Tag Archives: health

strong shoulders

Getting healthy, one day at a time

A few years ago I realized that being healthy and strong was critical to my overall well-being.  In fact I began to see that when I was healthy, everything else in my life flowed better.  As a result, each time I sit down to set goals, healthiness is at the top of my list: to walk as well as I can, to do strength training, and to maintain my joint health.

For me being healthy is also one of my biggest challenges.  Because I’m an amputee I can’t just take up jogging five miles a day, so I find that I have to be a lot more creative in the ways that I exercise.  I also have learned that I can’t do this alone, so I have coaches and friends who keep me motivated to keep at my health routines.

As of right now, this is my weekly exercise schedule:

Monday:
Early Morning, strength training with Coach Sarah
Evening, gyrotonics with Victoria (at Beau Corps studio)

Tuesday:
Rest Day

Wednesday:
Early Morning, strength training with Sarah
Evening, Iyengar yoga with Denise’s Intermediate Class

Thursday:
Rest Day

Friday:
Early Morning, strength training with Sarah

Saturday:
Early Morning, Outrigger Canoeing Team Practice

Sunday:
Either a 2-hour yoga workshop or a solo paddle on my canoe

What I like about this schedule is that it is a good mix of activities that I genuinely enjoy.  And I also like that it is a mix of solo exercise and group/team exercise.  What I don’t like: is that I don’t get ample cardio exercise.  I also feel like I ought to incorporate more stretching into my regular routines, such as a deep stretching/yoga workout on Tues/Thurs mornings.  And I must confess that the first thing to go in this schedule is my Wednesday yoga class–it is so hard to keep that commitment between teaching into the evenings on Tuesday and Thursday (and also one Wednesday per month I am at our South County campus too late in the evening to get to my yoga class).

I also just feel like overall it’s not enough.  I’m not as tone as I used to be and I definitely get creaky and injured far more easily than I did even five years ago (not to mention having put on 10 pounds that is definitely not muscle).  But I can barely keep up with this routine on top of my work and teaching, so I can’t really imagine adding more (like swimming, I really want to add swimming–but when?).

I guess I’m curious if any of you can suggest ways that I could squeeze in a bit more exercise here and there, or if you want to share your fitness plans with me, as something I might emulate?

(Note: photo taken 6 years ago, when my friend Crystal was doodling on my shoulders–that’s not permanent ink…)

why I stopped taking PPIs for gastric reflux

This post feels a bit like a PSA rather than a typical pilgrimsteps post.  But I wanted to share my experience with PPIs just in case it might be of help to some of you….

Last year I struggled to paddle because of severe back pain that was due to some problems with my prosthesis.  But it wasn’t just back pain, it was horrible painful muscle spasms that I had in my back, but also happened just about anywhere whenever I exercised vigorously.  My muscles just simply didn’t seem to be responding well to exercise–I was continuously fatigued and got cramps easily no matter what type of supplement I tried.

As a result, I quit paddling about halfway through last season.*

It wasn’t until a few months later that a lightbulb went on in my head as I talked with a friend about my chronic gastric reflux problems.  She told me that long-term use of over-the-counter PPIs did have long-term side effects (despite my thinking that they were nearly-benign meds) and that one of those was mineral loss.  I realized that the muscle cramping symptoms that I was experiencing were quite similar to the problems I’d had more than a decade previous when I was calcium deficient.  Given that I already have the double-whammy of bone density loss from being female and from having had high-dose chemotherapy, I started to become nervous about my dependence on PPIs to get me through dinnertime (it was almost always dinner that gave me problems–causing acid reflux for hours afterwards).

So…I stopped taking the PPIs cold-turkey and modified my diet as much as I could to compensate (such as no citrus or tomatoes and more yogurt).  Within a few weeks my acid reflux symptoms mostly disappeared–with only an occasional flare-up during stress.  And I found that I regained my muscle endurance fairly quickly after that.

I know that PPIs are necessary for many people and I’m not suggesting, necessarily, that you do what I did and stop taking them.  But I think it’s worth reading this recent article that warns of their side-effects, and to consider whether they are drugs that you really do need to be taking regularly.  In my case, I think the PPIs caused me to exercise less which exacerbated my reflux and led to weight gain (weight gain being one of the major contributors to reflux issues).  And I needed to get off the PPIs to I could become more active and healthy again.   My hope now is that the year I spent taking them won’t result in any long-term effect on my bone density.

*Additional motivation for quitting mid-season was due to some problems with my coach and the need to focus on my studies.  But the major reason was that I was in terrible pain each time I tried to paddle, I and I simply couldn’t figure out why my body was hurting so badly.