Health update:
Jun. 8th, 2012 07:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnpalmerWednesday, I jogged at 5.8mph for 30 minutes. Today, 6.0 for 20, and I felt like I could do 22, but I figured I'd try that Sunday at the earliest.
I've also broken 230 lbs (227 this morning) two days in a row for the first time in a week. I've been stuck between 225 and 235 for a long time. I'm hoping I've started losing again. I kinda hoped weight loss would resume once I was able to jog more and harder. This has been a really frustrating plateau; during part of it, I was doing two workouts a day, each of which could reasonably be as much as 500 calories, so, like, a thousand calories of exercise a day, and no noticeable change in eating, except a couple extra whey protein drinks (140 calories each) to make sure my protein levels were high (because that's a *lot* of exercise!). And, still, no weight loss. Don't let anyone tell you it's just calories in, minus calories burned.
Frustrating news: My fasting blood sugar is stubbornly elevated. This isn't *bad*. Fasting blood sugar doesn't mean anything is wrong, not by itself. A lot of people have a high fasting blood sugar in the morning, and then, when they eat breakfast, their body does its sugar-control thing, and their blood sugar goes up a bit, then down, and never hits that level again that day.
But I decided to cheat. I measured my fasting blood sugar after 35 minutes of exercising (including that 2 miles at 6mph), and... it was just as high as it was yesterday. WTF body?
(Those of you who've been reading all of my blood sugar posts might remember that one's liver might boost blood glucose during exercise, so it's actually not *surprising*, but it still seemed unfair. Like - how many of you, as very young children, tried to put one over on your parents, and thought you were *oh* so clever, only to find that they'd figured you out? Remember how you felt like, *no fair* that they figured out your clever plan? That's how it feels. And doubly so because I'm old enough to know better.)
Anyway: it's frustrating, but not bad. I'm more comfortable when my fasting blood sugar is below 100.
Other news:
I'm hitting the limit of what I can safely do on my treadmill. My left hip(/lower back) is still a bit wonky. It's feeling better and better (meaning it now hurts in *totally* different ways, but less frequently), but it's never getting "well" and I think I need to consider what to do about that - it's been a full *year* since I was having full blown sciatic problems, and I'm still dealing with pain every single day. Part of me wants to consider chiropractic adjustment. I've tried physical therapy, and the problem with that is, my body just doesn't move right, and it's very frustrating, and "frustrating" means I don't do it as often or with as much enthusiasm. If a good chiropractor can unkink my sacroiliac, and help finish turning my leg straight, it might make exercising easier.
(If anyone knows of any chiropractors in the Renton/Seattle area who would never use "subluxation" in my hearing (except to say that they don't buy into that notion), I'd like to know about them.)
(Hm? Oh: there's a branch of chirophracty that says that, basically, anything and everything is, or can be, caused by "subluxation". No, seriously, these problems can cause allergies, ADHD, digestive issues, spontaneous human combustion... but if you fix the spine, all of these things will just go away. Now, if a chiropractor had fixed my hip last year, it might have massively improved my health due to my suddenly being able to exercise better and more efficiently, and due to other, secondary effects of feeling better. I'll grant that fixing a subtle problem that an MD can't fix could have wonderful additional effects. But I consider subluxation to be cheap woo-woo.)
(What? Yes, I *am* a shaman, and yes, some people *do* think I peddle cheap woo-woo. But I don't tell you that you're spiritually damaged if you've got big, stinky farts, I tell you to consider eating some yogurt and maybe cutting down on those nasty bean burritos, and that doesn't help, talk to a doctor or nutritionist!)
Where was I?
Oh, yeah.
And, although I've been able to exercise longer, harder, and faster[1] than ever before, I *am* still having some post-exercise symptoms. This is only two weeks out, though, so I'm going to keep doing this for another two weeks before talking to my doctor. I'm on what's called a selective beta-blocker, and the original beta blocker, the one most often used for my kinds of problems, is a non-selective beta blocker. So, even if this drug isn't enough, and even if I can't raise the dose, there's another drug in the same family that might help.
[1] "Longer, harder, faster"? Yeah, laugh it up. That's not the worst innuendo of the week. That award goes to the guys saying "We were having a great time; but we could only go all over the surface, because we didn't have the go-ahead for penetration." Turns out they were talking about SCUBA diving.
I've also broken 230 lbs (227 this morning) two days in a row for the first time in a week. I've been stuck between 225 and 235 for a long time. I'm hoping I've started losing again. I kinda hoped weight loss would resume once I was able to jog more and harder. This has been a really frustrating plateau; during part of it, I was doing two workouts a day, each of which could reasonably be as much as 500 calories, so, like, a thousand calories of exercise a day, and no noticeable change in eating, except a couple extra whey protein drinks (140 calories each) to make sure my protein levels were high (because that's a *lot* of exercise!). And, still, no weight loss. Don't let anyone tell you it's just calories in, minus calories burned.
Frustrating news: My fasting blood sugar is stubbornly elevated. This isn't *bad*. Fasting blood sugar doesn't mean anything is wrong, not by itself. A lot of people have a high fasting blood sugar in the morning, and then, when they eat breakfast, their body does its sugar-control thing, and their blood sugar goes up a bit, then down, and never hits that level again that day.
But I decided to cheat. I measured my fasting blood sugar after 35 minutes of exercising (including that 2 miles at 6mph), and... it was just as high as it was yesterday. WTF body?
(Those of you who've been reading all of my blood sugar posts might remember that one's liver might boost blood glucose during exercise, so it's actually not *surprising*, but it still seemed unfair. Like - how many of you, as very young children, tried to put one over on your parents, and thought you were *oh* so clever, only to find that they'd figured you out? Remember how you felt like, *no fair* that they figured out your clever plan? That's how it feels. And doubly so because I'm old enough to know better.)
Anyway: it's frustrating, but not bad. I'm more comfortable when my fasting blood sugar is below 100.
Other news:
I'm hitting the limit of what I can safely do on my treadmill. My left hip(/lower back) is still a bit wonky. It's feeling better and better (meaning it now hurts in *totally* different ways, but less frequently), but it's never getting "well" and I think I need to consider what to do about that - it's been a full *year* since I was having full blown sciatic problems, and I'm still dealing with pain every single day. Part of me wants to consider chiropractic adjustment. I've tried physical therapy, and the problem with that is, my body just doesn't move right, and it's very frustrating, and "frustrating" means I don't do it as often or with as much enthusiasm. If a good chiropractor can unkink my sacroiliac, and help finish turning my leg straight, it might make exercising easier.
(If anyone knows of any chiropractors in the Renton/Seattle area who would never use "subluxation" in my hearing (except to say that they don't buy into that notion), I'd like to know about them.)
(Hm? Oh: there's a branch of chirophracty that says that, basically, anything and everything is, or can be, caused by "subluxation". No, seriously, these problems can cause allergies, ADHD, digestive issues, spontaneous human combustion... but if you fix the spine, all of these things will just go away. Now, if a chiropractor had fixed my hip last year, it might have massively improved my health due to my suddenly being able to exercise better and more efficiently, and due to other, secondary effects of feeling better. I'll grant that fixing a subtle problem that an MD can't fix could have wonderful additional effects. But I consider subluxation to be cheap woo-woo.)
(What? Yes, I *am* a shaman, and yes, some people *do* think I peddle cheap woo-woo. But I don't tell you that you're spiritually damaged if you've got big, stinky farts, I tell you to consider eating some yogurt and maybe cutting down on those nasty bean burritos, and that doesn't help, talk to a doctor or nutritionist!)
Where was I?
Oh, yeah.
And, although I've been able to exercise longer, harder, and faster[1] than ever before, I *am* still having some post-exercise symptoms. This is only two weeks out, though, so I'm going to keep doing this for another two weeks before talking to my doctor. I'm on what's called a selective beta-blocker, and the original beta blocker, the one most often used for my kinds of problems, is a non-selective beta blocker. So, even if this drug isn't enough, and even if I can't raise the dose, there's another drug in the same family that might help.
[1] "Longer, harder, faster"? Yeah, laugh it up. That's not the worst innuendo of the week. That award goes to the guys saying "We were having a great time; but we could only go all over the surface, because we didn't have the go-ahead for penetration." Turns out they were talking about SCUBA diving.
