Well, it turned out I spoke too soon in my previous post. I said I was fine, but fact is, for 5 days after biking, I've been suffering from extremely muscle sore and weakness, feeling debilitated most of time. Today I realized this fatigue came from my weakened muscles.
For years my focus was on my heart, and I did mostly cardio exercises. After this "test" - the bike tour I mentioned in previous post, I found that my heart was certainly improved, but my muscle seemed much weaker than before. Of course I always knew I needed some muscle exercises but my heart problem always always seemed more urgent. It's good that I finally improved my heart, and now it's time to improve muscles!
Showing posts with label ME/CFS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ME/CFS. Show all posts
Saturday, July 7, 2018
Monday, July 2, 2018
A Milestone
Haven't updated this blog forever. Because, mainly, I was tired of repeating. Not that I had no progress, but all I had been through during these couple of years were quite the same as before: symptoms, crashes, taking care of myself, diet, etc., all the same. I know I can be well again, it's just matter of time.
Today I did something worth to write down. I biked 4 miles, and more importantly, I came home feeling totally fine! During past 10 years I only dared to try this (biking 4 miles) twice, and both with dreadful consequences - the second time I literally crashed down in front of my door (I had to lied down on my front lawn otherwise I would have heart attack!), and followed by days or even weeks of being seriously ill. But today, I AM FINE!
I first biked to Food Lion, which is 2 miles from my house, bought a little grocery, then biked back along different route, which is also 2 miles. I had to walk on several sections of the roads because of up hills, but overall, it wasn't too hard for me.
So now I am positive to say that I am in the best physical condition during recent 10 years. However, I know that in order to prevent health going down again I must keep good life habits, include lots of physical activities, good diet, and sleep well.
My "dark age" of chronic illness officially started in 2008, though I was already very ill before that point. Now I still cannot say that I am cured. But I have no doubt that if I can keep my good life style I certainly will be.
Today I did something worth to write down. I biked 4 miles, and more importantly, I came home feeling totally fine! During past 10 years I only dared to try this (biking 4 miles) twice, and both with dreadful consequences - the second time I literally crashed down in front of my door (I had to lied down on my front lawn otherwise I would have heart attack!), and followed by days or even weeks of being seriously ill. But today, I AM FINE!
I first biked to Food Lion, which is 2 miles from my house, bought a little grocery, then biked back along different route, which is also 2 miles. I had to walk on several sections of the roads because of up hills, but overall, it wasn't too hard for me.
So now I am positive to say that I am in the best physical condition during recent 10 years. However, I know that in order to prevent health going down again I must keep good life habits, include lots of physical activities, good diet, and sleep well.
My "dark age" of chronic illness officially started in 2008, though I was already very ill before that point. Now I still cannot say that I am cured. But I have no doubt that if I can keep my good life style I certainly will be.
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
Health is UP!
Finally, my health is up again. For recently a couple of weeks I've not felt overwhelming fatigue and during recently several days I've done the most work for years without a crash!
2015, I had similar good period - it lasted for almost 3 months until final crashing down. This year summer I experienced another up rally but soon back to my "normal" condition which was sick... Hope this time lasts...
2015, I had similar good period - it lasted for almost 3 months until final crashing down. This year summer I experienced another up rally but soon back to my "normal" condition which was sick... Hope this time lasts...
Monday, September 3, 2012
Sick or Not, Who Decides?
As modern medicine evolved into this formidably complicated ("obese" is a better word) system - from theory to practice, from financial/labor investment to sky high price, modern people seem to completely yield themselves to medicine authority, for any trivial issues to serious ones, unquestionably listen to doctors, depend on doctors, and no longer listen to their own bodies, no longer depend on themselves.
We have annual check up, if the results said you have this or that disease, you would believe totally, and take whatever treatments doctors assigned to you, even if you felt completely nothing wrong with your daily physical function. And sooner or later you may still felt nothing different but, after going back check up again, doctor told you that numbers were all good now, then you certainly believed that, felt happy that all your suffering was over, even though all you suffered during the "illness" was "taking pills". On the other hand, there are a huge amount of people who claim being sick, or even chronically sick, but doctors could never find anything wrong with them. So these "sick people" have to do "doctor shopping" again and again, the result was the same: the numbers (of check up) are all "beautiful". At this point doctors usually would suggest that the patients' feeling ill was "imagined". So here comes mental issue: how is your personal life? Have you been feeling depressed?
Usually this type of "patients" with "beautiful numbers" have two choices: listening to doctors and take those anti-depressant and get sicker and sicker, or, refused to accept doctors' assumptions about mental illness and put the health into their own hands. I am one of the latter who refused to admit I was mentally ill. After a few attempts (back 10 years ago) trying to get helps from cardiologists I pretty much realized they could do nothing good for me. Even though after all these years I am still not completely recovered yet, I have no doubt that I will reach that day, sooner or later.
I also know many people who listened doctors' suggestions ("mental illness") and ended up with disastrous consequence. One of examples is Sophia Mirza (1), who died in 2005 with CFS when she was 29. Before she was died, she was treated as a mental ill patient. According to Wiki: "Mirza's physical symptoms were treated as a mental condition and her carers were accused of 'enabling' her. In July 2003 Mirza was sectioned for two weeks by her doctors, who believed her condition was psychosomatic, an action which her mother believed severely worsened her condition". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Mirza)
I personally believe that the death of Sophia Mirza was mostly caused by medical treatments.
There are tones of other patients who followed medical experts also had very serious consequence. Many of them could not even handle their daily life. And the chronic conditions last not only months, but years, some of them decades (mine is over 10 years). When these patients realized that listening do doctors was essentially wrong, usually it was very late. For some of them they it was indeed "too late".
Most people believe that science of modern medicine knows everything about our bodies, so they naturally believe that if doctors find nothing wrong with a person, this person must imagined his/her illness. Many "normal" people don't even know that there exists a huge population of "invisible disease patients" (I don't remember where I've read that the population of invisible disease patients in US are approximately 1 million). This, is so unfair to most unknown illness patients, because not only they don't get any helps from professionals (2), but also they don't get much mental support. They have to live not only with physical suffering, but also mental isolation, misunderstanding, social stigma and prejudice (many of them even come from family members). (I have many personal stories about this so just don't let me start...)
I think, the real blind spot is, after human mind evolved for so long time, we have been so amazed by left hemisphere of human brain (reason) that we forgot our right side brain (feeling, sense) is the "real boss" (I actually tend to believe that many people pretty much lost the ability to "feel" over the course of "civilization"). I believe, as far as our physical health is concerned, we better follow how our bodies feel than to depend on the numbers of check up by machine. This is not to say that I don't believe in science, nor to say that the numbers checked by machines are all useless, but only mean that the function of our bodies are way more complicated than what modern medical science can cover (so far), so better we use professionals' opinions as references, in many cases, if not all cases.
Modern society is a complicated machine, in which people work in different "parts". Modern cultures create "experts" in different fields, and these experts usually know nothing about others fields. Humans become more and more like tools that work in different separate parts of modern machine: lawyer, engineer, doctor (and among doctors we have eye doctor, lung doctor, cardiologist, dentist, etc.). My experience told me, that if we really know nothing about the fields outside of our own professions, and completely trust those experts, we easily end up with huge mistakes when we do "business" with them (I had bad business with lawyer, car mechanics, etc.), and the fault is our own. Since health is most crucial to our lives, doubtlessly, the biggest mistake we could ever make is to completely trust medical experts, ignoring completely what our won bodies telling us.
-------------------------------
1: More information about Sophia Mirza:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJvFwhW3FUY
2: For me this is acceptable because I actually believe many illnesses are "personal", so it's up to patients themselves to cure.
We have annual check up, if the results said you have this or that disease, you would believe totally, and take whatever treatments doctors assigned to you, even if you felt completely nothing wrong with your daily physical function. And sooner or later you may still felt nothing different but, after going back check up again, doctor told you that numbers were all good now, then you certainly believed that, felt happy that all your suffering was over, even though all you suffered during the "illness" was "taking pills". On the other hand, there are a huge amount of people who claim being sick, or even chronically sick, but doctors could never find anything wrong with them. So these "sick people" have to do "doctor shopping" again and again, the result was the same: the numbers (of check up) are all "beautiful". At this point doctors usually would suggest that the patients' feeling ill was "imagined". So here comes mental issue: how is your personal life? Have you been feeling depressed?
Usually this type of "patients" with "beautiful numbers" have two choices: listening to doctors and take those anti-depressant and get sicker and sicker, or, refused to accept doctors' assumptions about mental illness and put the health into their own hands. I am one of the latter who refused to admit I was mentally ill. After a few attempts (back 10 years ago) trying to get helps from cardiologists I pretty much realized they could do nothing good for me. Even though after all these years I am still not completely recovered yet, I have no doubt that I will reach that day, sooner or later.
I also know many people who listened doctors' suggestions ("mental illness") and ended up with disastrous consequence. One of examples is Sophia Mirza (1), who died in 2005 with CFS when she was 29. Before she was died, she was treated as a mental ill patient. According to Wiki: "Mirza's physical symptoms were treated as a mental condition and her carers were accused of 'enabling' her. In July 2003 Mirza was sectioned for two weeks by her doctors, who believed her condition was psychosomatic, an action which her mother believed severely worsened her condition". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Mirza)
I personally believe that the death of Sophia Mirza was mostly caused by medical treatments.
There are tones of other patients who followed medical experts also had very serious consequence. Many of them could not even handle their daily life. And the chronic conditions last not only months, but years, some of them decades (mine is over 10 years). When these patients realized that listening do doctors was essentially wrong, usually it was very late. For some of them they it was indeed "too late".
Most people believe that science of modern medicine knows everything about our bodies, so they naturally believe that if doctors find nothing wrong with a person, this person must imagined his/her illness. Many "normal" people don't even know that there exists a huge population of "invisible disease patients" (I don't remember where I've read that the population of invisible disease patients in US are approximately 1 million). This, is so unfair to most unknown illness patients, because not only they don't get any helps from professionals (2), but also they don't get much mental support. They have to live not only with physical suffering, but also mental isolation, misunderstanding, social stigma and prejudice (many of them even come from family members). (I have many personal stories about this so just don't let me start...)
I think, the real blind spot is, after human mind evolved for so long time, we have been so amazed by left hemisphere of human brain (reason) that we forgot our right side brain (feeling, sense) is the "real boss" (I actually tend to believe that many people pretty much lost the ability to "feel" over the course of "civilization"). I believe, as far as our physical health is concerned, we better follow how our bodies feel than to depend on the numbers of check up by machine. This is not to say that I don't believe in science, nor to say that the numbers checked by machines are all useless, but only mean that the function of our bodies are way more complicated than what modern medical science can cover (so far), so better we use professionals' opinions as references, in many cases, if not all cases.
Modern society is a complicated machine, in which people work in different "parts". Modern cultures create "experts" in different fields, and these experts usually know nothing about others fields. Humans become more and more like tools that work in different separate parts of modern machine: lawyer, engineer, doctor (and among doctors we have eye doctor, lung doctor, cardiologist, dentist, etc.). My experience told me, that if we really know nothing about the fields outside of our own professions, and completely trust those experts, we easily end up with huge mistakes when we do "business" with them (I had bad business with lawyer, car mechanics, etc.), and the fault is our own. Since health is most crucial to our lives, doubtlessly, the biggest mistake we could ever make is to completely trust medical experts, ignoring completely what our won bodies telling us.
-------------------------------
1: More information about Sophia Mirza:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJvFwhW3FUY
2: For me this is acceptable because I actually believe many illnesses are "personal", so it's up to patients themselves to cure.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
"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.&
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.&
Friday, March 18, 2011
A Support to Dominique, A Support to "CFS"/ME
Image by sweethardt via FlickrI like to post this for Dominique - a "CFS"/ME patient who struggling with this illness by her own, like most of other patients. This blog particularly described one of her "bad" days. I suppose any one with a decent sense about "fatigue" can understand, that this is far beyond just "fatigue".
Dominique has been in this illness for over 20 years. She used to run 7 miles a day before she got ill! Now, after 20 years living with this illness, most time bedridden, she was not tired, not sad, but ANGRY. And I am on her side, whole heartedly, sending the anger to medical institutes who dismiss this illness just because this illness doesn't fit their "scientific" theory, also sending the anger to the society and the people who refuse to give any sympathy to CFS/ME sufferers just because their suffering is "strange" to their life experience, or "strange" to their understanding of "illness". In other words, I am helping her to send anger to the "ignorance", the ignorance that kills lives.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Just bought "Borax" from vitamine shoppe
Just read from an online furom about Borax, another Candida fighter beside iodine. Someone with experience with this product said it is better than iodine. I will keep posting about how it works for me.
http://www.vitaminshoppe.com/search/en/query.jsp?q=borax&intsource2=main&tab_selection=vitamins
http://www.vitaminshoppe.com/search/en/query.jsp?q=borax&intsource2=main&tab_selection=vitamins
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Colloidal Silver, another anti-candida supplement beside Iodine?
I visited this forum (recommanded by a friend) and found a thread talking about iodine:
http://curezone.com/forums/fm.asp?i=1462509#i
and one of replying post suggested Colloidal Silver, an even better "candida fighter". I don't know much about this product but here is the link from which you can also see some basic information about how this product works:
http://www.utopiasilver.com/products/silver/
http://curezone.com/forums/fm.asp?i=1462509#i
and one of replying post suggested Colloidal Silver, an even better "candida fighter". I don't know much about this product but here is the link from which you can also see some basic information about how this product works:
http://www.utopiasilver.com/products/silver/
Monday, July 27, 2009
ME/CFS & Fibromyalgia Doctor List!!!
I just found the doctor list for CFS/ME (national wide) and found one that is very close to where I live!
http://www.co-cure.org/Good-Doc.htm
http://www.co-cure.org/Good-Doc.htm
Friday, June 19, 2009
Inulin, as a suppliment feeding beneficial intestinal bacteria
According to this link:
http://www.health-science-spirit.com/overcome-candida.htm
inulin, is "a non-digestible polysaccharide, which helps to feed the beneficial intestinal bacteria, especially in the colon. It is present in Jerusalem artichokes, chicory roots and dandelion roots, and may be sold as a white powder, see http://members.shaw.ca/duncancrow/inulin_prebiotic_probiotic.html. ..."
Here is the link to buy:
http://www26.netrition.com/now_inulin_page.html
http://www.health-science-spirit.com/overcome-candida.htm
inulin, is "a non-digestible polysaccharide, which helps to feed the beneficial intestinal bacteria, especially in the colon. It is present in Jerusalem artichokes, chicory roots and dandelion roots, and may be sold as a white powder, see http://members.shaw.ca/duncancrow/inulin_prebiotic_probiotic.html. ..."
Here is the link to buy:
http://www26.netrition.com/now_inulin_page.html
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Overcome CFS website!
It's coming. Not completely finished but most stuffs are up there:
http://www.overcomecfs.com/index.html
Please check it out and leave you comments. Thanks!
http://www.overcomecfs.com/index.html
Please check it out and leave you comments. Thanks!
Friday, June 5, 2009
"Draw attention"
Another CRAP that many people throw onto ME/CFS sufferers is "Draw attention".
Please watch this video if you are interested in this subject: a girl Sophia Mirza suffered ME/CFS died because her illness was treated as mental illness. Don't miss this detail: once she lay on bed without any energy, the docter just suggested that the reason she did so because she wanted to drawing people's attention!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mZMpvtD3rg
By my own experience, I just cannot count how many times my friends, doctors or other people thought that I was trying to draw their attention when I mentioned my problems. How could people be so judgemental? When one of my "friends" "positively encouraged" me not to mention again that I didn't have energy because he knew that I was "full of energy", I really wanted to slap his face, only if I had the energy he suggested.
Ignorance kills!
Please watch this video if you are interested in this subject: a girl Sophia Mirza suffered ME/CFS died because her illness was treated as mental illness. Don't miss this detail: once she lay on bed without any energy, the docter just suggested that the reason she did so because she wanted to drawing people's attention!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mZMpvtD3rg
By my own experience, I just cannot count how many times my friends, doctors or other people thought that I was trying to draw their attention when I mentioned my problems. How could people be so judgemental? When one of my "friends" "positively encouraged" me not to mention again that I didn't have energy because he knew that I was "full of energy", I really wanted to slap his face, only if I had the energy he suggested.
Ignorance kills!
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