I’m sick of hearing exercise is good for you!
This is what I get for 3 -4 days after a 20 minute work-out:
- Whole bodily system exhaustion feeling like I’m waking up under a tonne of bricks.
- Breathing is shallow, chest a bit tight — like I can’t get enough oxygen.
- Excessive tenderness all over my muscles.
- Compulsive yawning.
- Need for cool, dark room with no stimulus while lying in pain for 3 days.
- Brain fog, forgetfulness.
- Teariness.
- Sore throat and sometimes a full-blown infection.
Nonetheless, I occasionally do it because I LOVE exercise so much (I always regret it).
So IS exercise REALLY good for you?
It’s true for most of you out there and that’s what’s so confusing. It used to be good for me, too. I was a long distance runner who played lots of team sport, often three matches per day of soccer, touch rugby or gaelic football. I used to love the feeling after a great work out, the pain of lactose acid build-up, the slight endorphin rush. The body repairing itself felt GREAT to me. I had a low resting heart-rate and life was good.
One day it all changed. I’d been off my feet for 3 months with a snapped tendon in my leg. Keen to get running again, I set off on slow jogs around my neighbourhood. But I started to notice something strange. Even after fairly small jogs, I was waking up the next morning feeling like I was under a tonne of bricks. It was worse than any hangover, flu or other kind of heavy feeling.
Even though I quickly identified the correlation with exercise, I thought I was just being “weak”, that it would pass. I increased my exercise to cope with the feelings of exhaustion I was feeling through the day — surely a swim in the middle of the day would wake me up! The tightness of my muscles just meant I needed to stretch every few hours.
I was 22 years old, trying to do a Masters degree in maths and fighting lots of brain fog. Of course this was all my fault I told myself. I must be being lazy, I thought. I saw doctors but they essentially told me the same thing. One said I should eat more, another said it was stress and gave me neck stretching exercised to do in the shower. I believed them and tried everything I could to stay afloat.
Somehow I managed to muddle on with a strange life, fraught with issues. Things like severe difficulty performing at work, repeated infections, vagueness, waking up exhausted every day, loathe to stand ever, getting parking tickets because I just couldn’t bear having to walk the extra 200 metres. Coffee, lots of coffee became my central crutch (worst thing I could have done)
It was only really 6 or 7 years later after I had deteriorated to the point of struggling with breathing, that I fully accepted that I had ME/CFS. Once I knew what to google, helpful advice started to trickle in. The first thing I did was quit both exercise and coffee. And over the space of a year, my body started to improve markedly. It was just in time, as I had a super, new job and I needed my wits about me.
Over the next 8 years I’ve learned how to basically regain a good quality of life. I feed good bacteria to my gut, I mostly refrain from eating a bunch of things like wheat, milk, fruit (that’s a huge one!) and really any sugar. And I take a bunch of supplements like zinc, magnesium, potassium, folic acid and Vitamin D. Weirdly, I’ve had people notice the large number of pill boxes I carry around at times and laugh at me or comment publicly about it. I’m pretty sure I have a GREAT sense of humour but I just don’t get the joke..?!
In any case, I’m pretty much recovered from the worst of ME/CFS. And I’m so grateful because I know of so many people for whom it is still a desperate, daily struggle (and I will always fight with those looking for a scientific break through).
Even though I am mostly well, I find myself tormented by the fact that I STILL can’t do exercise. Surely in the 16 years I’ve had this illness, some amazing sport scientists out there must be able to narrow in on what’s causing the extremely negative inflammatory response that I seem to get.
So calling out to anyone who knows anything specifically about post-exertional malaise?
I’m willing for scientists / students interested in this to plug me into their machines and find data for what I’m telling them (I live in London but can travel). I can pass off as a healthy individual, except for the 3–4 days post exercise.
So, in summary, please stop telling me daily exercise is healthy for me and explain to me why it is not!