Another Sign of My "Significant" Improvement

After the recent improvement, I decided to go to bike on Tobacco Trail. It was my dream for over a year. The difficulty was to put my bike into my car. I thought of buying a bike rack, but seeing those racks are all quite high, which require lifting when in use, I decided to just trying to put bike inside trunk of my small Rav4 SUV.

When I just bought this bicycle from store, I put it inside my SUV trunk by myself, but the consequence was  severe, it hurt my heart. Over these years I realized that "heavy lifting" can do the most damage to my heart function. Also as long as damage was done, it required days, weeks and sometime even longer to recover. So for long time I've been very careful about lifting heavy things (actually not heavy for normal people at all) so putting bike into my care was totally out of question.

However, after my recent improvement, I decided to give it a try. yesterday.I put bike into trunk first, without too much difficulty, but after having quite good time in Tobacco Trail, I found it was more difficult to do repeat this task. The last step of this task was to adjust the bike's position so I could close the trunk door, and it was proven to be a "heave lifting" and I immediately felt the violent reaction of my heart. After I got home, I had to immediately lay down and rest. Not much serious malfunction followed but I still understood (by my past experience) that I had to wait longer to see the consequence, because usually the "consequence" really came much later, usually half day or one day later.

Now 20 hours passed, though I found myself feeling somehow weak, but overall I am quite OK. I can now "jump into conclusion" that this incident did not beat me, like many time it did before. I shall rest today, and maybe tomorrow, but I know there will be no relapse followed this time.

Hallelujah!

Biking - An Improvement and An Enjoyment

Finally, after purchasing a bike for over a year, I am able to do some biking.

I bought a bike last June. Just after a couple of times riding I had some quite serious relapses followed. I realized that biking (for me) requires more heart strength. Since my heart is my major problem so I quit bike for long time. However, after feeling more energetically recently, I decided it's time to try biking again. Last Saturday, after one of parents of my students pumped air into tires of my bike (I had some difficult to do that and he was so kind to help me), I started riding bike again. Since then, I biked about 5 times, averagely once per day, and each time about 25 to 35 minutes, and I found myself not only "survived", but also feeling better. It helps my metabolism tremendously.

I don't remember it's been how long I have not enjoyed biking. The last time I really biked was over 10 years ago! Still I cannot ride bike all the way from beginning to end, because I had to stop to walk whenever go uphill (the neighborhood is not perfectly flat), even those "hills" that are not steep at all. Today, when I walked along street a lady stopped car and asked if I was alright. I thought that was very kind of her. 

Anyway, after being tired of recording the progress or declines of my chronic condition, this, truly is a major improvement that is worth for me to write down!

"Imagined Illness" - Did I Get Enough?

Again today, someone suggested that my illness was imagined. I had to explain, as brief as possible. I thought I wasn't unhappy at all, but found myself a bit frustrated later. Why? Why is it so important to convince people about the truth of what I know?
I guess, after digging deep, it is because - 1, not only "imagining illness" is not my personality, but it is also just the opposite of my personality (During my entire early life, not only I did not imagine illnesses, but also I ignored their existence. I know many normal "tough" people would call 911 if they suffer only 10% of what I suffered); 2, I am still somehow "weak", need some mental understanding and support; 3, For so long time I have not found a clear logic to refute such "theory" effectively.&

Walking

This morning, I walked around neighborhood about 25 minutes (I thought it was 30 minutes), and came back with perfect heart rate. This is a proof that my heart function has been improved greatly. Also, I have been doing some studio rearrangement these days and sometime I was very tired, then I realized that I could be in big trouble if this condition happen couple of month ago. So I am glad I am much capable of physical work now, even though I still have some other less serious symptoms.

Vegs From Backyard

 It seems ages ago that I ate sweat-potato leaves. Earlier this year I planted some sweat potatoes. For a while I thought them dead, but later they grew up, strong and healthy! I made salad (scald them in hot water first) with some of them today and they were delicious!

Water spinach? They grow fast. I usually make salad with them or stir fry.

Lifestyle Change - Getting Up Earlier

Yosemite Valley in the morning (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was always a night person. Somehow recently, I was able to sleep earlier, get up earlier. And I found, with same amount of time, sleep early get up early seems to be more efficient on energy wise. Plus, the morning freshness makes feel like enjoying life more.

Overall, I have not made fundamental change yet. I give myself a score of 65%- 70% on my energy level.

B1N1 - Protein responsible for the contraction of heart identified

http://www.topnews.in/b1n1-protein-responsible-contraction-heart-identified-2253661

Heart Muscle Weakness - the Root Problem of My Chronic Heath Condition?

I had a "perfect" day yesterday, did things more than I expected, and did not feel anything wrong until I was ready to sleep - when that familiar heart weakness (actually "malfunction" is a better word) occurred. And this morning I woke up with a "not much better" feeling, realized my only option was to cancel all my Saturday classes. But, the good thing is, with a sudden enlightenment that came from no where, I realized what exactly wrong with my heart - weak heart muscle!

The reason I believe that my heart muscle is the ultimate "culprit" (at least one of major one!) is, for so long time, I've been always struggling  with my limit of energy - in order to feel better, or get my heart stronger, I have to exercise, but if I exercise just a bit over the limit, I got serious trouble. And this limit seemed to be impossible to figure out, if I stopped at the time I really feel tired, it is no doubt too late. So I really should stop before I really feel tired, say 5 or 10 minutes before, but this is a real problem, because I would always feel good before tiredness really comes, how could I tell when is the "5 or 10 minutes before"? Yesterday was an example, I even felt quite good after all day's busy working. This morning, I suddenly thought about how muscle works - it gets sore NOT during exercise, but AFTER exercise. And this resembles exactly how my heart functions. So I think it must be the weak heart muscle who messed up so many things for so long.

Of course, I also have so many other issues than just heart muscle, but I do have my reason to believe this is a major one. For what I know there is no truly a treatment for this problem but exercise. So, as I understood long time ago, if I want live a healthy life, I must walk everyday!

Gardening

I started liking gardening since couple of years ago, and this year, I enjoy it much more than pretty* years. Spending time with all these green is my greatest pleasure during daytime, it makes me feel healthy and alive. Most of vegs look greet so far. 
Below are the photos of one side of my backyard. 

*  "Previous" was mistyped as "pretty". But i guess every year is pretty, so I decided to keep it that way:-)

Modern Myth - Mental Unwellness as the Cause of Physical Unwellness

Health (Photo credit: 401K)

It seems to be many people's belief that mental wellness plays big role in our physical health, even functions as a cause of many physical illnesses. I doubt it. I do believe that our mental wellness play big role in the overall quality of our lives, but not necessarily (a big role) the physical part of it.

Studies show that many people who have mental problems such as depression or anxiety also have physical problems. This result seems to be very convincing about how mental wellness affect physical condition, but for me, it doesn't. I agree it does show the connection - our mental and physical parts of lives closely connect to each others, but, I do not see it shows mental condition IS THE CAUSE and physical illness IS THE CONSEQUENCE. For me, a reversed procedure is much more convincing - that very often mental unwellness is the consequence of our bad physical condition.

By my limited knowledge, the reasons that many people believe mental unwellenss is a cause of our physical health are: 1, modern psychology brought the importance of mental condition to our concern (which is good); 2, many studies show the connections between mental and physical health; 3, the "faith" to modern medicine (in other words, when doctors cannot diagnose a self-claimed physical illness, they blame to patients' mental conditions). But for me, none of these reasons show precisely that mental illness is the CAUSE of our physical illness - modern psychology just stressed the importance of our mental health, it does not necessarily make it as the cause of everything; the connection between mental and physical condition does not prove mental condition is the cause of latter (as I pointed out above), and doctors' failure on diagnosing physical diseases also cannot be a proof of patients' mental problems (rather, it is a proof of the ignorance of many so call "experts:). But why people still easily believe on our mental power? I am not entirely sure, and that's why I call it "modern myth".

One of examples of how people hold such belief is how doctors treat patients with unknown chronic illnesses. Whenever they failed diagnose some diseases by their knowledge and expensive equipment - which they (doctors and many people) believe as "omnipotent" on humans' physical function, they would confidently ask patients: "are you in depression?" And in most case, these patients are unfortunately in depression, at lease when they are very ill. But important fact is, their depression usually is caused by their physical condition, not the another way around:
"we should not confuse the fact that the vast majority of fatigue patients are depressed BECAUSE OF CHRONIC ILLNESS, not chronic ill because of they are depressed. this is a very important distinction and one that most doctors fail to draw... to treat depression as causing the whole illness is wrong" (i would add "is not only wrong but dangerous". ---Edward Conley, author of "america exhausted"

Of course, Conley was addressing those patients with physical chronic illness only. He did not say that all depressions are caused by chronic physical illness. I agree that there are also plenty of depressions are caused by mental issues, not physical ones. All I am trying to express here is, while our mental condition does affect our physical condition to some degree, it is not "scientific" nor "reasonable" to stretch this "some degree" to an exaggerated extent, like many people believe. I personally believe, that compare with our physical condition, mental condition is "secondary" in our overall life quality. This "belief" is based on a simple fact: our physical condition IS THE FOUNDATION of our whole life being. For those who believe our spiritual condition is more important, I would suggest that it is because sometime, or some of us, our physical condition allow us to be "spiritual", and we probably just take it for granted.

Again, I do agree that mental wellness is important to the overall quality of our lives (because it does affect our happiness tremendously), but not as crucial to our physical body function. Just imagining a person who is chronically tortured by physical pain, can he/she by so call "positive"? He/she might be tough enough to hold hope, certainly cannot be happy and cheerful all the time. On the contrary, I have seen plenty of people who have sever depression but still in decent (some are in excellent) physical health. For me, this is enough to show the dominance of our physical condition to our life existence.

And we all know, if our physical body died, we don't even have so call mental health exist, unless, of course, if you believe we have soul, which continues to act "positively" in heaven.