Hi Shel -
Another long post, so I'll summarize at the beginning:
- Weather incl. the cold no longer seems a big trigger for you, maybe you've learnt how to prevent its effect.
- The hiking and 600 steps will have been a cortisol day/experience, cos exhilerating. Interesting would be any backlash later.
- Fibro pain in "joints" are usually actually the tendons and ligaments, and the muscles shortening. Otherwise get it checked.
- Alleviating flares can be independent of the triggers, a growing toolbox can adapt to a good sensing of the symptoms.
- To prevent flares we need to hunt triggers. Stopping to sense them and being creative about possible triggers can help.
Long version:
Well, whilst many might not know what's causing their flares, (b)logging "all" triggers helps me find 90% of triggers.
I’ve tried to log everything possible-humidity, temperature, pressure in air, exercise-and there’s no rhyme or reason to when I feel fatigued or pain.
I'm not sure what else aside from weather and exercise you log?
Whilst barometric pressure is a common one, it doesn't influence me, neither does humidity. So I don't log them.
Temperature I'd put back on the list for a time after a few temperature plunges, but I know how to reset my 'thermostat' now using overheating then cold showering, so no longer any danger.
But I hiked and went up literally 600 steps, while on vacation and felt no pain or fatigue.
If the hiking and 600 steps were a single example and not something that works consistently, I'd say like in my case it would be: it's increased cortisol reducing your direct pain/fatigue for a day or two. This cortisol may be due to something like reduced sleep, "wiring us up". That's how my sleep lab psychiatrist explained it to me and that greatly helped me test and understand this.
After cortisol hours or days it depends how long I overused it rather than just enjoying it. This is what I've had to learn from my (Chinese) acupuncture, also something that increases cortisol: It gave me more energy, which made me sleep worse and using it all backfired. Now I know that, I enjoy it, use it, but keep my activities moderate.
My guess is that the reason for possible cortisol was that hiking and the 600 steps were such an exhilarating experience, that this fuelled all your neurotransmitters to help get you thru it well.
And my question would be: When was the next time you felt pain and fatigue afterwards, and how long did you use the sudden energy? But regardless - the cortisol connection is very useful to know and use!
It used to be the cold that brought on pain, but now I have pain all year round in joints.
This can of course change/develop. Before the fibro full flare I've now been on long term, wind and cold were my main problems. Now they're still not great, but other things are more apparent. Partly because I've adapted and adjusted and influence the cold, always got enough things with me to keep warm. Most importantly if I don't allow the cold/wind to get into my bones at all (various strategies), then I don't have to spend the rest of the day trying to get it out of my body again. So lost its thorn.
Regarding pain in joints: If it really were the joints then I'd think it's not fibro, it's something rheumatoid adding itself, so I'd get that checked if you haven't already. But after my wife and I long believing it was my joints that make me so stiff, I did a fest self-tests, moving all of my joints and feeling them while moving and also above and below them. Result was it wasn't the joints at all, it was the tendons above and below, with muscles and tendons seizing up especially whilst not moving.
It’s difficult to find relief, when I can’t say what’s causing issues.
Well,
alleviating after a trigger has flared me is usually something independent of the trigger: Local symptoms with stretches, exercises, acupressure and massager, the Ache from overdoing it and similar by resting, breath-holding, cold showering, heat and cold - it all doesn't matter what causes it, it matters what it feels like and then I try the whole toolbox in a certain order and get more and more proficient at finding the right treatment quickly. My main weakness there is succumbing to the flare and just resting and doing nice things, when actually I'd be out of it much quicker with more active resting. Today for instance I knew I need more oxygen, I knew Wim Hof breath-holding would have halved the recovery time, but instead I "procrastinated"... - which is "fine", I can "afford" that (e.g. my wife tells me not to bash myself up for it), but it does sometimes exasperate me.
But what I think you mean is how to
prevent triggers from unfolding, like in my "cold" example above. Which does actually sound as if like me you've already found out a bit how to prevent the cold from becoming a full trigger?
That's of course true that it's better to find out the triggers and stop them beforehand, if possible. And I have 40 insomnia triggers alone, many more food triggers etc.
One strategy here for you may be to become very sensitive to when pain/flare starts in micro-amounts and immediately stop and think about it there and then what you are doing or what is happening to you.
When pain comes up while I'm playing table tennis I know it means I have to stop, and it depends on my overall condition how far I can afford to continue. Today the pain started in the 2nd game, that on bad days means stopping after it, or after the 3rd at the latest. But today I had a lot of energy and knew that could compensate the pain going up from 1-2 to 5 to a certain extent, so I actually played 6 games and whilst the recovery took 2-3 hours as usual it was like I calculated that this didn't harm me much and won't be bad for my sleep tonight.
If you could write down for yourself or for us here a situation like that, it might help to get closer to finding out the trigger or sets of trigger (that can also make it a bit more complicated). Like I've said on another thread I've identified 4 reasons for my increased energy, and I will be checking these and any more that I come across so that I can reproduce it better.
Or the other day I had a quite clear bowel problem and thought up 3 possible reasons, repeated the 2 that were possible and was pretty sure my inkling was right that I'd drunk a rest of aloe vera juice that seemed OK, but was probably off.
You might like to look at my trigger hunting section on my big post "
How to.... hunt triggers" for further ideas?
But I'm always interested in thinking about others' experiences, cos it helps sharpen my senses too.
