First, just wanting to thanks Dorset Lady, PMRpro and the other kind folks who have advised me over recent months. On DL's Slow Taper Plan I have reduced 15 - 14 -13 and start on 12 this Sunday. I have had a few very very slight aches in my hips and felt a little wobbly on occasion but so far so good, especially as I have been probably a bit too busy. I managed to go sailing (living up to the Username I chose!) for 4 gentle days and came back feeling great - but Bro-in-Law's death which leaves his widow in very difficult place has added stress.
Second, I am a keen gardener and created a herb-rockery when I moved house 18 months ago. I filled the remaining space with Lemon Verbena - just saw it in a garden centre, it looked pretty and knew it would make a drink. On looking up the uses and properties I found it suggested that paired with mint it makes a relaxing bed-time tea and aids the immune system! I've also been using a CBD (hempseed/cannabis oil) massage cream. I do feel both have some effect. Anyone else tried these or similar? (The tea tastes great anyway!)
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Hopingsail
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I know the CBD cream has been talked about before but putting it in the search has mainly come up with oil. Can you tell me which one you use. I think I will give it a try. Many thanks
I’m using Holland and Barrett CBD Balm. My daughter from USA brought me Dr Will’s Pain Relief Salve. The stuff she brought to swallow by nose-dipper is LUV CBD - “Shine Tincture” !!! From the packaging it look v expensive - which fits w my daughter! I don’t think I’ll bother with this beyond this bottle (tho don’t tell her!)Maybe a spliff would be better?!
Well, you could take a saunter over and give it a try? 🤣. I would offer to join you but if that is Epping you are referring to it’s quite a distance from the south coast where I live... maybe I’ll try a local source first!Take care - sounds as if you have a bucket-full of stuff going on... x
I'm glad to hear the Holland & Barrett CBD is helping - I work for Holland & Barrett and whilst not actually dealing with the CBD, one of my colleagues in the team I work is the 'man' that knows about the CBD - So I will let him know and maybe being a 'H&B' I should purchase some of it to try for my PMR ailments too! What symptoms does it help with best? I know this PMR is such a weird and abstract condition (that's how I look at it - probably as it helps me 'deal' with it better) so know that there's different suffering for each of us.
I’m reducing from 15mg on DL’s Slow Taper. Just started 13 -12. I get a bit of an ache front hips towards groin. Not too troubling but find a little gentle massage with the CBD seems to help. I use H&B at bedtime - but an American version : Doctor Will pain salve in the morning (as it is has less smell!). My daughter, who lives in USA, sends me the Doctor Will - she is an influencer for them!
I like lemon verbena and put in in the sugar container as well. I got a bit for 10p at a fair and it has covered the whole garden along with the oregano. I love mint to and it is supposed to be really easy to grow. In my case it does not seem to like me!
Not for me sadly. I thought it was supposed to grow everywhere too. I have got one miserable plant of the bog standard mint and it just has one stem, it has been like that for two years. I bought another one and it died.
Hi Rosebud and Piglette! There are three types of mint here in my garden. The large -leafed one is Applemint - there is a teeny spearmint somewhere - the remainder is what I know as “ordinary”. I use the lovely Applemint for my tea with verbena. 1. Buy some mint from a regular nursery.
2. Fill a 5” or 6” flower pot with a few stones in at the bottom for drainage and then with general purpose compost.
3. Plant your mint in pot - then dig a hole (partial sun) into which sink your pot leaving an inch or so of the rim showing.
4. Water in and water regularly.
Hey presto - you will have a crop in no time and for ever! I always lift every spring, trim any escaping roots and re-pot (and each mint in pic is in a separate pot).
I have been trying for years to grow mint, I have tried everything from bog standard to pineapple mint, but fail. Apart from Tarragon which I can grow, it is the only herb I really like. They say crooks can’t grow mint!
Wow that brought back happy memories. The Canadian Arthritis website had a forum for PMR & GCA (there was only Patients Exp in the UK at that time and it was well administered.
However the Canadian was a bit more lax. On the PMR & GCA section, there was the thread of the 'Goodship PMR& GCA'.
Captain Bob was Ragnar. I was the 'donkey woman'.
I will never forget that Canadian site (now closed down) because of Ragnar the first for tapering plans.
Hi Hopingsail.So sorry to hear about your BIL. A sad time for your family.
How lovely to be able to participate again in something that clearly gives you such joy. Congratulations also with the tapering.
I use CBD balm.....a waxy substance for topical application......and has definitely helped ease head pain from withdrawal when dropping dose.... also helped my aches in shoulder and neck
I hadn't heard about Verbena before. Do you just infuse the leaves in hot water to make the drink, or do you need to do something further? Never grown it before!
I just infuse a few leaves of both mint and verbena, in a small teapot which makes 2 mugs. I keep one of those for later in the fridge and find it refreshing chilled. Both these herbs grow prolifically (Piglette’s experience notwithstanding!) and once planted are FREE!
Thanks for your comment re BiL. Being a priest I always get to turn out for the family life- events, which is great for weddings etc but stressful for funerals! Add friends and fellow- residents from my wife’s Carehome to the funeral list, plus Committal of Ashes from friends yachts... However in my years of decrepitude and now PMR it’s good to feel useful, though tricky not to take on too much.
I don't use cannabidiol, which I believe comes from hemp leaves and floweers, but I take a tablespoon of food grade hempseed oil every morning, and have used same oil topically on very dry skin with good results. There's supposed to be a good ratio of omega-3 and omega-6 in the oil, but also I understand that only marine omega-3 provides exactly the health benefits we need,
The hempseed oil sounds interesting - our daughter just brought me a small bottle from the USA but that uses a nose-size dropper for daily dose! Anyone know if this is available in UK? (We are being very slow to take on such meds here)
That is obviously NOT the kind of hemp oil I buy, which is, as I said, food grade (and nothing to do with either medical or recreational marijuana) 😁 . You must have been given CBD oil (cannabidiol) which is supposed to have medical effects but no psychological ones. It is supposed to be more effective taken with a small amount of THC (not enough to give you a high) and so some cannabidiol includes this. No, my hemp oil is in a 500 ml bottle and taken by the tablespoon! Cannabidiol comes from leaves, stems and flowers. Hempseed oil, as its name suggests, comes from the seeds and is a nutritional supplement.
I don't know if cannabidiol is available in the UK. However food grade is, I remember looking it up a number of years ago for someone. I buy mine at the same place as I get my other supplements.
Trivia - some years ago cannabidiol was being thrown away as unwanted residue from hemp processing! Now it costs a fortune.
Wild sardines, wild mackerel & wild Arctic or Pacific salmon are the best sources of Omega 3. (available canned, organic) They are also low in mercury as compared to other seafood. I eat this everyday.
Did you know that even the local mackerel population is collapsing? I can no longer bring myself to eat fish on a regular basis, it's become a special treat.
The huge growth in numbers of seals in Chichester Harbour (where I live) suggests that there are plenty of fish about locally. I buy from our local fishmongers who are mainly supplied by small local boats . Plus since the Brexit nonsense which prevents our shellfish fishermen sending their stuff to the continent, we are finding more shellfish at the fishmongers; had some fantastic Local oysters recently! The stats in the Seaspiracy program, which alarmed many inc me, were actually shown to be extrapolations from some old data - so some stocks are better than reported there.
What is truly shocking are the huge factory ships out of Russia, Japan, USA and China which hoover up tons of fish at a time.... thus damaging the stocks and livelihoods of many poorer communities. Ditto much fish-farming which causes environmental damage - and if you have seen some of the farms in places like Vietnam (as I have) you would be very careful regarding farmed fish!
Eat less is best - as with meat -but more veg: Good for us and the environment.
But herons (one of my favourite birds and common in our harbour) have always relied on fish and molluscs....
"The reason for the change on quotas is that DFO science has concluded the mackerel stock is in critical condition.
Unfortunately, the number of spawning-age mackerel is at an historic low. Immediate action must be taken to conserve and rebuild the population,” stated the DFO release last week."
Thanks for posting the link to that DFO article - your mackerel certainly seem to be in difficulty.... I’ve never heard of them being “trapped” before and wonder how that works. No doubt Google can answer! Good wishes
Thanks for that - very interesting. The take figures seem quite high and with a lot of traps deployed one can understand why the stocks are being put under pressure. I don’t think there is any such method around UK shores. What a mess we are making of our environment....
Recently (well a few years ago) I re-read some Rachel Carson books, and in one of them she describes the method of catching a school of mackerel in a giant net. It sounds like there was a lot of skill involved and always a chance the whole school could escape through the opening at the bottom of the net before the fishers had managed to close it. I think catching fish by means of weirs is quite an old method and I don't know if it's any worse than any other. It's just that we take too much. Early accounts of exploration in the North Atlantic describe sailing through an ocean of fish. It took human beings about five hundred years to fish that ocean empty.
I've used Hemptations CBD thermabalm to good effect on my neck and shoulders and they also do an arctic one which freezes rather than warms. They do free delivery throughout the UK.
Hello HopingsailDo you sail alone? I also sail but haven't since being diagnosed in March as I worry about all the sail ropework and my faded muscles. Don't want to get out there and get into trouble.
Hi - glad to learn there is another sailor around, but sorry there is at the same time! I looked up your story which pretty identical to mine - starting into PMR a few days after Pfizer 1...
We sold our last yacht (29’) some seven years ago when my wife had lost her spatial awareness due to Altzheimers and decided to step off the boat as we approached our marina! I’ve regularly crewed for friends since and in Feb entered into a syndicate to share running costs in a deceased friends Rassy 31 - I signed and paid up my share 2 weeks before PMR diagnosis!!
I had 5 days in the lovely weather a couple of weeks ago with 2 good friends we had sailed with fir many years. We set easy passages and stop-overs and it went really well with me mostly helming and friends doing the running around! It did my head a lot of good! I have a further week coming up - 2 different crew- but again these are happy to set modest distance targets. Plus if rough weather we don’t go!
That’s what I’ve done - but as is often said on this Forum everyone is different! Listen to your own body and aches and pains and don’t challenge PMR too hard - it always wins...
There is stacks of great advice on here - esp re Pred reduction - much better than the average GP! I’m using Dorset Lady’s Slow Taper Plan which is working well for me and many others. I’ve made up my mind to take PMR life as it comes - to do some gentle Solent sailing this year and hopefully be able to get back to racing on a friends yacht next year.
Hi HopingsailMy wife has done the sailing and says no more so I have downsized to a colvic sailor 26. which I can sail on my own in local waters here off Leigh-on-sea. Haven't been out yet since PMR but now I have settled down with the pred 13mg. i will go gentle and can always turn the engine on. Under sail, I just love the swish of water off the bow, very relaxing. We have owned Kelt 31, Moody 333 and Colvic Countess. Hey ho let's get this pmr beaten but slowly.
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