movements with my hands while standing up, therefore this means a lot of strain on my back, shoulders and arms. To add up, I have some slight scoliosis and I have a rectified back, which means I have little curvature in my upper back.

To give you a practical example, I can do four clinical pilates classes in a day followed by being in squatting positions doing sort of push-ups and pull-downs or holding kids and babies in my arms while doing exercises with them.

_{Picture from RobinKoertshuis on Pixabay}

So every single day I arrive home physically drained. All I can think of is going to the couch and sitting the rest of the day and that's mostly what I do, to be honest... I like playing computer games to relax and I play a little bit after dinner with my boyfriend, mostly every day.

I recognize and said on multiple occasions now that too much sitting time may not be the healthier way to approach any type of muscular pain. And it is not... However, it is easier said than done 😆. Don't get me wrong here, I am a physically active person and also mostly every day I do a 15/20 minute routine of stretching after finishing my game time. Plus, I do a yoga class at least 1x/week, which helps me not only to calm down my stress but also to work my body to be flexible and strong 🤗.

_{Picture from Sasin Tipchai on Pixabay}

Aside from the physical strain I'm under every day, my emotional state this year was also a big contributing factor. So many changes happened in my personal and professional life that at some point it was too much to handle... And I broke down. While my body was giving me all the signals that I needed to stop and take care of myself.

If you think of it, those 5/6 times I had a crisis I was unable to move without pain and even still I went to work mostly every day. Straining myself further without taking proper care of myself has pushed my body and mind to create painful ways to make me stop because I was just simply not listening.

But when I finally reached my bottom, truly bottom line, I was forced to listen.

_{Picture from AdelinaZw on Pixabay}

So now, I'm taking care of my depression and going emotionally steady, I'm keeping my yoga workout at least 1x/week, I started to manage my working schedule better and I go to a physiotherapist and osteopath friend once every couple of months to relieve my compensations from the repetitive movement and strain.

Implementing these strategies has worked wonderfully for me! My crisis and acute torticollis have been less frequent, less painful, functional less limiting and more quickly solved, sometimes without even recurring to muscular relaxants.

However, my last crisis just happened last Saturday 😣 and this time I had to go on medication to relieve the pain. It passed way faster than before and I only had to take medication for 2 days before feeling better. There was also one different aspect this time that made this crisis so different. I allowed myself to rest that weekend, left my chores undone and asked my boyfriend for help. I took a warm shower to relax my muscles, applied multiple warm bags on my neck and stayed still the whole day.

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Nevertheless, this new crisis means I still have some improvements to do to stop it altogether. I have to limit even further my gaming time and reinforce my stretching and strengthening routine since it has been a little forgotten since I returned from vacation. I've also been sleeping a little less and having a bit of trouble falling asleep... I sense something is troubling me but I'm not sure why just yet. So until then, I'll continue to work on figuring that out.

Dear reader, if you made it this far, thank you so much for your time 😊. I feel this post was a little different than my usual type of content but I hope you liked it nevertheless 😁.

Sharing such experiences of health problems might not be easy for everyone, but I know Med-Hive community would love to have more and more hivers sharing their health experiences and knowledge, so we can all learn from each other!

Now, I better go do some stretches after this long post as I'm already feeling the warning my body is giving me by the heaviness on my shoulders and discomfort on my neck 😆.

Care to join me, dear reader? 👉 A 20-minute Pilates Class | Targeting Shoulder&Upper back | Mobility&Posture workout 👈

Take care 🙌🙌

My previous health-related posts:

A guide for breathing | The importance of our diaphragm muscle

A 20-minute Pilates Class | Targeting Shoulder&Upper back | Mobility&Posture workout

MED-HIVE prompt week 1 | The Biomechanics of Pregnancy 🤰 | Part 1 - Postural changes | How it relates to my clinical practice

MED-HIVE prompt week 2 | Non-Communicable Diseases | Physical Activity - Benefits & Recommendations

MED-HIVE July Prompt | The role of physical activity on sleep health