Get your Head in the Game!

So, I'm slowly getting better from this lung irritation/inflammation issue. And getting a real lesson in how much our heads effects our bodies.

My latest thing is how much it stresses my lungs to talk. Talk too much, I can't talk at all. I'm ok until I'm not, if you know what I mean. At times this week I've been communicating with my loving husband via whispering. But tonight we went out for dinner at the Four Seasons. What happened? Get some wine in me, some good food, a lovely setting, my voice is fine. wtf?

Certainly alcohol has a relaxing physiological effect, and relaxation is always good. But how much is physiological and how much is psychological? Interesting question. Usually I'm not living such a dramatic example of the benefits of getting my head in the right place.

Mike promised a couple of nights at the Four Seasons when I'm feeling better. If that's not incentive, I don't know what is!

Whispers

Apparently I've overdone it yet again. Last week didn't seem very taxing, a couple of Pilates lessons, some grocery shopping and a massage on Friday. But it's apparently too much. Or the air was worse on Friday than I'd thought. Or I've been talking more than I realize.

But it's back. The heaviness. The feeling that something is sitting on me. The ache in that one little spot on the right side. The inability to muster up the air to talk very loudly or for very long.

Fuck.

I WILL persevere. I will keep doing the right things, taking it easy, taking my supplements, doing my breathing/meditation at least once a day.

Patience.

Hmmm

Didn't wake up feeling as good as I'd hoped. Perhaps yesterday was more taxing than I expected. Gee, now there's a typical theme!

Resting today. Getting a massage and hope to hang out in the steam room.

Had intended to try going for a walk tomorrow morning. Don't see that happening!

Overdoing it and losing perspective

For anyone paying attention I'd thought I'd post a quick health update and a comment about how we can get really caught up paying attention to the wrong things and lose our perspective.

I had a severe setback with my lung condition about 3 1/2 weeks ago that knocked me totally on my ass. Since then I've been diligent about my supplements, taking it easy, have added daily meditation and deep breathing to my routine, and slowly, very slowly, but surely I'm getting better. I went to Pilates twice last week and twice this week. It just makes me feel better, mentally and physically. Talking, cold air, and exertion all stress my lungs, but while I'm worn out and my chest is tight by the time I go to bed at night, I'm waking up each day feeling a little better. Trying to take it one day at a time and keep an optimistic attitude about my recovery.

Looking back on those months of killer workouts and calorie restrictions to drop 5 pounds seems really fucking stupid. Highly functioning immune system much more important! I was just too impatient. I wanted those pounds gone NOW. So now it's 4 months later, once I stopped killing myself 3 of the 5 pounds came right off and have stayed off, like it would have if I'd just been patient and kept to my old healthy routine. Sure, it would be great to hit my "fighting weight" which is all of 2 1/2 pounds below where I'm at now, but I look great where I am, and I'm at my average weight for the past, oh, 15 years or so. But because I pushed myself so hard to speed up the process a little now I've got a whole other set of much more serious issues that may now plague me forever. Lesson learned.

So anyone who's feeling like they're pushing themselves too hard at the gym, being too obsessive about their calorie intake, try to learn from my experience. Regular, but not killer, exercise and healthy choices will get you there. Extremes are NOT required to get where you're going. Taking it slower may not get you there as quickly, but you can only push yourself so far. And when your body has had enough it isn't necessarily a "hey, maybe I should slow down" moment, it could be an "oh, fuck, I really overdid it" moment. And the road back is a bitch, let me tell you.

Recovery Rate

Went to bed last night feeling bummed. It takes so little, it seems, to set me back. Yesterday was just not that taxing. {sigh} I just want to be healthy. And then I wake up this morning feeling great. Almost normal, even. So my recovery rate is at least improving. And that's a reason to be optimistic.

Pilates was great again today. I was a little afraid my heart rate was getting up there too high, but I topped out at 110. It's so great that I can get a workout in and not stress this thing too much. What would I do right now without Pilates?? I don't even want to think about that.

Went grocery shopping after class and met Mike there for lunch. Getting his call saying "hi sweetie, what're you doin? can we meet for lunch" just made me smile. We had a really nice lunch, sat outside (the weather is finally getting nice) and had the chance to just sit and talk. By the time I was heading home my lungs had decided to tighten up. Was it Pilates? Shopping? Talking? Just too much in general? Shit.

But no, no, no, I'm optimistic. My recovery time is definitely improving. I felt worse than this yesterday and woke up feeling great today, so...reasons to be optimistic.

Pilates and Mental Health

I'm sure Pilates is good for my body, it's the only exercise I'm getting these days, but more than that it's good for my head.

Feeling like an invalid sucks. Getting through a Pilates lesson without aggravating this lung condition makes me feel like I CAN overcome this thing. And Pilates isn't some pussy workout either! Nina kicked my ass a little today. Felt great.

That said, I do have a bit of tightness in my chest. Taking it easy tomorrow. Will be going down into the valley to run some errands. Hope the air quality will cooperate!

Healing isn't a straight line

Recovering from last Friday's outing into the blowing sand but not as much as I would like. On a scale of 1-10 (10 being the worst) I'd say today is a 3.5, maybe 4. The general heaviness is waning, and I'm left with a spot on the right side that aches and the occasional urge to cough (which I fight, never produces anything so I figure it's just irritating whatever's going on in there).

Healing is just not this gradual and steady increase, it goes in spurts. I know this. So I've got to get a grip on my emotions when it happens that way. Stress doesn't help anything. I'm eager to feel normal again, but stressing over that not happening isn't useful.

I discovered over the weekend that deep breathing helps. I put on my new meditation CD, Theta Meditation System by Dr. Jeffrey Thompson, and forced myself to get past the fear of taking a deep breath. I didn't even realize that fear was there. When I started to pay attention to my breath I realized I was breathing shallowly, into my chest. When I tried to take a deep breath I hesitated. Fear. I pushed past it and found that when I try to breath into my back it feels the best (pilates breathing). Deep abdominal breathing didn't hurt really, but doesn't feel as good as trying to pull it into my back or into the side of my ribs. After half an hour of focusing on relaxing and using more of my lungs my discomfort level went from a 7 to a 4. That's pretty remarkable.

Today is Pilates lesson day, which always makes me feel better and perks up my mood. Thank god for Pilates!

What's today?

How do you feel today honey? On a scale of 1 to 10?

Today is a 6, maybe a 7.

But that's a hard question. How do I know that today's 6 is the same as tomorrow's 6?

Today I feel like someone is sitting on me. Not a large someone. Dog weight. Small to medium sized dog. Does that help?

Felt fine yesterday morning, then went out for a day of pampering. Should have come home feeling rested and relaxed. Instead the wind was blowing like crazy, giving flight to the desert sand. The temperature was beautiful yesterday (finally) so we opened the windows for just a few minutes. Almost instantly we had a layer of grit over everything that was next to the window. Ah, life in Vegas. So walking into the day spa was a bit like being lightly sandblasted. Then I had to talk to my pamperers, Christina and Corene. These women are my friends not just my providers, I couldn't simply ignore them. So we talked. Not a lot, but we did. Between the air quality and the stress of talking today I'm feeling markedly worse than yesterday. By the weight of a small to medium sized dog.

Two steps forward, one step back...{sigh}

On the road to recovery

There were moments after Pilates on Tuesday that I actually felt normal! Felt better after that workout than I have since before aggravating this thing the last time.

Talked to my Mom for about half an hour on Wednesday afternoon. I knew that talking was a stressor, but I didn't realize how much of one. Didn't have much left after that. Still lingering limitations today with my voice.

Pilates was great again today. Forgot my heart rate monitor, so no idea how high my heart rate got, but I worked up a nice sweat and my quads are feelin' it. And no setback.

Pilates will be my savior.

I Love Pilates!

Because of this stupid lung condition I've been sedentary for the last two weeks. Haven't worked out AT ALL. Woke up feeling good this morning, my chest tightness is almost gone, my energy's back and I was very anxious to have my first Pilates lesson after my major setback. Chomping at the bit even.

Since this thing started back in July, Pilates is the ONLY thing that makes me feel better instead of stressed. Today was no exception. The lovely Nina took it a little easy on me since I hadn't done anything in two weeks, but it was still work. As with every lesson I've had, we did cool and unusual things we've never done before. God, I love the incredible variety Pilates offers! "The hundred" got my heart rate up to 117, but other than that my pulse hovered around 80 the whole workout, despite doing an hour of non-stop resistance training and working up a sweat. {sigh} I was SUCH a weight lifting snob. But Pilates has shown me you can get an intense resistance training workout without lifting a lot of weight and thankfully, without spiking your heart rate. Honestly, if I hadn't discovered Pilates I wouldn't be able to work out at all right now.

I felt better after Pilates than I did even before the last time I aggravated my lungs two weeks ago. Maybe it was just finally being active, but it felt awesome! Even burned 124 calories according to my heart rate monitor. That might not sound like a lot to YOU, but after two weeks of not being able to work out, that sounds like a lot to ME!

Then it was on to Whole Foods. First a nice little lunch from the salad bar. Gotta eat lots of green stuff when you're healing. Read a Pilates magazine (am I hooked? yes, I am!), munched on loads of veggies, enjoyed my Grape Synergy (probiotics, yeah!) and just chilled for a good 45 minutes. Then got through grocery shopping, including lifting a box of 12 liters of water up to the cart, with no problem. I felt so good when I got home Mike had to practically put me in a straight jacket to keep me from overdoing it! But Dr. Mike is on the case, ordered me to go soak in the tub and unwind while he makes me dinner (have I got it made or what??)

Feeling Better

Started feeling SO much better on Friday.

Today I feel like I just have a bit of a chest cold. I know better, and I'm not going to go back to being too active, I'm going to continue to take it easy-peasy for the next few months, but what a relief to feel almost normal less than 2 weeks after simply sitting upright wore me out!

Did tighten up a little when I was trying to meditate. Maybe too much deep breathing? Don't know why deep breathing would make me feel worse, but it seems to. Hmmm...

Asthma RADS treatment

Went on Whole Health M.D. and Patrick Holford's site last night and looked up recommendations for asthma.

Even though that's not what I have, it's certainly similar enough that the same natural remedies should help. Basically anti-inflammatory stuff and anti-oxidants. So today I picked up some Borage Oil (anti-inflammatory), quercetin (found in apples...anti-oxidant), N-Acetyl-L-Cysteine (an amino acid), some fresh ginger and some ginger tea. That's in addition to what I'm already taking...cod liver oil, MSM, vitamin C, good multi-vitamin. Also went anti-inflammatory shopping in the produce section...couple different kinds of apples, onions, garlic, carrots, red peppers, red grapes, spinach, romaine.

Since I'm tired of not being able to give Mike a straight answer to "do you feel better today, honey?" I ordered a Peak Flow Meter from Amazon so I can monitor my airflow (and hopefully watch myself get better). I also got a book on nutrition for asthma. Probably all the same stuff I just read of Whole Health and Patrick's site, but more convenient than always having to go online. And I ordered a book on the Buteyko breathing method called "Asthma-Free Naturally" from Amazon (looks like it's coming from overseas, delivery is a few weeks darn it). Doing Pilates is the only thing that makes me feel better and I think some of it is the slow controlled breathing, so it made sense to try the Buteyko method is, as it sounds very helpful to asthmatics.

What else? Oh! How could I forget? I ordered another food intolerance test from Optimum Health Resource Laboratories. I did it last year and it was very informative. Got me off dairy (for which I tested highly allergic). We'll see what I'm allergic to now. I'd love to test negative for dairy now that I've abstained for almost a year and be able to get a little yogurt into my diet once in a while. According to Patrick Holford asthma and most allergic reactions is a threshold thing. Your body can handle so many irritants, and then there's just too many and it has a reaction. That just makes sense to me. I think had I not run down my immune system with 3 months of killer workouts I wouldn't have had such a severe reaction to the forest fire smoke. It's not so much that you're allergic to the one thing that set you off, it's that your immune system got overloaded and that was the one thing that put you over the top. So the more you can lessen your overall burden the better. My condition now has nothing to do with food intolerances, but if I'm burdening my system with food that stressing it out, then it's just using up healing energy that could be going toward healing my lungs. Takes 4-6 weeks to get results, which sucks, but the results should be interesting.

That's it! Reactive Airways Dysfunction Syndrome

Dr. Mike has found the answer to what's been going on with my lungs since July 5th.

A recap for anyone not following along: I had what I thought was an asthma attack for the first time on July 5th while I was working out. The air quality that day was horrible, as forest fire smoke had settled over the Las Vegas Valley. The forest fire smoke cleared up several days later, but I didn't. Ever since then when my heart rate gets too high, or I'm exposed to bad air quality like second hand smoke, it kicks right back up, and in between 'episodes' the chest tightness continues. No body aches or other signs of a virus or infection, just a feeling like someone's sitting on my chest and occasionally an unproductive cough. A trip to the doctor's office and a battery of tests found nothing. I tested negative for asthma. Chest xray and blood work came back negative for allergies or any signs of infection. With rest I get better and then I'll overdo it, or walk into a smoky environment and it starts all over again, and it's been getting progressively worse with each re-irritation.

I just wanted to know what the hell was going on! I couldn't help but start thinking terrible thoughts...was it my heart? was there something seriously wrong with me? lung cancer? COPD from smoking 20 years ago? What??! It all just didn't make sense. Clearly the whole thing started with the forest fire smoke. But the air quality here had cleared up, why was I still having breathing problems? All my internet research made it sound like exercise induced asthma, but I failed the asthma test and my doctor said that didn't explain why the irritation continued when I wasn't working out. She was puzzled. I was scared. My unshakable husband, Mike, was firm in his belief that it was nothing to worry about, whatever it was it would resolve itself, I just had to take it easy, I was a healthy girl and my body knows how to heal itself, I just needed to support it with good nutrition and *relax*. My intuition told me he was right, but god it's scary when you can't breathe and you don't know WHY.

This morning he sent me a link to a respiratory disorder forum. In it a nurse describes how lung and bronchial irritation can continue even after the original irritant is no longer present. The irritation can linger for weeks, even months, and will eventually resolve itself. It's called reactive airway disease. I had a phrase. Time to Google! Here's the most succinct definition I found:

"reactive airways dysfunction syndrome" (RADS) denotes the development of a
persistent asthma-like condition with airway hyper-responsiveness developing in a previously healthy asymptomatic individual within 24 hours of a single exposure to concentrated respiratory irritants.

Yes! That's me! Thank you Michael! I'd given up finding answers, I just kept finding scary things that didn't fit my symptoms, but he persisted until he found it. Everything I've read on it fits me to a T. What a relief, I can't tell you.

So good. A diagnosis. Now what? Well, my google search returned lots of sites that don't differentiate between RADS and asthma, including treatment, which means steroid inhalants, although a single dose won't help, you have to use it every day for up to a month before seeing results. Yeah right. But RADS is different and while some research says steroids speed healing, some says it doesn't and all agree the condition resolves itself sooner or later. And if you know me at all, you know I'm not about to inhale steroids, even if they would speed the healing process.

My plan is to continue what I've been doing this past week. Good nutrition. Good supplements. Rest. Clean air. Mike says he'll work up a plan for me to get back to working out. Might end up being pilates in our condo where I have total control over air quality and temperature (cold kicks it up too), but I'll take anything that has me getting my ass off this couch!