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adrian_turtleBeing warm enough makes it easier for me to cope with pain and other kinds of stress. I only started noticing it the winter I started taking Topamax, so I don't know if I would need more heat than the rest of the world if I weren't trying to cope with chronic pain. As it is, sometimes I am so cold-sensitive it's embarrassing. I work in a large building where the priorities are frequent air exchange and aggressive air filtration, and I recognize that makes the place hard to heat in cold weather.
The temperature at my desk is probably about 55-60F, with a moderate breeze. I can remember thinking of that as a mild spring day. I can remember feeling relaxed at such temperatures, with no jacket, and maybe even with short sleeves. (Just not in recent years.) I still resent it when I'm shivering in a turtleneck and heavy sweater, and my colleagues seem comfortable in short sleeves or light dress shirts. Sometimes they even have sweaters draped over the backs of their chairs, in case of need. There is one colleague who complains of the cold, and keeps a space heater at her desk, but I am embarrassed on her behalf...if she wants to wear clothes that show so much skin, and if she really wants to call attention to it, surely there must be a more dignified way to go about it? Well, maybe there isn't.
Yesterday, I tried something different. I put one of those single-use heating pads, the kind with the adhesive backing, on my bad shoulder under my shirt. The heat source is a very fine powder which is supposed to react with air and gradually release heat over 6-8 hours. (It's the same idea as those handwarmer thingees to put in your pocket. They get somewhat hotter if they're exposed to more air when you take off the package, but they last longer wrapped in cloth.) The heating pads are sold for use with sore muscles, on the premise that even people who aren't cold all the way through are more comfortable with heat on specific achy bits. I'm not sure if it was helping me in that direction, or if it was just helping avoid cold-induced muscle spasms and the overall difficulty coping that comes with being cold. It did help, some.
The temperature at my desk is probably about 55-60F, with a moderate breeze. I can remember thinking of that as a mild spring day. I can remember feeling relaxed at such temperatures, with no jacket, and maybe even with short sleeves. (Just not in recent years.) I still resent it when I'm shivering in a turtleneck and heavy sweater, and my colleagues seem comfortable in short sleeves or light dress shirts. Sometimes they even have sweaters draped over the backs of their chairs, in case of need. There is one colleague who complains of the cold, and keeps a space heater at her desk, but I am embarrassed on her behalf...if she wants to wear clothes that show so much skin, and if she really wants to call attention to it, surely there must be a more dignified way to go about it? Well, maybe there isn't.
Yesterday, I tried something different. I put one of those single-use heating pads, the kind with the adhesive backing, on my bad shoulder under my shirt. The heat source is a very fine powder which is supposed to react with air and gradually release heat over 6-8 hours. (It's the same idea as those handwarmer thingees to put in your pocket. They get somewhat hotter if they're exposed to more air when you take off the package, but they last longer wrapped in cloth.) The heating pads are sold for use with sore muscles, on the premise that even people who aren't cold all the way through are more comfortable with heat on specific achy bits. I'm not sure if it was helping me in that direction, or if it was just helping avoid cold-induced muscle spasms and the overall difficulty coping that comes with being cold. It did help, some.
