For those of us who enjoy the opportunity to keep learning long past our school days, chronic conditions offer a unique opportunity, an opportunity we have no choice but to take, whether we want to or not. There is no such thing as knowing everything there is to know about your conditions because, first, no two patient conditions are the same, and second, they keep changing based on things like age and lifestyle.
Now, I always knew that water was good for kidney disease (d’uh) and diabetes (there was an incident when I was 20). I’ve also experienced how it helps with hypertension, gastroparesis, and neuropathy.
Those are all system-based conditions. But I also have a number of musculo-skeletal conditions – trigger finger, muscle atrophy, and a partially pinched nerve, among others. I don’t know why it never occurred to me that water would be just as important to those and the associated pain management as the others, but it never clicked.
Then the trigger finger started getting less serious. My hands would be stiffer in the mornings when they retained water (what, you thought only legs and feet did that?), until I’d had some water and the clicking stopped.
Next, the back issues that came with muscle atrophy, like pain and cramping, lessened when I drank more water. Of course they did – muscles always do better the better hydrated they are. I just never thought about the issue as a muscles-that-support-your-spine thing as opposed to a misalignment issue, and water definitely can’t help with misalignment.
Finally, the pinched nerve issue dropped on my head. It was painfully sore one day, and I was doing everything I could to mitigate pain with minimal chemical assistance (see: painkillers and kidney disease). I was stretching, then I was lying on a heating pad, then using a TENS machine. It wouldn’t go away. Until I realized I hadn’t had anything to drink all day. I started correcting that mistake and, in an hour, or so, the pain receded.
I’ll be honest. I felt kind of dumb not recognizing the connection earlier. It would have saved me a lot of discomfort over the years.
It’s not what I would choose as a topic of continuous education. I sucked at science in school. But it’s not a bad thing to be reminded every once in a while, that no matter how much you think you know, there’s always more.