Every inch of our bodies needs exercise. Muscles must be flexed to remain healthy. The hundreds of miles of capillaries that feed the muscle and bone cells need the blood pushed through them. I think neglecting that push - exercise - is what brings on the disease that is commonly called rheumatism or swelling of the joints. Long before the cells get stressed to that degree, muscles ache. Old folklore delegates that to foretelling storms or drastic changes in the weather and may have some truth which you have to endure. But the aching may also be warning you that there is a lack of blood pushed into the capillaries and you can do something about that.

I stretch, twist, walk, breathe deeply and move about. I flex my hands as if squeezing a soft ball. I concentrate on the offending muscle as if to confront it as an individual, willing it to admit that it is hurting me. Well that usually helps the occasional twinge in my wrists - they both have been broken in years past - and my concentration seems to overpower the twinge.

Charley horses in my calves are another challenge and not so easily confronted. Relaxing to send them away is not easy because the pain is too great to let me concentrate on anything but hurting. Message relieves and softens the muscles but they often hurt long afterwards. I have to keep reminding myself to drink more water. Lots more. Not coffee or pop, just water. Then exercise.

I'm lucky that most of my muscle aches were so easily self treated. When that didn't work I went to the doctor. I was cat scanned, ultrasounded, and oscopy-ed in many nooks and crannies before being told that my muscle pain was caused by ulcers in my esophagus. I'm on medication now and perhaps those muscle pains will recede but I still stretch, twist, lift, breathe deeply and walk to keep my blood moving into every capillary.

Naomi Sherer