Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Therapeutic Heat

Ever get your shoulders and chest all in a wad, and you just can't get comfortable? That's been my experience all too often over the last 20 years. Now and then I get a break from shoulder pain and tightness for days, or weeks at a time, but stress always brings it back.

I've been attempting to achieve more life balance lately (you may have noticed I've been absent from the blogosphere for a few weeks) and that has certainly helped a lot.

But I've also been traveling, and that involves toting heavy bags and other various aggravations, which can bring back some of the upper body pain.

Along my travels I stopped at a friend's house and he had this great thing, a Bed Buddy, which you heat up in the microwave for 2 minutes. It provides moist heat. For me, moist heat is very therapeutic.

And using this thing, which stays warm for a while, means I don't have to worry about falling asleep with the heating pad on and starting a fire. It wraps nicely around the neck, filled with little beads of some sort (clay?). And it comes in various shapes, for different body parts- lower back, lower abdomen (for menstrual discomfort), neck, upper back. Very affordable as well.

I ordered one for myself and it was there when I got back home. Just took it off, in fact.