Glad to hear some improvements ongoing. Not sure about the caffeine issue, but I'd be inclined to think that the caffeine helps the painkiller ingredients to kick-in and distribute quicker. My choice tends to be nurofen, always with a snack to avoid any stomach issues, but I've managed to cut cut down in the last few years to about one tenth of my previous consumption (20+ years of taking painkillers just to do normal stuff, or to sleep)....the sleeping postures did that. The altering of sleeping postures has created its own bearable 'normality' which doesn't require the med dependency, thankfully. With C/S we can never say what it's going to be like next week, but 'so-fa' so good, and I'm optimistic in a way that I had become convinced would be impossible. My previous overview of the condition, probably fed by everything we read and are told, has flipped into a self management program that actually delivers results. I'd like to think that others who are going through the same chronic pain and confusions, at least have an opportunity to consider that, as I've learned, things can be different. However, from communicating directly with C/S patients on other sites, I realise that it's difficult to convince by suggestion alone...even with good experiential insight into what they may be going through. Chronic conditions have a tendency to create a mindset, where best decisions are not always made....the symptoms create their own urgency at the expense of good reasoning etc. I'd hope that the professionals pick up somehow on the sleeping postures as good therapy because that might be the quickest way to inform those who need to know.
To try and explain the onset of morning symptoms as something instigated during sleep, I see it like this.............Whatever activities we've engaged in during the day, we inevitably aggravate or further threaten the nerve/s in the neck, but because we are awake, we are in protective/defensive mode....in other words, the neck is defying its own vulnerabilities. Then, when we fall asleep, that defense mode is relaxed, the nervous system can then read its own vulnerabilities, and it instigates protective measures for when we next wake up. A threatened or pinched nerve should really only manifest as numbness/pins and needles in a dedicated area, whether radiated or referred. So, any painful symptoms such as headache, sore neck, pain in shoulder/chest/arm, I see as resulting from protective muscular adjustments which are instigated to help towards less aggravation to the actual nerve. Relieve the threat to the nerve by any means, in my case by altering sleep postures (nothing else has worked for me), and the protective associated symptoms are also immediately relieved. Any actual deterioration of the cerv spine, with resulting further threats to nerves, shouldn't actually cause pain in itself....the bone structure degeneration doesn't hurt, and endangered nerves usually manifest referred numbness. There are few C/S patients who complain of disabling pain at point of nerve compression. So, with the sleep thing it's about sensing the least vulnerable/stressed postures, where the neck's own dynamics don't need to instigate protective responses whilst we sleep. That takes a bit of getting used to, and because we can't eliminate 'error' from a trial and error approach, I suppose those in most need will always show some reluctance to take a risk.....especially when they are constantly being told that medications might deliver a more appropriate solution...which they don't. The medication culture needs to be challenged because, with C/S there's a ready-made population all too ready to be zombified, and if that's the best they can do, I think I'll just carry on with my own research.
I liked your previous idea of having something to stabilise the sleep posture....am looking into that one.
Gerry