Cayenne Pepper for the Feet

Poor circulation in my feet has been a challenge for at least a decade. It's why my Kaiser podiatrist granted approval for acupuncture. Of course, Dr. Mai treats a lot more than tingly, numb, sore feet, but for all the years I've been seeing him, he's always put needles in my feet to stimulate blood circulation. This helps, and I'm sure acupuncture has kept me from losing a toe or two.

Circulation in my feet and in my legs in general has been further compromised due to the triple-bypass surgery, during which veins were extracted from my right leg, and hip surgery, which entailed three incisions in my left thigh and buttocks. Following heart surgery, my legs were drum-tight for more than a month, due to severe fluid retention. This was extremely uncomfortable. Now, following hip surgery, I have experienced intense, shooting pain and a burning sensation in my feet, especially at night. The pain is so severe that it awakens me. Twice I have taken vicodin for the pain in my feet, not for the incision pain or muscle pain in my leg.

I pleaded with my nephrologist, my GP, my cardiologist, the diabetic nurse, and the orthopedic physician's assistant to authorize a sequential compression device for me. This is the device that surgical patients are usually hooked up to post-op to prevent blood clots from forming. It's basically two cuffs that are placed around the patient's calves and which continuously contract and expand. They massage the calves and keep blood circulating. They are fantastic, and throughout my hospital stay, I had none of the intense pain that I have experienced since coming home.

Though a few of these healthcare providers attempted to get DME (durable medical equipment) to send out the sequentlal compression device, they were told it was not a covered item. This is the ridiculous nature of having people who are bean counters make medical decisions. I emailed my doctors, saying that, surely, the cost of this device is far less than the cost of amputations. Unfortunately, though they agreed with me, they could do nothing.

So, I have gone the alternative route. I read that cayenne pepper aids blood circulation. A few months ago, I had mixed spice-grade cayenne and red pepper flakes with hand lotion and massaged my feet with this mixture, then put cayenne in my socks, and went to sleep, my tootsies invigorated by these warm spices.

This worked well for a while, but this last post-op episode was especially intense. So I bought cayenne capsules at a health food store. These babies have 40,000 heat units per capsule. That's much, much more than I would be able to ingest through spice-grade cayenne.

At first, I took the cayenne on an empty stomach. That was a mistake. I became dizzy and nauseated. From then on, I've taken it with a meal and seen immediate results. No more stabbing pain. No more getting woken up by pain. No more burning in my feet. True, the tingling is still there, but it's been there for a long time. This is defintely a step in the right direction.

The Social-Lubricant Lie

Maybe seven, eight years ago, it struck me that there is a type of lie I had never before considered. I call it the social-lubricant lie. Let me explain.

I was standing in front of the faculty mailboxes in the journalism department, sorting through my mail. Two colleagues were doing the same. One commented negatively on a memo that we all had received. I don't remember what the memo was about, but let's just say it was something small, like a reminder to clean up your workspace after you had finished copying or assembling papers, something like that. Perhaps the other professor said something like, "Oh, gawd, another memo! He's always sending out these ridiculous memos!" As if hit by a bolt of lightening, I realized that if I fed this negativity, this grumbling, I would not be honest, since to me it was a reasonable thing to ask to clean up after ourselves. The social lubricant lie would have been to say something like, "Yeah, he's a real pain, that old memo-writer!" Instead I just smiled, said, "Oh, well," and walked away.

I began to give some real thought to social-lubricant lies. I began to see all the energy and words and drama wasted over them, how much of human interaction consists of these disingenuous statements.

They are not the same as so-called white lies, though perhaps white lies are a type of social-lubricant lies. White lies are more volitional; the person uttering them knows that they are not true and yet says them supposedly to protect someone's feelings. Most social-lubricant lies are on a much more automatic, unthinking level, as they are often just a parroting of what others are saying without any inner reflection as to how one actually feels about the subject.

Since that day standing in front of the mailboxes, I have been attentive to my own interactions with others, taking care not to engage in this pervasive type of lie. And this doesn't mean calling others out about their infractions. It just means conducting myself in such a way that I am not violating my own truth. This can be done in a cute way, as I did those seven, eight years ago in the journalism department, simply smiling and offering a noncommital "oh, well," thereby not offending anyone, but not feeding their criticism either.

So just as an exercise, go about your next week attentive of the social-lubricant lies that are everywhere to be found. Very often they are linked to a complaint. So whenever anyone complains to you about something, hold back for a second and determine how you really feel about the subject. Is it worth complaining about? Is it really all that awful? If not, why not simply smile to the complainer and with your eyes bright and cheery, say, "oh, well"?