Well, you could have picked my jaw up from off the floor this week.
As a medical intuitive who knows a lot about natural pain relievers and anti inflamatories, I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was, but this sure made me a believer.
I've been limping around with sciatic pain and a bum left hip for more than a year now. Physical therapy, massage therapy, chiropractic adjustments, traditional treatments all seemed to have short lived, temporary results. I've been working on my exercises, walking more, and making sure I have the right shoes. I've been totally resisting going to the doctor for a stronger pain reliever, determined to get on top of this myself.
But I wasn't getting very far. I'd have two or three good days, then a bad flare up. Ibuprofen or naproxen just wasn't cutting the night time pain and so I would toss and turn all night, not finding any good position, even with a pillow between my knees.
Until last week. I was picking up fruit at the local grocery and stumbled upon a sale of papaya, a fruit I had spoken to my clients about for its enzyme papain, but hadn't actually eaten myself in who knew how long. They were half price so I bought one.
Papaya are green yellow on the outside when ripe, and pretty much look and taste like cantelope. They are easy to eat, pare off the skin with a knife, cut it in half the long way down the middle, scoop out the seeds, slice and eat. I ate half of one the first day, saving the other part for later.
I limped to bed, but as the night came on, my hip pain relaxed. It relaxed so much, I got the first good night's sleep in more than a month. I woke up, swung my legs round to the floor, stood up and realized suddenly that I hadn't tossed and turned all night and standing up was easy.
WOOT~!
Cautiously optimistic, I ate the other half of the papaya that evening and experienced the same result. A night of blissful, pain free sleep.
I waited several days, did a little gardening, mushroom hunting, hiking and sure enough, the hip pain returned. I went and bought 2 more papaya. This time I took ibuprofen and ate the papaya in the afternoon instead of the evening. Within 2 hours, my pain was nearly gone (ibuprofen never did that alone!) and stayed good until about midnight that night. Nearly 10 hours after eating two cups of papaya, the anti-inflammatory effects stayed with me that long.
Repeated the ibuprofen with papaya at bedtime last night. It still took a couple of hours for the full pain relieving affect to hit (guess it takes a while to get enough of the enzyme flowing through my system.)
I have another larger papaya ripening on the kitchen counter. More experimentation to come!
