Aching Joints

I don’t know whether I drink too much. Sometimes, I suppose, but I probably drink more than most people and more than doctors would recommend. I usually have about four beers a day in the early evening. Anyway, now that I am older, I have noticed that I get aching joints, if I skip my drinking for even a few days.

This is nothing new, I first became aware of the phenomenon three or four years ago, and have used it as a reason for the Bacchic sessions ever since.

I can hear my old headmaster telling me when I was fourteen that I was the greatest casuist he had ever met, and that I should never forget that a reason was only an excuse with substance.

Anyway, to continue, yesterday, I was telling a rare falang visitor to our village this story, and he started smiling at me.

‘I’m not joking,’ I said smiling back. ‘I first noticed it years ago’.

‘What, so you’re under the influence twenty-four hours a day, are you?’

‘No,’ I replied and explained my custom.

‘So how does that stop your feet, knees and back hurting twelve hours later when you get up? ‘It’s not the alcohol that’s saving you the pain,’ he explained, ‘it’s the calories’.

I urged him to continue.

‘You are overweight,’ he said bluntly, but honestly, ‘therefore, there are pockets and strips of fat all over your body. If you stop drinking, do you lose weight?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I can lose two to five kilos in a week easily’.

‘Just what I thought. When you stop drinking, your body strips out fat from your body and the first places it does that start to ache, because they have lost the cushion of fat’.

I felt such a fool! I was so sure that he was right.

‘Most people,’ he continued, ‘replace one thing with another. So, stop smoking, eat sweets. Stop drinking alcohol, drink fruit juice and the calorie count goes up, but you don’t do that, obviously’.

And he was right again. I replace beer with water, I only eat till I’m hungry and always have, and I’m not keen on sugary foodstuffs, with the exceptions of chocolate and ice cream, but they have to be good quality.

Since our village shops only sell cheap crap for kids, I cannot buy it here or within seventy-five kilometres. The Chinese chocolate here has ‘Contains no chocolate’ written on the wrapper in English (so most Thais can’t read it) and my wife told me the other day that cheap ice cream is made from milk thickened with ‘Thai potato’, whatever that is.

So, he was right, when I stop drinking, I lose weight and start aching all over.

Isn’t it great when our myths are debunked?

Does anyone have an opinion on curing aching joints like this?

All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Aching Joints