Stay Warm at Night

Staying warm is a matter of heated air (heated by the body) contained in a space surrounding the body. When blankets lay on a bed undisturbed for days, they loose all of the air between them and there is nothing for the body to heat.  After crawling into bed at night, put an air layer back into each space between the blankets and don’t forget to do it for your children also.

Beginning with the first blanket, just flap it, (lift and let it fall back down.) capturing air, then do the same with the next blanket until they are all flapped.  When layering blankets, put the down comforter near the top and as a barrier of heat loss by conduction, cover everything with a thin Polar Fleece blanket.

Body heat is captured by the kind of covering.  Fur is warmest because there are thousands of tiny air pockets, (hair is the perfect example, your head stays warm at night).   Polar bears walk on ice because the bottom of their paws are covered with fur. Wool has little barbs on the fiber that capture air.  Alpaca is not wool, it’s actually fur. Feathers capture air in the same way and the down in comforters is the fluffy little under feathers of ducks and geese.

A modern fabric that’s as warm as fur is Polar Fleece… it’s made from recycled plastics and has the added warmth of a heat loss barrier.

Mattress pads of wool, sheepskin or feathers also retain body heat and add a barrier to conduction heat loss.

Camping and survival gear includes a foil sheet.  Wrapping in this locks body heat into the spaces and, with little cost,  prevents heat loss by evaporation and convection.

Fix Rotator Cuff and Frozen Shoulder

TORN ROTATOR CUFF

  • A sharp, intense, straight line pain on the outside of the arm, just below the bottom of the shoulder bone that hurts when the arm is raised.
  • Caused by a sudden, pulling trauma to the arm.

Stop the pain, and protect the joint:

  • Fasten your arm down at night.  During sleep, rolling over onto the arm in bad alignment causes extreme pain and more damage to the cuff and the  joint.  The OTC Shoulder Immobilizer with sling and swathe is the only style of sling that correctly splints the shoulder, fastening the upper arm to your side and holding the wrist firmly, reducing abduction and arm rotation.
    No other type of splint works.  Photo is below and it’s available at Walgreens and Amazon.

Apply Kinesio tape

  • The world was introduced to Kinesio tape while watching American Keri Walsh playing beach basketball at the Bejing Olympics with a torn rotator cuff.  She showed no sign of pain, no hesitation in movement and great strength.
  • You can apply Kinesio at home, shower with it and bathe with it on for 2-3 weeks each application.  It’s available on Amazon and some sporting goods stores.  There are now copy tapes on the market but they do not have the same effect.
  • Before applying the tape, have the skin clean and dry.  Then round the corners of each piece of tape so it won’t begin to roll off.  I put a great deal of traction on each piece.  Lift the arm out to the side, shoulder high, shoulders back and straight. Put the 2 shorter pieces on first and then the longer piece over top. Illustrations below.
  • How does Kinesio work?  The sticky side has waved ridges in a diagonal pattern and with every movement, the ridges lift the deep layers of skin to allow continuous drainage of lymph.  There is no other tape that does this.

Kinesio is also used to reduce lymphoedema.   There is a how-to book on Amazon.

FROZEN SHOULDER

  • Not raising the arm and bracing it reduces the joint’s ability to continue a free range of motion and it rapidly becomes a ‘frozen shoulder’, a joint that has become so solid a mass from adhesions (tough fiber bands), created by inflammation that one can no longer put a shirt on or get a fork to the mouth. When the shoulder joint is frozen, lifting the arm comes from the collar bone, ‘hunching the shoulder’  and has no effect of loosening the shoulder.
  • If the shoulder is frozen, you must break the adhesions.  Injecting the joint is fantastically painful and it doesn’t work.  (Be careful of your memories!).   These adhesions can be broken under general anesthesia but there is a poor man’s way, no more painful than the shoulder in general.  Choose a very strong friend.  Sit on the floor, back against the sofa, legs crossed.  Have the friend put his knee on your shoulder, (between the shoulder and your neck), firmly grab the arm close to the shoulder and quickly force it all the way up straight.  When it’s up straight, have him rotate the arm through the full arc of the socket.  Give him great thanks and undying gratitude and head for a hot shower.  With hot water beating on the shoulder joint, put your hand against the wall and walk it up, slowly higher and higher.  The heat allows you to go beyond the limits of pain and it chelates lactic acid from the muscles.  Do this twice a day if you can.  There may be little residual pains in the rotator cuff but ignore them, they will vanish.
  • You must keep the shoulder moving in a full range of motion frequently during the day so new adhesions won’t form.  Rotate the arm, pull your arm over your head,  walk the hand up a wall often, leaning into it to stretch the muscles.  It feels so very good.
  • Note:  It’s important that you don’t have the friend yank on the arm. You don’t want the adhesions to pull off of the bone because that will cause bleeding into the joint and make further adhesions. It’s the thing that caused them in the first place. Have him hold the arm close to the shoulder (holding it further down will risk breaking the bone) and without pulling, quickly bend the arm straight up. This will hurt you much less than the pain you have now. (adhesions have no pain receptors).

Get Rid of Crows, Squirrels and Maybe Deer.

There are few solutions to discouraging crows and critters from city gardens but frightening them is easy, non-toxic and always  works.  They are all afraid of fire.

Crows will usually spend only one day in a tree and then move to another unless they are nesting and have eggs.  They travel and nest in flocks, often huge.  They become territorial and bold, attacking  cats, dogs and sometimes people.

Twisted Mylar ribbon, when hung from a high point and allowed to hang freely, will move as flames in a fire, warding off crows and squirrels but not the little songbirds.  Crows immediately silence and within minutes they leave your trees. They will move into trees nearby and out of sight of your ribbons so when making  Mylar twists, make extra and pass them out to your neighbors.

Only the twisted loops of red and silver, in the sun and moving, completely mimic flames and are the best.  Untwisted streamers need a strong wind to move them about and do not look like fire.  Twisting  the tape provides loops at the bottom that catch wind like a sail making them move with only a slight breeze.

The plain silver are holographic and when caught in the sun, reflect with thousands of prisms and changing colors.  While this does not mimic flame, holographic images confuse animals and apparently crows also.

Hanging these in larger clumps may also ward off deer and hopefully local  raccoons.

To look like fire, the Mylar must be twisted.  Cut a piece as long as your arms will reach or less.  Twist it about 5 times (3 for shorter lengths) and join the 2 ends.  Now twist again several times and again join the ends. Staple the ends together and tie  a string tightly around the stapled end to hang.  

If the crows return it will be brief and only because there is not enough wind to move the Mylar. They leave when the hanging begins to move again.

The red and silver Mylar ribbon, called “Bird B Gone Flash Tape” is available at Home Depot and Amazon,