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Episode: 3771
Title: HPR3771: How I eliminated pain naturally
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3771/hpr3771.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 05:11:51
---
This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,771 from Monday the 16th of January 2023.
Today's show is entitled, How I Eliminated Pain Naturally.
It is hosted by Paul Quirk, and is about 20 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is I describe how I managed to eliminate pain from carpal tunnel syndrome
and osteoarthritis.
Today's show is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial, No Derivatives
License.
Good day, good listener of Hacker Public Radio, and welcome back to the Paul Quirk show.
I'm Paul, and I will be your host.
It's been a while since my last podcast on HPR, but I'm thankful to all the contributors
who have kept it going for nerds like me.
Today, I'd like to talk to you about my journey with pain.
I'm in my 50s now, and having been diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome in my 20s and
osteoarthritis in my 30s, I'd like to share with you how I managed to overcome these
naturally and without surgery so that today I live completely free of physical pain.
Now before I get started, I'd like to share with you my views of what pain is.
We live in a culture of where we believe pain is bad and needs to be avoided at all costs.
This feeds into the natural response of being fearful of pain.
However, I have come to learn that pain is simply the body's way of telling the brain
that there is a problem.
Quite often, the first response to pain is to take some sort of drug or medication to make
the pain go away.
Now while I agree that pain is not enjoyable, I think the overuse of painkillers is the
folly of modern medicine.
Because I believe that sometimes pain is an early warning sign that means I need to make
a lifestyle change to steer my body towards better health.
This isn't always easy, but our understanding of this has grown and changed significantly
over the past century.
In the 1990s, I was a technical support technician and a cobalt programmer, so I spent a lot
of time with a keyboard and a mouse.
This led to a diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome by my doctor in my mid-20s.
Not wanting to rely on drugs or surgery, I looked for a natural solution.
I started with researching keyboards.
Most ergonomic keyboards of that time were prohibitively expensive except for one, the
Microsoft Natural Keyboard.
The first generation of Microsoft Natural Keyboard was released in 1994 and was designed
for Microsoft by Ziba Design and manufactured by Keytronic.
I was glad I bought my keyboard when I did, because Microsoft replaced it with the inferior
natural keyboard elite, which did not include a riser for negative tilt, and they shrunk
down some of the keys.
Today, my keyboard choice is the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, which I consider
to be the only ergonomic keyboard worthy of succeeding the original.
You would have to pry it from my cold, dead carpal tunnel syndrome free hands before
I'd part with it.
The other thing I changed in my desktop environment was to stop using a mouse.
Today my putting device of choice is the ergonomic track ball that uses my thumb to move the
ball.
I learned that my thumb was much stronger than my fingers, having more muscles that are
shorter, and the ergonomic design of these track balls allows my hand to rest in a neutral
position which can be difficult to achieve when pushing a square box around a desk.
Also, it didn't matter that my Microsoft Natural Keyboard took up so much desk space anymore
as a track ball doesn't need much desk space.
I actually used two ergonomic track balls.
I used the Logitech M570 for my right hand, which usually travels with my laptop computer
in the LECOM EX6 for my left hand.
I think being ambidextrous with my track balls also helped to alleviate issues with carpal
tunnel syndrome.
I also learned to be ambidextrous in other tasks as well, such as using tools.
It can be frustrating at first, but learning to perform tasks equally well with either
hand has probably helped as much as a use of an ergonomic keyboard and track ball.
When I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis in my 30s, I was an incredible pain.
The act of standing up from a chair was nearly impossible some days, and I required the
assistance of a cane most days just to function.
I inherited this terrible condition from my mother's mother's side of the family,
which explained my so many aunts, uncles, and cousins use canes and did not live very long
into old age.
As the medications, both prescribed and over the counter, tend to have negative side effects
on the organs after used for an extended period of time.
Surgery options are invasive and radical, and do not necessarily restore one's standard
of living.
While the pain might be relieved, it can come at the cost of mobility and flexibility,
and can put stress on other joints.
I was determined to find a natural solution.
The first thing I considered was what had changed in my lifestyle.
I had to admit I was not making time for exercise as I did when I was younger.
The link between exercise and pain relief, especially when it comes to conditions like
osteoarthritis, is demonstrably true.
My mother's mother, who had a stroke in her early 50s, and lost over half of her heart
capacity due to this, was possibly the only person on her side of the family to live independently
into her 90s.
After retirement at age 65, she got rid of her car and sold her bungalow to live in a
house with stairs within walking distance of the shopping mall, so that she would force
herself into walking a good distance every single day.
She lived with the pain, albeit at a low level.
I wanted to take this a step further and get rid of it entirely, and thanks to a modern
invention called the elliptical trainer, I have done just that.
The reduction in pain by exercise is called induced hypoalgesia.
According to Wikipedia, hypoalgesia occurs when painful stimuli are interrupted or decreased
somewhere along the path between the input and the places where they are processed and
recognized as pain in the conscious mind.
The mechanisms behind exercise-induced hypoalgesia are still poorly understood, but it has been
shown that the triggering mechanism is caused by the increase in blood pressure that accompanies
a good workout.
The body senses the increased blood pressure, and the hypothesis is that endogenous opioids
are released.
Another research also suggests that the endocannabinoid system is involved.
This is what gives runners their high.
The problem with traditional exercise, such as running, is that such exercise can cause
further damage to the part of the body that is causing the pain in the first place.
This means that a good run might eliminate my knee pain today, but things could be worse
when I wake up tomorrow.
The inventor of the first version of the elliptical trainer, Larry Miller, shared this concern,
and so the elliptical trainer was designed to provide all of the benefits of running with
none of the impact.
Later, hand grips were added, making the modern elliptical machine a modern miracle
of medicine that delivers a zero impact full body workout.
I say medicine because it is the machine of choice for many physiotherapists today to
help their patients recover mobility from strokes and accidents due to its success rate.
If the elliptical machine were made into a pill, it would be the best-selling drug of all
time in the world.
The hardest part of using the elliptical trainer is being motivated to use it.
What I had to do was to set up a routine first thing in the morning.
This was the only time I could do it reliably.
I can't do it at work, and when I get home from work, I'm too exhausted to do anything,
and I'm often too busy taking care of the necessaries of modern life and getting ready
for the next day of work.
So what I decided to do was to go to bed earlier so I could wake up earlier.
My routine is to get on my elliptical trainer at 5 o'clock in the morning, usually motivated
by some good music, or maybe listening to an episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I do the interval training program for about half an hour.
When I have my shower, I get dressed, then I get ready for work.
This represents my baseline for fitness, and is all the exercise I need to do that day
to keep the pain away.
I fuel my exercise with a bowl of oatmeal, topped with cinnamon, a handful of crushed
walnuts, and blueberries, which means I usually wake up before 4.30.
This is made easy, since I developed the habit of keeping an early bedtime, and naturally
exhausted by 8 o'clock PM anyway.
Then I reward myself on the weekend by sleeping it until 6 o'clock and enjoying a breakfast
of bacon, eggs, and hash browns, and then enjoying a ride on my bicycle or a hike with my
beautiful wife.
Now I admit, at first, it wasn't easy.
For the first week, I could only do 20 minutes on the elliptical trainer and my brain kept
questioning, why was I putting myself through this torment?
But every day, by the end of the exercise, I was glad to have done it.
By week 2, I had those negative thoughts about exercise for the first 10 minutes, but once
I got past the 10 minute mark, the exercise induced high-poil jeezia kicked in, and it was
no longer a hardship.
By week 3, I woke up looking forward to my morning workout.
After week 4, and every day since, it's been as routine as taking a shower and brushing
my teeth, and nothing stops me.
Now I don't think the benefits of the elliptical trainer can be understated.
I went from having trouble standing up and needing to walk with a cane in my late 30s
and early 40s, to running a half marathon in Montreal just before my 50th birthday.
Now, I'm not saying it made me a Superman.
I certainly didn't break any records that day, and I can still blow out my knee easy enough
if I'm not careful.
But I can walk long distances and up and down many flights of stairs, without any hardship
whatsoever.
It might recovery from injury is a lot quicker.
I can now just walk off a rolled ankle that would have laid me up for at least a couple
of days, 10 years ago.
You see, it's not just the exercise induced high-poil jeezia that's helping me.
The elliptical trainer is a trainer, and it helps to develop muscle tissue around the
joints and strengthen the tendons.
Since this is a podcast, I will let you hear what my knees sound like when I do a squat.
Now, if you're squeamish, you might want to skip over the next 5 seconds of this podcast.
Now, you can hear that my knees are still a mess.
But I experienced absolutely no pain performing this squat.
By exercising every day, the muscles around my knee joints have taken much of the stress
off of the actual joint.
To help keep the stress on my knee at a minimal, I also watch my weight, sticking to a balanced
diet of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and natural meats and nuts.
Of course, when the weekend comes, I eat whatever I want, even fast food and alcohol
if I feel like it, but Monday through Friday, I keep things pretty strict.
The benefits of daily use of my elliptical trainer have gone well beyond relieving the
pain of my arthritis, however, it has improved my overall well-being.
I find I am more relaxed and calm during the day, and I am much better able to manage
stress.
My mood stays positive, even on bad days when nothing seems to be going right.
I sleep a lot better and tend to be more alert when I'm awake.
It has been transformative in every respect of my life with no physical or mental downsides.
Like everything else in life, there are good elliptical trainers and there are garbage
elliptical trainers.
This is our that if you go to a store like Walmart to buy an elliptical trainer, you'll
be disappointed.
One of the things that's important to me is that the elliptical trainer can provide interval
training.
According to Wikipedia, interval training is a type of training exercise that involves
a series of high-intensity workouts that are at or close to anaerobic exercise, interspersed
with rest or relief periods.
It's important to achieve anaerobic exercise as this is a type of exercise that breaks
down glucose in the body without using oxygen.
Since I can only commit half an hour per workday to exercise, I want to get the greatest
benefit from that time, and that, to me, means interval training.
A good elliptical will have a built-in computer that can automatically vary the resistance
and slope throughout the half hour of training complete with a warm-up and cool-down period.
Now, if you've never used an elliptical before, I recommend going to a gym that has one
and asking someone who works there to show you how to use the interval training on that
machine.
You will also find these kinds of elliptical machines at hotels and resorts, possibly in
at your condo if you live in a condominium unit, and the instructions on how to use the
interval training program can usually be found online.
This is so important to me that I actually bought my own light commercial elliptical trainer
and dedicated a whole room in my house to it.
I bought the Soul E98 Soul Bicosco, which is a light commercial elliptical usually found
in hotels and condominiums.
I personally prefer commercial equipment to residential grade because it tends to hold
up better over time and is serviceable using ball bearings and place of bushings.
I would also consider using used or refurbished commercial gym equipment, but the new price
of the Soul at Costco is very competitive with those used prices.
The last thing I can think of is to remember to stay hydrated.
When I started using an elliptical trainer, it was easy to forget to bring a water bottle
with me because the exercise doesn't seem that difficult.
However, after 10 minutes of interval training, I start to work up a sweat, so keeping a bottle
of water with me on the machine is key for enjoying my workout, so that I can rehydrate
after periods of anaerobic exercise.
Traditionally, I like to end my podcasts with some music that I found in the Creative
Commons.
Unfortunately, it was too difficult for me to find something appropriate in the Creative
Commons to end this episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I wanted something energetic so that you, the listener, could include in your own exercise
routine.
So I decided it was up to me to lay down some beats on my trusty Casiotone CTS 300 at 128
beats per minute.
It's about 4 minutes long, and since it was created by me, it's licensed under the
same Creative Commons license as the rest of my podcast.
If you liked this sort of thing, let me know in the Fediverse at QuirkatMasterDone.Social,
and maybe I could be motivated to make an entire half hour of these tracks.
If you would like to read the transcript of this podcast and see the accompanying pictures,
you can do so at my website at pquirk.com.
Thank you for listening to the Paul Quirk show on Hacker Public Radio today.
As always, do remember to drive safe, stay active, and have fun.
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at HackerPublicRadio.org.
Today's show was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording a podcast, then click on our contribute link to find out
how easy it really is.
Hosting for HPR has been kindly provided by an honesthost.com, the internet archive,
and our syncs.net.
On this advice status, today's show is released on our Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License.