My heart skipped a beat today when I received my first order for an ExxoPok cell phone pouch coming in from my own little handmade e-commerce website http://exxopok.karin-web.com
I designed this unique belt clip phone case out of personal necessity in October 2015, when I joined Google Fi and had to somehow attach a big Nexus 5X smartphone to my belt. After making several of those handy pouches with the “angle of dangle” for myself and family, and selling three of them in person, I set up a shop on Etsy https://www.etsy.com/shop/exxopok and actually sold 37 of my ingenious gadgets there by now.
Good business practice is to diversify, don’t put all your eggs in one basket, and have multiple sales channels – even if you’re just treating this like a hobby without any aspirations to turn into a “full-time job/income”. Plus it would be a good learning experience for me to get into newer techniques of web-development.
So, in December of 2016, I added the ExxoPok subdomain to my Karin-web.com domain, found and customized a free html5 template that I like, installed the Ecwid e-commerce plugin on it – which is also free if you list no more than 10 items, and worked hard to get the whole thing optimized for Google’s search engine. Being found on the internet is the hardest thing to do. It takes time, and you have to keep “talking” about your stuff, posting on social media, blogging about it, creating link authority for your site.
Today was the big day: one customer ordered an ExxoPok to be made as a gift for Father’s Day! Needless to say that I got to work right away, making sure this pouch is going to be everything I promised it to be.
So you think you got this blog, website, or other online presence, and now people are going to see you, hear you, buy from you? Wrong! If Google doesn’t know you’re there, you’ll be invisible. Your services or products could be the best thing since sliced bread – if nobody can find you through a search on Google, you’re virtually dead.
I’ve known this for years, tried to adhere to the standards, but only recently discovered the magic of Google’s Search Console. Google Analytics is nice, you can see how many visitors you have on your webpages. But it doesn’t come close to the newly found insight I get from the Search Console.
I had to tweak my SEO on the old homepage, on this blog, and on the latest addition – my ExxoPok subdomain. Making sure that I have the appropriate meta tags, a good sitemap, alt tags on all images – and then including Google’s verification token – was a little tricky.
The results are worth the effort! After a few days my properties have been crawled, I am beginning to see what my visitors searched for on Google.
I have been living with chronic lower back pain for the last thirty years. Degenerating discs, sitting on office chairs, lack of excercise, being slightly overweight, occasional heavy lifting – I had grown so used to the pain, that I hardly paid attention to it anymore. When the pain gradually increased early this year, and then spread further down into my right hip, I thought this was to be expected as a normal result of aging.
Three months went by before I finally decided that this was too much pain to ignore. It got so bad, that I would avoid getting up out of my chair, because I knew the initial pain would be excruciating. It took me longer, and longer to get moving. I developed a limp in my walk, and people started asking “are you ok?” when they noticed that.
Researching my symptoms, possible causes, treatment options, or future prospect, everything pointed me in the direction of osteoarthritis of the hip; not a very good thing to discover. Many articles I read about the topic suggested it can’t be cured, all you can do is alleviate the pain, and eventually you will need joint replacement surgery.
Before I just roll over and die, though, I decided to first have the diagnosis confirmed by a professional, and then plan on a course of action. Finding a doctor who will accept new patients is not easy in the USA. Expect long wait times. It took me two hours on the phone to set up an appointment several months out, early in October. In the meantime I decided to develop my own treatment plan, assuming my assessment was correct, and I did in fact have osteoarthritis.
From my research I learned, that osteoarthritis is painful mainly because of inflammation, not so much because of bones rubbing on bones – at least in the initial stages. Inflammation caused by little chunks of malnourished cartilage coming apart, floating around inside the joint, will prompt the surrounding bones to form bone spurs, which then cause more wear and tear on the cartilage, and more inflammation. It’s like a vicious cycle that ends in destruction of a joint, if you can’t stop it.
Armed with my newly found knowledge I developed a holistic approach to my joint problem. I knew there would not be the one “miracle pill” that fixes years of neglect and damage within a short time. I knew I would need changes in my diet, and life style, and suitable supplements to help my body help itself. I knew this would take time, months, maybe years.
By now, five months into my own treatment plan, I am happy to report improvement. A day before my scheduled doctor’s appointment I thought to myself “I really don’t need a doctor for this”, but then I also wanted to have a professional diagnosis, and maybe hear some professional opinion about my options.
The x-ray images taken revealed moderate (stage 1-2) osteoarthritis in my right hip, and on both sides of my sacroiliac joint. That definitely explains all the symptoms I was experiencing. The doctor recommended to continue doing, what I had been doing. She offered prescription pain medication, suggested a referral to an orthopedic specialist, physical therapy, injections… but all that only if I felt the pain was getting worse again.
You’re still here? Good. You will now find out exactly what I am doing to improve my condition. If you suffer from arthritis, I hope you’ll have the same results as I did. Feel free to contact me with additional questions by commenting on this post.
1. Nutrition
Inflammation is a reason for many ailments, not just osteoarthritis, so to eliminate that is the first goal. Greatly reduce your intake of animal protein; eat more plant based food instead. You don’t have to become a vegetarian; just eat less meat, dairy products, eggs. Also avoid processed, packaged food with artificial sweeteners, artificial colours, preservatives, and other chemicals you can’t even pronounce.
Don’t drink pop, read labels and chose natural, plain, simple products, containing no more than ten ingredients that you would have available in your kitchen. Prepare your own food from scratch whenever possible. Fresh ginger and turmeric are excellent spices to use. Drink lots of clean water, or unsweetened tea. Eliminate sugar, other sweeteners, and simple carbohydrates from your diet – or at least minimize those.
2. Life Style
The basic “use it or lose it” rule applies to joint mobility too. Joints need to be moved to stay flexible, but you have to make sure the movement doesn’t result in excessive wear. If you are overweight, work to reduce that. Every pound lost takes up to four pounds of pressure off your joints.
Walk frequently throughout the day; aim to be walking for at least 45 minutes every day. Swimming, riding bicycle, dancing, tai-chi, yoga, or any other sport that involves slow, flowing, smooth movements, is advised. Don’t run, or jump, or play sports like tennis, or volleyball, where you would have to twist and turn rapidly. Get enough sleep daily.
3. Supplements
Even with changes to diet and life style, osteoarthritis is sometimes hard to control. Especially when damage to the joint has already occurred, adding the following supplements may help you reach your goal to be pain-free, and to prevent the disease from progressing.
Be advised, though, that I am not a medical professional. Talk to your doctor, if you are unsure about adding any of these supplements to your daily regimen. Even natural remedies can have side effects, or interactions with medication you are already taking.
I personally use these supplements, which I order from Amazon, to help with my osteoarthritis:
I know we all get “old” sooner or later, that’s by design. I am hoping to get really, really, old – because that’s still better than dying young. What I don’t like are the side effects of getting old. For me the most noticeable, and most annoying, side effects of aging were mobility restrictions: morning stiffness, aching joints, start-up pain, lower back pain, sciatic nerve problems, maybe even early stage arthritis, or osteoporosis.
Instead of simply accepting the facts, or going to a doctor to get some kind of prescription, I went on a treasure hunt in pursuit of a solution to my problem, or at least an improvement of the condition.
Now, two months into my research and experiment, I am happy to report that things are looking really good! My mobility has greatly improved. Joint pain is almost gone in most situations. In addition to my main concern being a lot less concerning, I am also finding surprising improvements in other areas. Thinning eyebrows are growing in nicely again, I now have visible lower eye-lashes, my skin isn’t itchy and dry anymore, the gaps between my receding gums and upper back molars seem a lot smaller lately, my respiratory allergies cause less frequent/severe coughing during the day.
How did I do all this, you may ask. Apart from a few general recommendations for a healthy life-style (eat less animal protein, get enough sleep, exercise every day) I attribute my success to three supplements that I added to my daily regimen, listed in descending order of importance.
one tablespoon full of colloidal silica (Hübner Silica Gel)
two capsules of high dose pure serrapeptase (Arthur Andrew Serrétia)
two capsules of cissus quadrangularis extract (Nutrakey Cissus Quadrangularis)
I invented the awesome ExxoPok phone pouch – and I (try to) sell it on Etsy and Ebay. Not bad, for a start. It’s like having a stand at the flea-market, though. Your shop isn’t really yours, and the marketplace wants to make money off of you by charging various fees. Listing fees, transaction fees, monthly fees, service fees………
So I started looking for ways to diversify, maybe add a web-shop to my own little old home page? Or sell ExxoPoks on Facebook? There are so many different ways to do that, I started to get confused. Shopify, Volusion, BigCartel, SquareSpace, 3dCart, LemonStand, BigCommerce, AmeriCommerce……… all fine products having several flaws in common.
They all cost monthly fees (after some initial trial period), ranging anywhere from $8 to $299 a month, depending on the level of flexibility you buy. Also, once you decide what e-commerce platform to use, you are pretty much “stuck” with them. Migrating to a different platform is complicated, or next to impossible, for most of these.
After weeks of digging I finally found a little gem called “Ecwid”. It took me a few hours on the weekend to get this figured out, setting up a subdomain, adding a free template to it, customizing that and integrating Ecwid’s shop plugin – looks great!
Then I realized you can simply add that plugin to a Facebook page too. For up to 10 items the whole platform is completely free to use, forever. Which means, if I make a sale through Ecwid, all I’d have to pay would be Paypal’s transaction fees.
I’ve known this for years, tried to adhere to the standards, but only recently discovered the magic of Google’s Search Console. Google Analytics is nice, you can see how many visitors you have on your webpages. But it doesn’t come close to the newly found insight I get from the Search Console.
From my research I learned, that osteoarthritis is painful mainly because of inflammation, not so much because of bones rubbing on bones – at least in the initial stages. Inflammation caused by little chunks of malnourished cartilage coming apart, floating around inside the joint, will prompt the surrounding bones to form bone spurs, which then cause more wear and tear on the cartilage, and more inflammation. It’s like a vicious cycle that ends in destruction of a joint, if you can’t stop it.
