Page 32 - AllegroMedical Blog

I love digging in the dirt, planting seeds and relishing the fruits of my labor just as much as the next gal, but nothing crumps me up faster than a few hours in the garden. My friend and co-worker Melissa swears that her mom's knee replacements were directly related to her years of gardening. I believe it. Kneeling and stretching and bending, oh my!

A few years ago I started waking up in the middle of the night with a numb thumb and index finger.  I thought I'd slept on my hand or something.  A few days later, I started feeling pain in my fingers during the day and my wrist ached most of the time.   We sell a lot of wrist wraps for carpal tunnel so I knew a little bit about it, but I wasn't 100% sure that was what it was.   I did some research and what confirmed it was the fact that my little finger was never numb when I woke up, but my thumb and two of my fingers were.  That's one of the characteristics of the symptoms, because the nerve that is pinched doesn't extend into your pinkie finger.   Luckily the pain went away completely when I wore a specially designed wrist support for a few nights, and for a couple days while I was typing.  Now I just wear it when I start getting achy wrists, but it is very rare.

I think I finally have my computing area set up so I can avoid the worst of the computer-related injuries even though I spend most of my life in front of a computer.  It's all about the right chair, the perfect desk height, a curvy ergonomic keboard, a cushy wrist rest, etc. 

My parents used to tell great grandma to "stay out of the sugar!" whenever we left her house.  I wasn't sure why they said it, but everyone got a kick out of it.  Great-grandma, I came to find out had 'the sugar diabetes' (pronounced dia-BEE-tuzz by my family) so she wasn't allowed to eat a lot of sugar (horrors).  Anyhoo, years passed before I understood why.  It's pretty confusing so I thought I'd do you a quick little lesson, in layman's terms, on what diabetes is, and what the different types mean.

Diabetes is a very serious disease and any diabetes-like symptoms need immediate professional medical advice for diagnosis and treatment.  It is ultimately diagnosed by testing the amount of glucose (sugar) in your blood after fasting overnight for at least 8 hours.  It is easily determined with a single draw of blood which is analyzed by a lab, or it can be done in your doctor's office using a glucose meter. 

From what I can tell by the repeat sales of our blood glucose testing supplies, people pretty much stick to the same meters and test strips, time after time.  Hey, whatever works, right?  So I won't bore you with a listing of those, (but you should still check out our low, low prices).   Instead, I'll turn you on to some super buys on products you might have missed in the 267 diabetic products at AllegroMedical.com.

Allegro is celebrating 'Patient Safety Week', the week of March 9th, with an eye towards safety products for everyone, including patients. Besides making your life easier, many of these simple products will help avoid slip-n-falls, accidents and household injuries or even death.

Monday March 2nd kicked off the National Multiple Sclerosis Society's MS Awareness Week.  The Society is asking for your support and involvement to help move toward a world free of MS.  Their website offers many ways to contribute your time, skills, funds or ideas to benefit those with MS.

I don't want to sound all drill sergeanty, but there are a lot of you that can move a whole lot more than you are, but you're not.   If you're tired of feeling stagnant and tight, it's time to make a change.

Hopefully you've read my blog Hey, you...yeah you...MOVE IT! and you're ready to start moving and stretching.  Check these out: