Dealing with the Finger Problems.... A Solution???

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Posted by fiddlepogo on Saturday, March 30, 2013

Somewhere in my reading about cramps and what causes them, I read that chloride is what causes muscles to relax again after they contract in order to do work.

Well, last night, I went shopping, and for some reason I had a craving for potato chips.... however, I thought better of it, since potatoes have been known to trigger my arthritis attacks... but I did get some pretzels, and ate some before I even left the store's parking lot. Then, later that night, I got out my main fiddle (Booker now with downtuned Zyex on it) and played for a fair amount.... and somehow, my fingers felt more "normal", and not even close to cramping. Then, when I woke up this morning, I noticed that my head seemed clearer. I tried playing some electric guitar, even some first position chords... no signs of cramping.

I started thinking about the salt content of what I eat, and a couple of months ago, Trader Joe's stopped carrying my favorite bread of theirs, because the regional bakery they had contracted with had gone out of business. So I've been using substitutes. The main one I've used is their Whole Wheat Lavash, and it has a considerably lower salt content. Plus, I started eating Frosted Mini Wheats, but they have NO salt in them... with lots of milk which has no salt- and I'm prone to having this not just for breakfast, but for snacks, and I drink coffee, which has no salt, and I only eat meat a couple times a week which I use salt on, and I'm allergic to a lot of vegetables that might otherwise get eaten with salt. So I'm thinking that maybe my salt intake had dropped drastically, meaning that my chloride levels were low, and that caused cramping.

Anyway, I'm upping my salt intake a bit, and will SLOWLY try and move back to higher tension string situations... I'm thinking it will take a while for the new salt intake to permeate my muscles, and I still may have injured something.

One thing I also noticed was that I was having knee pain in an odd surface location where I'd never had it before, and this morning after eating the pretzels it was gone! So I think it wasn't only my index finger that was suffering. Actually, my other fingers were showing signs of tightness as well

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