The special powers of yellow mustard

I fight nausea all the time. It’s sometimes a precursor for the vertigo that I deal with every so often. It can last a few minutes or a few hours (the nausea, not the vertigo! Having vertigo for several hours would really complicate things and, not to mention, be utterly exhausting).

My sweetie takes very good care of me and recently sent me to work with a bag filled with two things: crackers and yellow mustard. Why? Eating generous amounts of yellow mustard eases nausea. Who knew? Apparently sailors and pregnant women.

Eat mustard to ease nausea

I learned of mustard’s special powers the last time I had a long bout of nausea. It was recommended to me that I spread a ton of the yellow stuff on bread and gobble it up. And gobble it up I did! Within a few moments, the nausea eased.

Now if only I had a small jar of mustard in my cycling jersey when I got hit with nausea the time before that, while out on a ride. Uber annoying! Nausea and riding your bike at ferocious speeds do not mix.

There’s no real evidence to prove that mustard is a true cure for nausea but it seems to work for me.  That’s evidence enough.

C.

Free Ride on the Merry-Go-Round

Vertigo.
An involuntary
merry-go-round ride.

I experienced a pretty radical round of vertigo this past Sunday night. It was totally wacky, like being on a merry-go-round sans looped in circus music and I couldn’t get off the ride. It used to be that being on a rotating circular platform was a ton of fun but not when it’s involuntary!

Alas my amusement ride was not amusing and I was near panic. One minute everything was normal and the next moment my living room was spinning around me. Naturally I felt unsafe and filled up with anxiety. When I looked straight ahead at the front door it rotated to the left, returned to normal and then rotated to the left again. Other items in the living room spun around me. “What is the TV doing over there? This is insane, somebody get me off this crazy thing!” It was near impossible not to totally freak out.

All of my sources tell me that bouts of vertigo are pretty short lived and that I should continue to move about my life. Yet I was nervous. My first impulse, when the spinning finally stopped, was not to move around for the rest of the night. So that is exactly what I did. I plopped on the couch and didn’t move. Luckily, I found some strength the next morning and moved about my day as normal. And no more vertigo attacks for the rest of the week. Whew!

Apparently vertigo is a fairly common symptom of multiple sclerosis, affecting 20% of us MSers. How about you? Ever experience this type of involuntary merry-go-round ride? I would love to hear from you.

Take care and be well,

Christie