Oh, the catch 22 of exercise. Being fitter will make you healthier, but exercise itself makes you sicker. Is there any greater bane to the chronically ill? Possibly people saying: 'You would be healthier if you exercised more'.
How
To Exercise When Chronically Ill:
First, you know
better than anyone else what you are capable of. And if anything, most
chronically ill people are prone to push themselves TOO hard and make it much
worse for themselves. So be realistic about your goals and be realistic about
how much you can do.
First, define why
you want to exercise. For me, it is about promoting blood flow and keeping
myself as physically able as possible. I don't want to get weak joins and I
don't want my stamina to drop so low that I can't do things on the days I am
well enough to go out. I'd also like to lose weight, but more about that later.
Secondly, once you
have decided WHY you are exercising, you must choose exercises that are
suitable for you, and suitable for your goals. It might be slow, low impact
exercise like slow walking is best for you. Or maybe short bursts of high
intensity. You know what is best for me? Swimming. Medium intensity, but most
importantly, I can't overheat. Which is my biggest problem with exercise. You
know what I don't have easy access to? A pool or the beach. I drive to the
beach when I can, but that is much, much less often than I would like.
Thirdly, think
outside the box. Can you lift cans of food while watching TV? That's exercise.
Can you do leg lifts? Squats? If some parts of your body don't work, how can
you isolate and exercise the other parts? What can you do in your living room
with a small amount of space. Can you do a dance routine? I promise youtube has
hundreds more exercise tutorials on it than you could ever complete if you
dedicated your life to trying. You don't need fancy equipment or a trainer and
you don't need to exercise the parts of you that don't work well.
Fourthly, did you do
ten squats and give up? That's okay. Do ten squats tomorrow. Maybe build up to
11. Then 12. Move slowly. A tiny bit of exercise is still doing you good. Don't
beat yourself up because you can't do what a 'healthy' person can. I hate to
break this to you, but you aren't healthy.
When
Your Doctor Wants You To Lose Weight:
I am going to talk
about weight in this blog post, but there will be no fat shaming. And I hope
most of you know me well enough that you thought this was a given.
The biggest problem
with being overweight and chronically ill, is that doctors, nurses and random
people with no right to an opinion will blame many of your symptoms on your
weight. It is, of course, more likely that the reverse is true. Being chronically
ill makes it almost impossible to eat as well as you want or exercise as much
as you want. And in some cases, your illness may be the direct cause of your
weight, particularly if you have POS or any kind of inflammation or sleep
disorder, along with a lot of mental illnesses.
There are, however,
some benefits to weight loss I want to talk about. Two of these, I don't WANT
to be true, but however horrible, they are true and until society changes, we
are going to have to live with them:
1. It's easier on
your joints.
Carrying around a
lot of excess weight, regardless of if the weight is part of you, or not
(boxes, books etc) is hard on your joints. As is repetitive use of said joints.
I know a lot of writers with bad hands and wrists, I know a lot of removalists
or warehouse workers with shot backs and I know a good number of overweight
people with shot knees. And, of course, if you have bad knees, it's going to be
harder to move around and you will gain more weight, and the terrible cycle
continues.
2. It's easier to
exercise.
There are some
amazing overweight athletes and all of my healthy overweight friends can run
rings around me. However, it’s a lot easier to exercise when you are carrying
less weight. At my heaviest I was over 90kgs and dragging myself up a hill was
a nightmare. It still is, but with a 20kg back pack on, I probably wouldn't
make it now.
3. It's easier to
make doctors take you seriously.
Being fat could kill
you. Not because of the fat, but because some asshole doctor is doing to blame
your fatal condition on your weight. It happens ALL THE TIME. As in, daily. I
have no stats on how many people die per day from treatable conditions that
were misdiagnosed because they were overweight, but I do have enough stories
just from friends to terrify me. Find a good doctor who isn't a fat-phob, warn
people away from the fat-phob doctors you do meet. But also accept that in an
ER, your great GP isn't going to save you.
4. I will relieve
some psychological pressure.
It doesn't matter
how much to love your curves, every time someone makes a negative comment, you
probably die a little inside. I wish I could be there to punch every single
negative person in the face before they speak, but I can't. And you're still
going to be bombarded with skinny models and actors and advertising telling you
to be ashamed and that you are only beautiful if you are thin. I know in this
context losing weight is essentially 'giving up', conforming to make the
bullying stop. And yes, that's exactly what it is. We live in a dystopian hell
and sometimes you have to do whatever it takes to survive here.
Medication
Sucks
No one enjoys taking
medication. Even addicts don't enjoy it, addicted or not, it something we do to
cope. To hopefully make things a tiny bit better—either by keeping us alive or
removing some symptom we suffer through.
It can be difficult
to balance our medications, they can be dangerous, disruptive, and come with a
lot of complicated feelings. Its hard to take pills of any kind without feeling
there is something 'wrong' with you, even when logic argues that we need it.
Its up to you to use
common sense when it comes to your medication. Logic should trump emotion. Take
your pills when you should, and acknowledge your negative feelings about them. Journal
about them, if it helps. Here are some other tips:
Question.
Your. Medication.
At least once a
year, I like to re-assess and re-trial all my medication. Depending on what
medication you take, this may be dangerous, impossible or relatively easy. You
can book a meeting with a pharmacist in Australia, who will meet with you and
go over all your medications looking for potential clashes and interactions. They
can also talk to you about side-effects you might be treating as symptoms.
Symptoms evolve and change and if you have been taking a lot of medications for
a long time, symtoms that are getting worse may be from the medication. EG: I
took Panadol almost daily for 20 years. Recently when my headaches just would
not ease, I spent a week with NO painkillers, not even Panadol. It was hell.
Not going to lie. However, one of the new aspects of the migraines eased up,
only to flare again when I tried the Panadol again. I can no longer tolerate
Panadol and I have had to adjust my medication schedule accordingly. It used to
be I couldn't take nurofen without throwing up, now I handle it just fine.
Likewise, an old
migraine medication I took for ten years suddenly started giving me seizures.
You change, your symptoms change and your reactions to medications change.
Anything you are on long term needs to be re-assessed regularly to weed out
illnesses-disguised-as-cures.
Research
New And Alternative Medications.
I don't mean
alternative therapies. Don't switch your Naltrexone for crystals.
Don't disregard
vitamins and herbals just because they are 'simple'. Let's be honest,
after years of chronic exhaustion, we would feel stupid if our condition was
treatable by something as simple as a vitamin. Iron, or vitamin D, or Vitamin
B. However, this is literally a best case scenario. Feeling better from taking
a pill with no side effects, no prescription, no long term harm.
I'll tell you
something else, a lot of 'hardcore' drugs are just complicated versions of
simple things. Medications are just compounds of other things. Most of us know
penicillin is derived from mould. All drugs are derived from something and
sometimes the only reason a herbal supplement is not an expensive prescription
drug is because pharmaceutical companies have not isolated the right compound
yet.
Valerian root and
turmeric are two fantastic examples. Valerian, when concentrated, is a better
sleeping agent than any commercially available sleeping pills. But it also
dangerous. So the valerian you get from blackmores is very mild. Because
pharmaceutical companies don’t know WHY valerian makes people sleep, they can't
turn it into a sleeping pill yet. But they are trying. Meanwhile, Valerian is
not taken very seriously by anyone as a sleeping aid, even though we KNOW it is
more effective.
Turmeric is the same. With pepper, it is proving very effective at treating certain conditions, just as Indian medicine has been saying for centuries. However, the active compound isn't known, so pharmaceutical companies have been releasing rather misleading studies claiming turmeric has no effect. Really, the specific compound in turmeric they tested had no effect. But in spreading these results, they drive people away from using turmeric and back to their other prescription products.
Remember Health Is The Goal.
Your goal is always to
be healthier in the long and short term. We need to stay fit, flexible and strong
enough that life doesn't become more difficult for us. But we also don't want
to make ourselves sicker trying to overdo it.
Likewise, we want
our pills to improve our situation, not make it worse, and that means a lot of
trial, error, research and inconvenience, which can often leave us struggling
in the short term, but is hopefully beneficial in the long term.
I'm not a big fan of
doctors, but I hope you have one you can trust to speak to before you embark on
any medication tests or exercise routines. Who knows, they might even have some
good ideas.
Next week: Socialization,
time management and goal setting!
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