Exercise: Does Sex Count? (Fatigue & Fibromyalgia Are Optional, Part 8)
Vitality101 Newsletter
Hello Reader,
This is part 8 in my "Fatigue & Fibromyalgia Are Optional" series. In this week's Brain Fog Friendly (BFF) Summary, I'll list a handful of tips on how you should approach exercising.
BFF Summary
- Find a way to exercise that feels good. Do it with a friend on a regular schedule.
- "No pain, no gain" is stupid.
- Start slowly. A little bit can go a long way. See how many steps you are taking each day, and add about 50 steps every few days as is comfortable.
- If you have CFS/fibromyalgia and you get postexertional malaise, and feel worse the next day, then you did too much. Rest for three days, and then cut back by 20% to a comfortable level. Then continue that amount. After eight weeks on the S.H.I.N.E.® Protocol, your energy production will skyrocket and you can start to increase by about 50 steps every few days.
- But even if you can only do a little bit because of your CFS and fibromyalgia, exercise is important to maintain conditioning.
- Get an exercise app like Fitbit, and slowly increase the lengths of your walks as feels best, aiming for 6,000 to 10,000 steps a day. Take your time reaching this goal—there is no hurry. And less is still very helpful.
- As noted, however, the rules are different for those with CFS and fibromyalgia. This will be discussed in Chapter 19, "Exercise Intensive Care."
(To remind you, BFFs are just the short summaries I include at the beginning of each chapter in my newest edition of From Fatigued to Fantastic! I added these to my new edition to help readers who don't have the time to go through all the detail in every chapter, allowing them to quickly get the main points of a topic while devoting more time to reading the details in chapters they're more interested in.)
P.S. - Our recently published study using HRG80™ Red Ginseng showed that 60% of people improved with an average 72% increase in stamina. More info on this exciting new study will be coming soon!
Here's What Fibromyalgia Feels Like, Say Physicians
Dr. T gives a fairly thorough overview of fibromyalgia in this just-published article on Yahoo! He covers what it is, what causes it, who's most at risk for getting it, how people describe FMS pain, how it can affect your life, how its treated, and several other important aspects of the illness.
Dog Scan for Long COVID?
Recent evidence suggests that there might be a persistent reservoir of virus remnants that remains in the body in "Long COVID." These are not contagious, but may trigger chronic activation and exhaustion of the immune system. This is suggested by a study that shows that specially trained dogs are often able to “sniff out” people with Long COVID. Two trained "sniffer" dogs correctly picked out 51% of people with the condition, without incorrectly picking any of the sweat samples from people without.
Long COVID Symptoms Linked to Effects on Vagus Nerve
In a small study of 22 people with Long-Haul post-COVID, 27% showed evidence of inflammation of the vagal nerve. This nerve tends to counterbalance adrenaline and support digestion in our body's dance of autonomic function. It shows one more mechanism, in addition to limbic and hypothalamic dysfunction, contributing to the sense of adrenaline overdrive and POTS that many people with CFS and fibromyalgia have.
The decreased movement of the diaphragm muscle that separates the lungs from the abdomen may also be one factor contributing to the sense of breathlessness that many people have
Featured This Week
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Family Humor
Wife: "How would you describe me?"
Husband: "ABCDEFGHIJK."
Wife: "What does that mean?"
Husband: "Adorable, beautiful, cute, delightful, elegant, fashionable, gorgeous, and hot."
Wife: "Aw, thank you, but what about IJK?"
Husband: "I'm just kidding!"
Jacob Teitelbaum, M.D. is one of the world's leading integrative medical authorities on fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. He is the lead author of eight research studies on their effective treatments, and has published numerous health & wellness books, including the bestseller on fibromyalgia From Fatigued to Fantastic! and The Fatigue and Fibromyalgia Solution. Dr. Teitelbaum is one of the most frequently quoted fibromyalgia experts in the world and appears often as a guest on news and talk shows nationwide including Good Morning America, The Dr. Oz Show, Oprah & Friends, CNN, and Fox News Health.
