Cold green tea and me and my body.

I'm not a keen food culinary snob. I just like what I like.Preferably without fuss. But I've been drinking green tea brewed cold for years. It's less bitter that way.

It turns out that hot brewing releases different Catechins , a type of disease-fighting flavonoid and antioxidant, than does cold steeping. So I've started to brew up jugs of tea with hot water. But not just any old hot water. I'm trying to keep the initial brew temp within the 60-80 degree centigrade range in the hope that I can avoid the taste of bitter tannins.

This range is supposedly serendipitous  for green tea.

That may seem fastidious but it works. The flavours are stronger but I use green tea as a cordial anyway. 

Since I use a thermometer to make my yogurt -- an essential -- the tea temp thing comes easily to me. 

I indulged myself last week and bought 50 grams of locally grown Sencha. Ouch! Vereey priceey.

The literature may be keen to distinguish green teas one from the other in way of benefits but I think there's not much in it. In Summer  cold green tea is my preferred daytime tipple but I'm gonna stick with the supermarket blends as that's my price range -- esp my preferred Madura Green Tea and Papaya Leaf. I rip the strings bits off the teabags and steep the little pockets of tea. The Papaya Leaf is supposedly a therapy addition but I just like the taste...and besides Pawpaw/Papaya is my favorite fruit.

Why bother with green tea?

While I like drinking it I'm currently extra keen to exploit any means of pain relief I can find. It has  been a very painful last 8 months inside my body and after obtaining some relief  with Curcumin (Tumeric) I'm looking for similar options. I've been a bit desperate you see...

This snippet- Natural anti-inflammatory agents for pain relief - caught my attention:

Green tea has long been recognized to have cardiovascular and cancer preventative characteristics due to its antioxidant properties. Its use in the treatment of arthritic disease as an anti-inflammatory agent has been recognized more recently. The constituents of green tea are polyphenolic compounds called catechins, and epigallocatechin-3 galate is the most abundant catechin in green tea.Epigallocatechin-3 galate inhibits IL-1–induced proteoglycan release and type 2 collagen degradation in cartilage explants.In human in vitro models, it also suppresses IL-1b and attenuates activation of the transcription factor NF-kB. Green tea also inhibits the aggrecanases which degrade cartilage.Green tea research now demonstrates both anti-inflammatory and chondroprotective effects. Additionally, green tea research includes the “Asian paradox”, which theorizes that increased green tea consumption in Asia may lead to significant cardiovascular, neuroprotective and cancer prevention properties. The usual recommendation is 3–4 cups of tea a day. Green tea extract has a typical dosage of 300–400 mg. Green tea can cause stomach irritation in some, and because of its caffeine content, a decaffeinated variety is also available; but the polyphenol content is currently unknown.

Mind you I drink black tea too. That's my favorite drink. Maybe four large cups per day (although my black tea is low caffeine). And I drink coffee -- black -- each morning.

Why bother? The Joys of Exercise

I've had a simply terrible month in what's been a brutal  Summer for me.

I've spent so much of it flat on my back. 

But today...I dragged myself out of bed this morning thinking that it was gonna be another one of those days in which I'll be housebound and more often abed.  

Fortunately, it didn't pan out that way

Since I'm a total weather vane -- a barometric junkie-- after an hour shuffling around the house I began to feel a little nimble. 

I don't look a gift horse in the mouth so I always try to seize the opportunity if it's there. So I altered my agenda to fit the expanding options.

The thing is that I bounced.

And bouncing is a skill you have to work at.

I was able to bounce today because I have such a great customized exercise program and my body is ready to be turned to active mode when it is given the go ahead.

That means I am trained to recover quickly.

This is the great thing about careful exercising -- something that explains the seeming conundrum. Exercise doesn't lessen my illness at all. I can't help the bouts of stiffness, pain and fatigue I am prone to.

Like shit, it happens.

But when flagged 'well' I can quickly seize the moment. 

I value that bounce.Waste not. Want not.

Exercise also reduces my pain levels. It won't prevent pain or stiffness, but my body is less willing to cede its carcass to crippling rheumatic symptoms. So I get traded a certain edge -- a little leeway.

I am allowed resilience. 

Resilience...and awareness. Exercise gives me movement awareness. I'm more attuned to how my body moves and feels. I more readily read all the somatic signals I get from all over: pain, stiffness, ease of movement, tension, fatigue, clumsiness.... It's surprising how easily you misread how your body is -- how routinely  you make assumptions based on a shallow inventory. I do it all the time. And so often I have to begin some exercising to chart the full picture because that will then tell me what I am install for and what agenda I can expect  that day. 

Finally, what exercise does is switch me from victim to animator. It won't do that all the time, of course, but I find that if I attempt  light exercises  while ill - and dancing is especially good in this regard -- I switch on responses in my body  that alleviate the pain, fatigue and stiffness. I consider it a sort of endorphin response but it also may indeed be cognitive in  that activity has its own rewards.

And exercise, afterall, is its own routine. Like those three meals a day, exercise is a regime, a schedule --- something that gets included on  your to-do list.

If you wallow in pain by focusing on its presence you will indeed ensure that the pain will continue. 

So get up, get out of bed -- and have a go...or so I try to tell myself. But hey! It works.

• Excellent summary of the proven benefits of strength training

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It's over: I got where I wanted to go...

When I bagan all this  I was keen to negotiate a self conscious lifestyle journey.

I had then, and still do have, major health issues to deal with.

But I needed to improve my options by changing the way I lived. 

There wasn't anything especially toxic in my day to day. It was just that I was cornered by the toll chronic illness was taking on me. And the best response to my condition was to up my game.

So I've worked at the exercising and I've worked at the diet and such  so that now I've tweaked as much as I can and  routinely just do it.

In fact, from my point of view, I don't really consider myself contained by 'a diet' or 'an exercise program' at all. 

I don't need to call on that much discipline because  it's all routine. It's not boring, nor ascetic ... it's no longer demanding. 

It just happens...and I enjoy it.

So what have I done?

• I guess, on average,  I  'exercise' at least three times per day. But then, as far as I'm concerned,  I really only exercise for 8 minutes every second day. That's the High Intensity Interval Training stuff. The other times I'm walking the dogs, scooting around town or dancing. We may call it 'exercise' during these other times, but as far as I'm concerned it's  recreation a or a simple chore. The way I've tweaked this I'm notching up over 30 km most weeks  'exercising/recreating'. I give myself a 1 km credit for each of the non distance sessions I do. So as well as the foot work I do --walking or scooting -- I pick up peripheral marks from these other habits. But the only real conscious strain and pain is doing the HIIT. The rest is pleasure.
• It took a lot of work, many years and a lot of experimentation to develop this customized program. Indeed, some of the discovery embedded in all this, was pure luck...and, of course, it suits me. There was research involved: plenty of reading up. I used professional trainers for a time. I logged my sessions and monitored the impacts the exertions were having on my physiology. I relied on dog ownership to keep me focused. And out of all this I got myself a sort of activated daily life, as routinised as eating lunch. 
• I've also altered my diet. I now routinely -- every day with no problems -- eat a low carbohydrate diet. I guess I'm eating around  50-100 grams of carbohydrate per day. I shop with low carb in mind.I cook with low carb in mind. I eat with low carb in mind. That's my cuisine. Of course that means I have to forgo a few foods.I may miss a weekly  dose of bananas or crusty bread or ice cream or rice or whatever else is carb dense ...but then, all that means is that I get to be inventive with the foods I do eat. 
• And that's it. I've lost weight.I may still be oh-so-very-often crippled by episodes of  illness and incapacity, but I'm the fittest I've been in decades. That means I get more bounce to the ounce. Suffer less pain. More sprightly for longer with no need to wallow in depression because the activity disallows it. I recover from my debility episodes quicker. And I've tweaked it that no matter how bad I may feel though Fibromyalgia I can still do at least some element of my exercising which means I can access any endorphins my body may have in reserve.

So now -- given what I've done -- what continues to interest me is the question of activity -- of how to make my day more physically active, more 'fidgeted' by making it more mental. 

This may seem an odd perspective -- fidget time -- but please consider the fact that movement for me is arduous and sore for long periods, and I have to sleep a lot. I also have to deal with the ready descent of a Fibrofog which plays havoc with cognition. So making the most of my active awake time becomes important. It's a  sort of seize-the-hour/seize-the-haf-hour challenge. 

Besides I'm getting older and the clock is ticking.

That's my new frontier and I can tell you it is a hard call.

I'm trying to delineate what I should focus on and schedule short bouts of intense mental  activity -- whether it be creating stuff on the computer or reading -- and break this up with movement out and about. I'm also trying to engineer this around a relaxed cyclical program of awake and sleep so that my penchant for insomnia (a symptom of FM) doesn't cripple me.

What I've learned from 'exercising'  I now try to apply more generally.It's a glorious quest for High Intensity Interval Thinking.

Wish me luck.

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Fibromyalgia for Beginners (begins)

I've finally begun a new webcomic series about my experience with  Fibromyalgia.   I don't know how long it will be but the journey should be instructive -- for me anyway. The archive of all strips (so far) is here.

                       

Click on comic image for enlarged view

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Fibromyalgia for Beginners as a webcomic

Gregory McKay: Comic Artist Rehab

It's late and I suspect I may be tired (which would be a good thing if true). So I won't write up the  more thoughtful of my cognitions.

Sorry about that. Better luck next time.

However, I wanted to outline a new grand scheme.

For some time I have been thinking (oops! there's that mental thingey again) that I wanted to write up my experience of Fibromyalgia over the past  27 years.

I used to read all the Fibromyalgia self help books I could get my hands on. Cures. Existences. DIY treatments. Pathology backgrounders....

Been there/read all that.

So I was keen not to expand the burgeoning literature with more  of the same or add  to the self pity and the exhibit-your-symptom habits (justified as they may be).

My working title was "Fibromyalgia for Beginners" and all I needed was a means to the end product.

Now I've got that -- that 'means': a webcomic. Something fresh. Deceptively 'lite'. Something that suits my style of address.

I'm thinking of incorporating this as part of the adventures logged in my already existing webcomic, Mr Punch and Professor Ratbaggy [Emeritus]. (Note that tonight that link doesn't work. Sorry about that. Better luck next time. It's Google you see: Big Brother doesn't have a complaints department.)

I point this out because  I'm gonna start spilling out musings in these pages on the topic of Fibromyalgia. It will be  a sort of notation trail, mapping out the route to  the end product. 

The ends justifies the means.

In the meantime I need to skill up my webcomic making skills...while I write the script. Comics -- with more pages than one -- really need to be scripted -- storyboarded just like film.

Skilling up currently amounts to creating 2-3 episodes of a webcomic each week as I practice to say what I want to say  in shorter creative time slots. A 12 panel comic currently takes me 4 hours to make. Longer if I stumble with the graphics and dialogue. I'd like to establish a routine of doing one every second day, but then I'm more engaged at the coal face/desk top than I thought I would be. 

I happen to love making comics the way I do with photomontage. This is why I've asked myself to consider tackling the topic of Fibromyalgia by the same means.

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A skilled and experienced sufferer of symptoms

 A recent photograph of Fibrofog

Since the current weather is  unkind towards me all I seem  to be doing  is eating and sleeping. 

I do seize upon the opportunities to do other stuff -- I do get 'windows' -- but my current existence is brutal indeed.

The prevailing weather patterns  may be stable but they seem to be locked into let's-bully-Dave mode.

It is so dry that my lawn is almost dead and to walk on  the paths between my garden beds it's all noisy crunch crunch. Crisp under foot. 

Bushfire weather. 

Which component of this meteorological mix is the one that harms me so,  I don't know. Weather changes may bring on acute attacks of Fibromyalgia symptoms in me but I suspect that like some irritable organism, a flurry of attacks can switch me to chronic mode and my whole system goes bad -- to over load.

It then takes ages to climb back out of the abyss again. 

The good thing is that as a skilled and experienced sufferer of symptoms I can still manage to do stuff  and never fall into a crippling heap.

That's something to be proud of.

I challenge my body when I can by exercising -- so that 'schedule' ( such as it is) is very important to me. It does indeed pay to have a few obsessions. 

For instance, I can hardly walk today but I danced and despite the fact I spent so much of it  flat on my back I managed to do 'things' that I value in order to register  the day as worthwhile.

• I read.
• Cooked an evening meal
• Watered the garden
• Did stuff on the computer
• Danced my dance 

I'd be lost without the computer and the web. Lost. It anchors my thought processes when just like today my concentration is missing in action. Typing out my thoughts -- sharing them and designing or editing  stuff for online publishing --  is all about me.

Even now I'm having a conversation with myself. 

I need  the challenge of composing stuff -- whatever it may be -- for an imagined audience starting with myself. Attempting to communicate something -- anything -- projects me out of the pathology I may be currently stuck with.

It's a very basic human need. 

And very effective. I recommend it. 

Ask yourself

 When you seek better  structure and form in order to explain yourself  with greater clarity  the process of composition  disciplines your own thoughts and facilitates deciding. 

You get to ask yourself: what am I thinking? Unless you try to answer that you won't really know.  From psychotherapy, to diary keeping, to  writing literature or exploring some other medium,  what you think is all about packaging the inside stuff for outside consumption -- even if the audience is just yourself. 

I even walk around with a note book so that I can make lists because making lists -- the business of jotting down items -- helps me to remember and organise what I need/intend to do-- where I'm at. Even if I don't later review the list I'm ahead because I gave my thinking a tangible form outside my head.

I separated thoughts by selecting which ones to jot down. I itemized my thinking.

This is the experience of 27 years of Fibromyalgia speaking. 

You can take my word for it: Fibro Fog is a nasty murk indeed. There have been occasions when I haven't been able to operate an ATM. I'd never be able to drive a car even if I wanted to. I'd be too dangerous on the road. I couldn't trust myself.

So in a sense you really have to work hard on generating a  boutique culture.  You may be able to get by with the same ole same ole but my everyday existence is peppered with these cognitive traps.

And to look at me you'd never guess.

Proper names and numbers -- forget about them. They are more often than not in my too hard basket. People's names. Names of townships. Telephone numbers... I cannot attach them to my memory despite my best efforts.

All too frequent example:  Imagine a new social setting and I get introduced to any number of persons. Maybe I'm to speak to them or teach them something (as happens). But there's hardly a chance I'll remember any of their names. The sounds just don't register. In fact, I immediately start panicking. They expect me to know their names and I won't! So I'm thinking  that before I run a session I gotta get those people to wear stick on name tags as there is no way I can get people to relate to and accept my cognitive impairment. My defensive habit is to not use personal/Christian names for fear that either I  won't know their names or in taking a punt and saying a name I make a mistake. The annoying problem is that I haven't worked out why I remember the names I do. Indeed, if we are introduced and I remember your name consider yourself blessed by cognitive forces unknown.

Obviously I am incapable of learning anything by rote. It doesn't work.

Numbers are a lost cause. The only phone number I know is my own. My ATM pin isn't really a number so much as a spatial layout on a key pad. I don't think I could easily articulate  it as a succession of four numbers.  But online passwords -- because I 'write/type' them down -- no probs. The visual layout of the keyboard guides my recall and confirms the embedding in my brain.

I try to register names by associating them with something else. It's like the way  mnemonics are used and I guess I'm still yearning for a ready system I can use any and every day to handle the proper noun challenge.

Example: I could never recall to memory the name of the Queensland town, "Nambour". It drove me crazy. I'd get to the point of the conversation where I wanted to speak the word "Nambour" and there was nothing there. No name. Blank. I'd have to say, "you know, the town that's on the Pacific Highway half way to the Sunshine Coast."  My solution, crude as it is, was to associate "Nambour" with "Vietnam" because the "Nam" got me half way through the word. It works. But I cannot retool every proper noun I stumble over like that.

Perhaps you are wondering how a condition that is a sort of Arthritis with all these stiffness, fatigue and pain symptoms be also so constraining cognitively.

Go figure.

But the research  doesn't give the sufferers from foggy break down much hope:

Research has shown that sufferers (of Fibro Fog) annually lose more than three times as much "gray matter" brain tissue than healthy, age-matched controls. And some of that loss occurs in areas of the brain that are involved in memory and concentration, says Patrick Wood, MD, a senior medical adviser to the NFA and one of the coauthors of the 2007 study.(link)

So it may get worse? What a bummer.

Believe me: pain and stiffness is easy. Thinking in a fog is hard. Real hard.

Afterward: I leant soon enough that after I 'got' Fibromyalgia  I could no longer learn a musical score. I used to play banjo  but under Fibro Fog rules none of the old tunes or any new ones were possible to play. After 4 or 5 bars the music in my head ran out. However (and this is  a wonderful thing) I discovered only over the last 12 months that I can learn and remember choreography. So dancing is so very important to me, you see. Lesson: what you lose on the swings...you gain on the slides.

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Underneath all that bulk is Adonis being opportunistic

'Tis amazing that I carry so much weight for my level of activity.

[If I may say so myself: that's my imponderable. ]

How about them genes, eh? I've never been located at a happy BMI. 

The irony is that I'm very fit. Despite my chronic illness  my capacity to do stuff,  to exert myself -- at least when I'm 'well' -- is very good for someone my age. But that extra weight is hard to lose.

This conundrum is explained by the fact that exercise is not in itself a good way to lose weight. It is very good for you because of this  or that reason, but the body compensates for all your exertions to stay at steady state bulk. 

Only by dieting can you begin to shift the kilograms -- but exercise , however, will help you keep them, like some bad smell, away. 

But dieting can feed the problem and yo-yo dieting doesn't work. If you are gonna diet you need to diet for life. 

So I figured that if you have to go without food big time for ever and ever just so you can slim down I'm not signing up to that option. 

I like my tucker.

But after I started a low carbohydrate diet I lost weight. It was effortless and impressive that in a very short space of time I lost 10 kgm. 

Then the weight loss stopped.

This is not an unusual occurrence on low carb diets. Plateauing will often kick in. 

But since shifting from a generic  'low carbohydrate'  format to a Low Carbohydrate High Fat approach I'm back shrinking. 

I'm losing it...

I'm in no hurry and I love the food. 

I'd like to lose another 10 kgm if I could. I don't want any hassles or dramas.  I want  the old bod to shed the grams quietly as I go about my daily business of living.

 The irony is that  because of my current exercise regime and the concurrent loss of adipose tissue,  I'm discovering musculature I didn't know existed. While I'm still fat, underneath all that bulk is Adonis. 

I can feel him. He wants to do the Full Monty.

And just think: each kilogram you lose is less weight you have to carry around every day. 

I have a series of kettlebells that I lift skyward and I appreciate how much they weigh. 8 kgm. 12kgm. 20kgm.

They are all heavy. But that's the sort of extra weight I've been dragging through life--since the mid eighties, when I first fell ill. 

I  have put on 10 kilograms each decade since. 

That's a normal ageing process, that's genetics...It was illness and medication for illness. It was bouts of inactivity. A vicious cycle. 

So if we go back ten years, say, there's Dave walking with a cane and having to go to bed every day during the day so he can make the 24 hours duty roster. 

When I took up scootering -- the kickbike -- I was imagining it as a substitute for one of those electric mobility scooters.

That's true: I was  becoming an invalid rather than someone who was just chronically ill. 

But when I started to consciously work on my exercising I began to roll back the debilitating symptoms of Fibromyalgia and the toll it had taken on  my body.

Of course the art is -- and it is an art -- to challenge yourself without exerting yourself such that you enter relapse. Stress does that and exercise is designed as stress.

The other knack is to pursue a routine of exercise despite your intermittent ill health which will often undermine your capacity to even walk.

Rule of thumb: Know thyself moment to moment and be opportunistic. 

I didn't say 'optimistic'. I said 'opportunistic'. 

That's the rub. Work hard when you get a window.

Anyway, I'm hoping that by continuing with this LCHF regime I can lift more of the heavy burden offa me. I don't have to be religious about it. LCHF is  tasty dining.

I  can't be sure what will happen -- that I will continue to lose weight or not -- but every little bit shedded is gonna be a thrill.

YONI FREEDHOFF (a beriatric physician) contemplates some novel criteria for judging any weight loss program. I'm with Yoni.  My score estimate for LCHF out of 10 for each item is in brackets.

Hunger [10]
Cravings [8]
Feelings of fullness/satisfaction [10]
Need to cook special meals for other family members [8]
Ability to still eat out with friends and family [9]
Energy levels and feelings of general well-being [7]
Complexity of dietary requirements [7]
Dietary flexibility vs. monotony [8]
Rigidity of dietary requirements (ie forbidden foods/food groups and impact on quality of life) [8]
Expense/cost of dietary requirements (ie expensive foods, supplements, etc.)[7]

That's 83 points out of 100

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Sleep and rest in chronic fatigue mode : the day bed for Polyphasic snoozing

It is a tragic irony of my existence that despite all the stuff I get up to I am crippled by pain, stiffness and fatigue.

I suffer from Fibromyalgia which had an early diagnostic  life as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Such a burden plays out and you get to wing it as the years go by. 

Of late , with these frequent surges of wet weather and barometric roller coasting, I am spending a good part of my days abed. For years now I have always set aside  an item of domestic furniture upon which I lay horizontal, read and dose off. 

This is my day bed.

My day bed may double up for use by guests and fam who sleepover, but for me it is a special place: my Occupy. After years of laying out my body at all hours of the day or night I have customized my hardware to suit .

• A reading lamp
• Pillow
• Fan
• 'Bed' side table (I love my op shop 3 legger)
• My Kobo ebook reader
• Linen

This last item -- this 'linen' (I was going to use 'manchester' but no one uses that term any more ) is a creative hobby. I have discovered that at local Op(portunity) Shops I can get very cheap dooner covers so I live my sleepy bye time upon a mix and match collection of colours and designs which I lay out like tablecloths upon my bed. If the chill sets in, I use one to cover myself.

You see, I'm not into boring myself. 

Location of Day Bed

The first rule of daybedding is to sleep yourself outside. This is where verandahs come in -- or in my current existence, a garage opened at both ends to the air and sun. The car sleeps outside, I have Occupied its space (in protest against its carbon emissions).

In the worst winter chill I pull down the roller door.

Against one wall is my two scooters...and I share the space with animals (pictured).

Use of Day Bed

The best a day bed offers is reliability. It is always there. No matter. When fatigue overcomes me I know that I can retreat to  my back. I have ebooks to read if I'm  compos mentis - but if I am not of sound mind I can dose.

To sleep, perchance to Dream;  (Note: ebook readers are so easy to read when lying flat)

 The option of sleep is my bottom line. I find that I follow a sort of pattern.

Polyphasis

If I make it through the day, after tea at night, even after taking the dogs for a long (one hour) walk I will collapse exhausted on my day bed and sleep for a few hours, rising at about 12 midnight. I then do some work on the computer or watch videos for a few hours, before retiring again.

I  used to think this was perversity or a pathology on my part but I suspect that I am defaulting to a Polyphasic sleep pattern. Recent arguments suggest that  Segmented sleep does in fact have a cultural history.

Segmented sleep, also known as divided sleep, bimodal sleep pattern, or interrupted sleep, is a polyphasic or biphasic sleep pattern where two or more periods of sleep are punctuated by a period of wakefulness. Along with a nap (siesta) in the day, it has been argued that this is the natural pattern of human sleep. A case has been made that maintaining such a sleep pattern may be important in regulating stress.

Of course, I try ever so hard to siesta. And when I do my night time first sleep either is uncalled for or is reduced in length. Sometimes, and often of late because of the weather, my siesta is not so short. I may awake after several hours asleep. On other occasions, the fact that I siesta enables me to take the dogs out that evening...

What you lose on the swings you gain on the slides...

But then, I'm adaptable. I find that I can awake and tackle a range of optional tasks from cooking a meal, gardening, exercising, dog walking, dancing or whatever. 

Sleeps usually -- but not always -- refresh me.

I have also learnt that by being Polyphasic like this I get to harvest many dawn options. I am physically more often 'better'  on my morning awakening than, my others during each 24 hour period. So I have this window where I can do more rather than less. After a couple of hours, stiffness and fatigue may set in again. and activity is harder.

I also get to enjoy the dawns as they come up.... 

In some traditional senses I do suffer from insomnia. If I cannot settle into my second night time sleep I can find myself up and about, even speedy. This drives me crazy. It may be  2 or 3 a.m. in the morning and I feel great; keen to do stuff -- but ruled by the sentence that I should be sleeping. If I actually do stuff, I stimulate my mind and sleep is not an option that night. On some of these occasions I suffer from annoying itchiness all over. ... This is often gone by morning.

While I have this condition, this illness, it has a strong sleep disturbance component which plays a brutal game with one's bod:

For people with fibromyalgia, the combination of pain and sleep disturbance is a double-edged sword: the pain makes sleep more difficult and sleep deprivation exacerbates pain.(source)

After years of trying to follow 'sleep hygiene' rules I'm now a free spirit....and I suspect I'm much better for it.

And it turns out (before becoming Fibo Man) I used to work 12 hour shifts running a psychiatric admission ward at night. Best, most exciting job I ever had.Two nights on/two nights off. Such madnesses came out of the dark. I loved the nightimeness and the way I could harvest my days between shifts and days off. Sleeping for me after returning home each morning was not a problem. I needed less sleep. I was physically very active and would even drop by the local swimming pool to do laps each morning en route to bed. However, the way night duty is deployed under 8 hour protocols with shifts rotating through a 24 period only caused me to....wet the bed. My sleeps were so deep that I could not be raised and if so I would not recall the conversation. I could not establish a pattern and my whole system was in wack.

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Music, dance, exercise and HIIT: a Fibromyalgia anecdote

Yesterday I was much overcome my stiffness and fatigue. Had trouble walking at times. When I kickbiked to the shops I almost turned back after 200 metres (and gone back to bed) because I could not get any power into my kicks. It's as though your body had given up on me and gone on strike.

However, after returning and 'recovering' I thought I'd attempt a HIIT session: lifting kettlebells.

The full on High Intensity session worked. 

It was very hard to start -- I began with kettlebell one armed  bench presses and finished with squats. There was enough demand there such that I can still feel  it all over  my body today -- 18 hours later. That's the zone I aim for: one that lasts. It's like lightly bruising  the muscles ( you do in fact tear them) so that you know -- a day later -- that they are there and have been used (and abused).

It's interesting is it not that long slow weight bearing -- like the kickbiking -- was almost beyond me; but I could 'switch on'  my body for the intense resistance interval training and climb quickly to meet the exertion demanded.

Of course, as is the way with Fibromyalgia, I shifted back into stiff and tired mode and had to lay down again. It's all very mercurial, you see. Switch on/switch off. Ab lib stuff. 

But after being flat on my back for a while I thought, "stuff this! I'll attempt to line dance."

And I did.

I thought I'd do a few minutes and drag my feet across the floor. But after four bars on my first routine, with me rising to synchronicity and in step with the music, I was boppin big time and then proceeded to dance my rocks off for 40 minutes. At speed, in full dance flight, there was no stiffness at all. None. I was liquid motion.

This fact -- a novel fact -- is a discovery of immense significance to me. High Intensity Interval Training which requires a full on work load -- albeit for a short duration -- and using music is:

• exercise I can do maybe regardless of my condition that day
• exercise that  lowers my pain levels
• exercise that enlivens my circulatory and muscular/skeletal systems and impacts at the cellular and hormonal level (eg: insulin levels).
• exercise that contributes to weight loss ( my plateau period has been broken) 
• exercise that is guaranteed to embolden and enrich my day regardless of my physical and mental condition

I can't do this stuff and presume I'll get into recovery-from-symptoms-mode. It ain't a magic bullet. But the cumulative effect is something I'm keen to monitor. I'm hoping that over time I can:

• reduce my blood glucose levels more (measured in mmol)
• start losing weight again
• recover from relapses of FM symptoms quicker and suffer from less acute and debilitating symptoms
• experience less pain ... and stiffness (if that's possible).
• gain more control over my cognition so that I can anchor  and improve my ability to recall and learn.
• have more control over my day to day

Now there should be a risk of over doing this -- of stressing the body too much such that I tip myself into a relapse. I think that's very real prospect.  

The complication is of course that it is all about promoting stress but stress that is interval measured and controlled such that the body can expect it. For instance every second day I go the max for 5 minutes. While I'll max out I won't be demanding that level of exertion for another 48 hours.

It's a bargain: I'm negotiating with my body so that I can move up a few physiological notches and down some pathological ones.

Research Report: "If you go for a jog or a run you oxidise glycogen but you are not depleting the glycogen in your muscles.

"The only way to get to this glycogen is through very intense contractions of the muscles.

"If we can get people in their 20s, 30s and 40s doing these exercises twice a week then it could have a very dramatic effect on the future prevalence of diabetes."

He said the effects were bigger than the traditional "one hour of running per day".

The exercise routine is known as "high-intensity interval training" or HIT for short.

Discussion:Intervals don't take long...and can prevent diabetes?

Afterward Note - 'Tabata': While I will continue with my 'Tabata Music' and exercise for short intervals I won't be referring to what I do as 'Tabata' because it isn't. I'm no where near that extreme level of exercise load. My quest now is to integrate what I'm doing (and loving) with the new science I am learning. So what I do and strive to do is HIIT -- High Intensity Interval Training. At stake is what form that will take and how frequently I do it. 

HIIT for Fibromyalgia

This is too early in the mix to make a ruling but the fact that I can do the 4.5 minutes of intense exertion and survive must mean something.

• I'm sore and raw afterwards but that is to be expected. It's hard work when I'm working.
• I suspect that I may sleep better for the full on nature of the physical demand.
• I find that I look forward to and consciously plan for the next HIIT workout two days from the last. Easy scheduling, right? Two days off/5 minutes on.  I even find that I  tend to 'imagine' the workout because it is such a short window of activity. If HIIT is interval training then each separate workout is an interval of its own kind-- 36/48 hours apart. You need the spell. and you either look forward to the challenge or fear it. 

The issue is going to pan out I'm sure, but will I get a better hold on my Fibromyalgia? I find long slow exercise may keep me within a 'fitness' zone but the pain quotient doesn't vary that much and I know from experience that to drive up my endorphins and sundry other biochemical preference I need exertion -- but at a level of inflammatory stress that won't tip me over into a major relapse.

So that's the tightrope I have to walk.

What I appreciate about HIIT in the form of Tabata is that the 20 seconds on/10 seconds off/eight times over/ every two days is a set rhythm with seemingly no surprises outside what your body is like that day. If you don't know what your body is like then, you are soon going to find out...very very quickly.

While the obvious physical challenge is there in big letters of PAIN! all you have to tell yourself is that like the dentist's drill it soon will be over. You are not asking yourself to give birth, right?

As I write this one hour after a session I can still feel the warmth surging through my body systems. My breathing knows it. My circulation. My musculature. My bones. They all know where they have recently been.

But they also know that I will not force them to go back there for another two days...

I'm just an old softie.

It's not that I make New Year resolutions...but gather ye rosebuds

As my mum always says, "everyday is a blessing." Coming up to 88 next week -- and she also says it that way -- "coming up to" -- she should know.

If each day is a blessing, then so too is each year -- despite its 365  blessed or unblessed days.

They're unblessed, I guess,  if you're dead.

I've just been through a couple of years somewhere in between. Not dead but  anointed enough to function in a fashion as I dealt with a succession of challenging health issues.

I thought I was sentenced to a lifestyle formatted by deteriorating health -- plagued by a mixture of worsening illnesses.

But, I suspect I have graduated  -- not with top marks, but with a pass certificate that says I have tamed the worst of it.

Whew. (Wipes forehead)

At the moment my body is adjusting as it goes about its business of convincing my mind that maybe I can  afford a tad more self confidence every day that I am 'blessed' with.

The irony is that I do do so much but these activities are interspersed with me doing so little.

Such as today:I slept for most of it.

Despite that slumber handicap on this New Year's Day, 2012,  I was walking the dogs at dawn along the shoreline, line danced for 40 minutes, read some James Lee Burke  and cooked an evening meal for the significant other and I ( a rather delicious shepherds pie).

I have these skills you see that enable me to roll with the punches and make the most of  each day's mobility quota.  Despite the fact that after dawn and for most of today (but not all of it) I was hobble prone or prostrate and non compus mentis...

You see, I'm a physiological opportunist and one of the expectations I'm promoting this upcoming year is to write my own DIY manual: Fibromyalgia for Beginners . 

Motto: do what you can when you can -- because  Uncle Dave says so.

It's not so much cape diem but the rule of green thumbery:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today,

Tomorrow will be dying.

This also means that I work through a series of projects as best as I can. Schedules will only cripple the psyche.

So this year I'll build that canoe I've been planning and get back on the water sailing. I'll learn many more  soul line dances and maybe try to get a club together so a 'line' actually exists when the music starts. I'll keep up with the boxing, kettlebelling, walking and kickbiking because I luv that stuff.

I'll shoot more movies and hone my editing skills....

As for the rest -- as yet unspoken and untyped -- we'll see.

But to give you an idea how all this works, one of the thrills this last year was the very recent discovery of 'urban soul'  line dancing.

I'm a frustrated muso and while I have played a little bit of this and that  my illness thwarted my instrumental engagement because my reflexes have stiffened and any capacity to hold the music in my head failed me. Since I cannot  easily remember proper nouns and numbers  --  verbs and adjectives won't get you very far with sheet music.

But -- and  here's the really thrilling part -- I discovered  that I can commit dance steps to memory because I can associate the moves with the beat and with the melody. Each element , it seems, reinforces the other inside my brain and I get to dance because I can remember the steps.

Dancers learn to repeat things not just with their bodies, but also with their hands and in words. This process of repeating what you just saw or heard until you've committed it to memory is a skill, and it serves dancers in all aspects of life, both inside the studio and out. (ref)

Any remembrance is sweet when you are threatened by poor recall. I can lay out a whole presentation in my head and deliver it the way I planned in front of an audience but I cannot commit one line of text to memory. True: not one line.

But I can take a sequence of dance steps and a succesion of dances  -- and replicate them.

Dance Therapy

It was the dancing When my little boy Dimitri died…and everybody was crying… Me, I got up and I danced. They said, "Zorba is mad." But it was the dancing — only the dancing that stopped the pain. –[Zorba, in Zorba the Greek]

And that's so true.

Despite my stiffening musculature I can make my tootsies go places they have not visited before.

The late English comic actor Terry Thomas suffered from Parkinsons Disease and made a remark once that makes so much sense to me:

"Sometimes I don't sleep very well, and when I wake up I get a piece of chocolate and I have to go through a door from my bedroom to the kitchen where the chocolate is. One night, coming to the door, I couldn't get through it and I had to force my way through. It was as if one's feet were glued to the ground. I've tried tricks like dancing thorough and sometimes it's worked."

You betcha Terry. I don't have his malady but the fact that I can dance when I can hardly walk is such a wondrous discovery. I'm no Fred Astaire of course, but to do this when I am so often so physically  challenged is amazing.

Talk about happy feet! Dancing does indeed stop the pain.

I used to think that the endorphins produced by exercise were the ruling opiate. I used to wallow in a Runner's High when I was a jogger way back when, so I knew there was something on offer if you sweated up. But I didn't expect such Zenhood from dancing -- in point of fact, dance with repetitive movements like line dancing.

We tend to think of dance class more as a rite of passage for elementary-school girls than a therapeutic outlet, but mounting scientific evidence suggests a surprising range of psychological benefits, from greater calm and elevated mood to an expanded sense of fulfillment and control. "Dance allows people to experience themselves in ways they didn't know they could," says Miriam Berger, a dance professor and dance therapist at New York University. "You can change your internal state through external movement."  Dance Therapy: Spin Control

So this year I'm seizing the day and gathering ye rosebuds dancing...

Fibromyalgia : grin-and-bear-it

I have coexisted with Fibromyalgia for 26  very long years. It is a part of me as much as my leg or my nose is. When it gets in the way -- as it does every single day! -- I have to accommodate.

When you kiss you turn your nose left or right. With Fibromyalgia you have to be prepared to do the same.

Wing it.

While it hasn't been a bag of laughs, day in day out, what I object to is the way it sets you up for so many of the other bogeyman ills that shadow us. I really don't know where my Fibromyalgia leaves off and other chronic conditions kick in.

It's all the one medley.

I get used to dealing with the Fibro, but when the other stuff kicks in...I get annoyed.

Mind you I am very proud with my achievements. Despite my invalid status I've done well. I've managed a good life -- and in some instances a better life than I could have had  -- despite the sentence.

Every day is a blessing (of sorts).

While I would not wish Fibromyalgia on my worst enemy,  the illness, while devoid of credits in its own right, demands so much of you that you have to deliver (a life/ a manufactured life) or go under.

You'll have to forgive me if I suggest that I would have  preferred to be blind, or in a wheel chair or  without  a limb rather than suffer from Fibromyalgia. You  blind, limbless, and paraplegic souls are fortunate to suffer a constant existence. Each morning when I wake up  I have no idea what the day may bring in way of cognitive or physical mobility.

I can never know my future -- because I can never know my future capacity to do stuff, to achieve.

My life is about prediction -- of assuming and guessing what I may be able to do tomorrow and the day after tomorrow... because I may, as much as anything else, be in bed or hobbling about  in pain or mentally gah gah as anything else.

So keeping to schedule is not so easy to do.

In my case the mercurial and unpredictable nature of my existence is ruled by the weather.

And we all know how much the weather changes!

Me, I'm a weather vane.

What primary features of meteorology overwhelms  me is something I have not been able work out. Despite 365 day-in-day out days over 26 long years of coal face experience I cannot finger the culprit.

But the core problem is not the weather, it's what is inside me. I could have just as easily been stressed out by foods or some other catalyst such that I may as well have been a manic depressive despite any pathological etiology.

But after 26 years, who really give a stuff? Me and this thing inside me get along. Despite any rigor I have to put up with I know that I'll recover from the worst of the suffering on any one bad day.

It's my grin-and-bear-it approach.

Nonetheless, as the years tick over I note the price I'm paying in way of mobility and cognition. Dexterity, strength, memory, word recognition, flexibility, gait..and all the rest -- I'm losing the battle to stay ahead of the deteriorating symptom pack. It's not just ageing. I have these festering complications that have worsened in step with my illness. But like some chronic alcoholic losing their memory of yesterday's breakfast, I am proceeding to lose my capabilities at a leisurely pace.

That's a plus.

The inebriate may confabulate on the fly, but I have the leisure to accommodate to my stiffenings and mental transgressions while I work on any number of  means to compensate for the loss. 

It's a hobby.

This brings me back to "the other stuff" --  the ageing and all the surprises in my family's gene pool. If the Fibromyalgia wasn't bad enough,  I have to deal  with the dead hand of past generations! 

I have to say that I would have preferred better parents and a  healthier pedigree.

I'm no genetic determinist* but my Fibromyalgia has set me up to be visited by some of the skeletons in my family's closet.

I guess that's the joke played on all of us: we can go so far until the leash tightens and you become an offspring still tied to the family tree. 

* 'I'm no genetic determinist' was originally written as 'I'm know genetic determinist.' Thus my brain deteriorates in Fibro mode. For now I can correct most or some of these mistakes. (But who am I to talk? How do I know?)

If you want to bathe in style, bathe in a tent.

Having moved residence to a place that does not boast a bath tub my often pained body yearns for a good soak in a hot bath. Haven't had one of those for many months.

What to do? 

Retrofit the bathroom at much unaffordable expense?

Go without? "Please, no," said I.

So we decided to 'put in' and outdoor bathroom.  Not as easy as it appears, this plumbing for bathing business outdoors.

Undaunted,we opted to  proceed by a cheap route. (Hot tubbing and spa baths are not cheap routes).

1. Bought an inexpensive bath tub.  (Tooltip: Try before you buy. Sit in and stretch out. After previously being sentenced to stubby bend-your-knee bathtubs with shallow sides  you value roominess.)
2. Spent  a lot of time hunting down the outlet connectors so that the outlet/plug gauge ran down to 13 mm hose fitting. And the hot and cold water had a switch valve at the bath end.
3. Bought a camping duo shower tent (pictured above). 
4. Cannibalised a couple of garden hoses and attached them to the outdoor tap and the laundry hot water outlet (unused as we launder in cold water).
5. Raised the bath above ground by resting it on sand bags. Plenty of sand here.
6. Connected the outlet to a garden hose to  harvest  the grey water created by our ablutions.
7. Turned on the taps...
8. Used a space blanket to keep in the bathwater heat
9. Bathed.

Ah: hot water bathing...

There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them.

--Sylvia Plath

What pleasure. No better relief for all that all-over, non specific, crippling connective tissue pain I am so very familiar with. Guaranteed. I have gone so long without this respite and the glorious feeling of soaking while heating is such a pleasure. 

There is nothing like a hot bath. Nothing.

And when outdoors, you can open up the flaps and commune with nature...and nature can commune with you.

When the wind blows cold, you're inside, easily flapped up and cosy. *

A bathtub with a view.

If you want to bathe in style, bathe in a  tent.

*Afterthought: If I seal the vents maybe I can make up  a sort of steam room, a sweat tent-- like the Native American Sweat Lodge. by using a steam wallpaper stripper for extra moist heat.



A Crow sweat lodge.--Museum of the American Indian

Patience and lactic acid

I use kettlebells and boxing as key elements in my workout regime. But since I suffer from very chronic Fibromyalgia I am hampered in my ability to engineer a routine.

Somedays walking will be challenge enough.

That said -- and we're talking not so much 'looking good' but surviving pain and muscle contraction -- I've found that any time I go to the exercise max -- such as in a group exercise class -- I'm stressed over and the worse of my symptoms will kick in.

This has been my experience over New Year when I joined a local circuit class. Despite my ability to keep up and perform the routines, my health suffered. And over Summer, heat is sufferance enough.

I learnt a lesson that I canot afford to be impatient. The price I'll have to pay is too high.

Much as I have tried over the years to push my training up into  really intense zones for longer periods, I am  thwarted by the consequences -- which always lead to setbacks. The sweet point -- the therapeutic threshold zone -- is always going to variable day to day but sustaining in its own good time.

Recent research indicates something along this line -- albeit for normals. Upping your blood lactic acid  for as long and as high as you can manage may not be the best way to do exercise business. There is a false efficiency in pushing so hard -- more pain for less gain.

I've found that while kettlebell lifting is a great tool I need to supplement  that discipline not so much with other weight training devices (as I fund a cheap gym) but I get a lot of reward from Gymball/Stability Ball (el cheap again) work -- especially as an option on those days I cannot manage KB lifts.

A good day I'll do both KB (+ boxing) and ball. The challenge is to pick which option suits the body at that moment of somatic time.

The problem over Summer is that unless I am mobile in the early morning -- and I'm more often mobile soon after wakening -- I miss the opportunity to get out on the kickbike and notch up the ks before the day's heat kicks in.

You want to stress out? Then exercise in the Summer sun.

So I can get caught often enough between a rock and a hot place.

This is where the paddling is supposed to kick in -- paddling the paddleski along the coastline. But that, given how inundating and storm prone has been our Summer  here in Qld -- has not so often been an option. 

But as the weather settles and the days are more comfortable....expect Salty Dog.

Riley's Ist , 2nd , 3rd and 4th Laws of Fibromyalgia

This weather! Oh, this weather!

With a flood the size of Victoria out west, I think I have been every where my body can take me without actually going anywhere: sharp twitches of pain, stiffness, massive fatigue, gah gah mental fog. I've been so physiologically mercurial that I don't know what's beckoning from one hour to the  the next.

Ah Summer!

I have occasionally done studies -- is it the temperature, the humidity, the temperature and the humidity, the barometric reading, the rate the barometer changes...? After 25 years of being my own subject of investigation, I cannot make a ruling. But one thing is certain: the more physically active you (ie: I)  have been in regard to exercise, the faster you (ie: I) will recover from episodes of pain , stiffness and fatigue.

That's Riley's Ist Law of Fibromyalgia: a body will return to steady state as a quotient of its exercise parameters.

I'm not quite sure what that means but let's say that you can't have your cake without first baking it.

There is also a trick to this -- a trick that is well worth meditating upon. How do you 'exercise' if you are so often stiff, sore and fatigued? You'll have to imagine that this presents a major obstacle to generating an  exercise routine. I mean why build up a sweat doing something if it is so uncomfortable to do so?

Herein lies Riley's 2nd Law of Fibromyalgia: a body when physiologically stressed may release pain relieving endorphins. 

Endorphins resemble the opiates in their abilities to produce analgesia and a feeling of well-being. Endorphins work as "natural pain relievers."

That's a contradiction, of course: why generate more pain to get less? I agree that that does present a complication as it can be so very difficult indeed to convince your head that straining and paining may lead to a measure of relief. But being a betting man I can say that odds are  that after an intense work out session -- despite the physical difficulties you may have to negotiate  and the shallow level of your attainments during it -- you may feel better than you did before you started.

And besides, you won't feel any worse!

So the magic word is : exercise. No secret that. What kind of exercise, however,  is a moot point. I think weight bearing is very useful as it is more likely to focus on different muscle groups where stiffness and musculature stress may aggregate.

That said, and assuming you are hell bent on developing an exercise regime, how do you manage that if you are so much handicapped by illness?

This relates to  Riley's 3rd Law of Fibromyalgia: a body must exploit the physiological window of opportunity. 

Fibromyalgia is not a level playing field. The intensity of its  symptoms are very mercurial. Why that should be , I don't now , but any one episode is not a constant  and there are periods of amelioration. These may be undefineably slight in nature but  they happen.

These "physiological windows of opportunity" need to be harnessed for the common good and as soon as you are aware (and that in itself is a real skill) that there's a lessening of symptom intensity, rise up from your pallet and walk.

That means you go do some intense physical activity, the likes of which you should have to hand. This is why weight training can be so useful as it is all about picking up a  weighted exercise device and doing something with it. In my case I love lifting and swinging the kettlebells.

Since that can be a tad boring and at times seemingly too stressful, it pays to have a few options. And a few options I do have: lifting barbells, working on  a boxing heavy bag, and kicking the kickbike around a set neighborhood course.

Each day now I try to do -- when I can -- all of these things. 

I find that after I rise in the morning, the overnight stiffness may lessen within 30 minutes and I have an  exercise window of opportunity before there's a relapse.

That's when I bike it. No helmet. No fuss. I even go barefoot. It's all Carpe diem stuff.

I get on the bike and go. On the kickbike the stress only begins to kick in around the first kilometre mark.

In contrast a weight lifting segment may last no more than 5 or 7 minutes; boxing the bag,maybe 5-10 minutes; and kettlebell, 7-12 minutes.

I used to rely on a half hour walk with the dogs each day -- when I was up to it -- but really that shallow level of exercise is insufficient to impact on the symptoms of Fibromyalgia or avail you a significant level of symptom protection.

The regime has to be moderately stressful but not so stressful  as to lead to a ongoing strain effect. Recovery should be completed soon after  finishing the session.

Herein lies, Riley's 4th Law of Fibromyalgia: a body with Fibromyalgia must be worked more intensely than one without (but not so that it is over stressed).

That contradictory conclusion is a product of the first three of Riley's Laws of Fibromyalgia.

Discussion

I've had this condition for 25 years and in that time have utilized a few exercise regimes and at times did not exercise at all. The conundrum is that exercise won't cure you and may not even make you feel qualitatively better -- such that you are subjectively aware of its effects -- but it will at least  slow down your symptoms from worsening.

Stop exercising frequently and regularly and then note the difference!

However, the perception that exercise must be soft and almost passive, I think, is a mistake. Water exercises or Tai chi ( and I've done both for years on end)are only useful in sustaining range of motion and because they don't stress you physically there is much less rebound effect.

A similar complication is the notion that exercise must be routine -- same time, same day , same schedule. If you want to become dispirited with any exercise plan, make it a strict routine.

No, you have to forget about rules and learn to be opportunistic. This of course turns the challenge of motivation back onto you. In this regard I have one religion: every Friday morning I have a 30 minute session with a personal trainer at a local boxing gym. That sets my threshold, pushes my envelope and let's me know, since I can compare how I felt session to session, where my body is at.

It happens that I may miss a few of sessions each year as I am occasionally too stiff and sore to attend. But that's not the end of the world...that's just another day.

My challenge -- and my success -- is that I have been able to adopt what I do at the gym -- and what I learn there --  to what I do at home. This allows me to negotiate a gradient where what I do at the gym and what I do at home improves over time as my capacity to exercise and tolerate the physiological stress improves.

Will I 'get better'? No way. Will my symptoms ease? Perhaps -- but the real plus is that the worse symptoms -- the worse episodes -- are easier to recover from. Your capacity to 'bounce back' improves.