I’m no expert

Anonymous
October 8, 2008 at 7:29 pm

I’m no expert on exercise or recovery, but I can relate what others have said. Gene, one of the wise people on this site who is not longer with us, used to say that you should recover from any activity within 24 hours of doing it and that if you do not, you have done too much. I know that I have pushed the limits a lot and ended up with everything cumulatively getting worse with escalation of pain and muscle protesting. His suggestion seems to work; the only hard part is that you only know a day after the fact….

At this meeting that I went to last weekend, Dr Jacobs said that you really need to be slow and steady in increasing exercise and that warm-up is especially important. I understand this–I have stupid, slow, sluggish muscles since this illness and stretching and warming them up will do more for us to prevent injury and overdoing than it would for the typical “healthy” person.
He also suggested short periods of exercise (30-45 minutes) three times a week. this also makes sense from what my body can do, because the longer I try to do something, the wimpier I get at it–it noticably deteriorates and so short times are better. He talked about swim walking, walking, and bicycling with the arms also being used.

At the meeting in Dayton, one of the ladies there was talking about physical therapy on horses and how good that is for balance. Another said that she used to crawl a lot when she could not walk and this built back up strength and balance until she could walk again. It takes less strength because the “fulcrums” are shorter, but it still used lots of muscles that are shared with walking. We humans do this for a reason–aren’t we magnificently designed?

WithHope

I’m no expert…….

Anonymous
August 31, 2008 at 8:47 am

I’m not an expert, but sounds like your immune system is reacting to something… May be an allergy? Are you taking any meds? I know I’m starting to develop reactions to environmental (i.e. ragweed), that I could handle when I was younger… Just a thought…. Then again, we’ve changed post gbs…..