Edema

One of the health challenges that I have been facing ever since I had the weird reaction to Naprosyn has been intermittent swelling of my lower legs, ankles and feet. Scary right? You betcha! I recently scheduled an appointment with my appropriately licensed standard medical care giver and endured a nice blood letting in order to find out if it might be from a liver or kidney disturbance. Happily, those lab tests were within the normal range, nor do I have the marker for rheumatoid arthritis. So, I have no idea what might be causing this swelling, and have been trying all sorts of experiments to see if I can make it never come back. No luck with that so far, but I have found some ways to minimise it:

1) Don't get dehydrated. I know it would seem that if the body is retaining fluid, fluid should be minimised or purged. In my thinking, that just confuses the body and tells it to try to conserve more fluid. Since I love coffees and numerous teas which have diuretic properties, this is a challenge and I am not giving up my drinks! To counteract this (hopefully), I try to force myself to drink at least a cup of water for every cup or two of these drinks that I enjoy. I do seem to have slimmer ankles when I faithfully ingest more water.

2)Reduce sodium intake. What a drag, especially since I eat dulse rather than take a multivitamin supplement in pill form. I wont give up my dulse, but I will give up sodium in other ways. I don't use regular salt for my other food flavorings, and I try to avoid high sodium foods.

3) Ditch the sugar. Very hard and I'm certainly not faithful. I do use stevia for my coffees and teas, but I sure have been munching the delicious milk chocolate too lately. The more I avoid the sugar, the better my body feels though. I have also noticed that the more I avoid grains in any form, the better my body feels, along with less swelling episodes.

4) Tons of leafy green vegetables seem to help.

5) Movement. I try not to sit for all day computer sessions, or stand in one spot for all day soap or herb processing stints.

6) Kinds of movement. Rather than simply walk around, I do some really odd little exercises periodically during my day when I notice a bout of swelling. I lie down and do raised leg toe point and foot flex exercises which are doing a good job. Swimming is wonderful, because it is a horizontal exercise activity and I try to swim at least once a day, weather permitting.(If only we had an eco friendly pool! I also grease my skin up heartily prior to swimming to hopefully protect it from the chlorine exposure which is not very good for me or any other creature)

I found it very disappointing that I didn't get a precise definition of the cause of this thing from the appropriate medical professional that I was counting on for good information, so I'll continue winging my own research,theories and experiments. One day I hope to post that I found the way to make this problem leave forever.