You went to sleep but, did you rest? Was your sleep restorative? How can it be when you are dealing with pain in your body and you toss and turn throughout the night? We experience pain-somnia (pain that keeps us up throughout the night or all night). We are getting up to get pain cream or pain meds. We are moving to adjust the positions of our body because maybe it’s the right hip or the left shoulder or the entire arm on fire. Yeah, sleep, about that…

Sleep is important to everyone. It is important to those of us that have RAD. And doing whatever we need to do to get a good night’s rest can help us the next day to function, lessen the brain fog, and to deal with aches and pains better. So, how do we get better sleep? You try many things until you find what helps and works for you. Do your research. Speak with your rheumatologist or primary care physician. Personally, if I feel aches and pains that mild I use pain cream. But if that pain is mild and fluctuating all over the place on the pain scale I take no chances. I take a pain med or a warm epsom salt bath before bed. I also take a very low dose sleep medication. And yes, there have been times of a flare up that sleep and pain was happening simultaneously. And then there is plain old insomnia. I do the best I can. Sometimes catching a power nap in the day.

When we have flare ups it not only affects our body with pain but, it affects our brain (brain fog), our mood, and it causes extreme fatigue. These things can us to feel anxious or depressed about getting through our day or about not getting through the day at all. It can make us worry feel sad about our life or our future. And when you don’t have a supportive family, life for RAD warriors is worse. In fact, when you have any kind of health issues and your family, friends, spouse is not supportive or understanding or willfully ignorant to your issue, it makes your life all the more miserable. I am going to talk more about that in the next post.

Rest like a warrior and stay hydrated and eat good things for your body! Stop. Do not past your limits. You can do more harm or delay your recovery. But do little things. do the less hard things if you can. And if you can’t do anything but eat and wash your face or brush your teeth, change clothes, then you have done something. If you can move from the bed to the couch and sit up for 30 minutes, do it. And count it all a victory! One small thing in the FACE of RA is a victory!

~Nikki

With love