Happy Tuesday Y’all! Today is May 11th and, surprisingly, it’s a beautiful day in Charlotte. I believe the weather forecast said it was going to be much cooler than it feels outside, but it’s definitely nice. Think there’s a bit of a cool spell coming our way, but by the weekend it appears we’ll be well on our to summer-time temps!
Today I want to talk just a bit about exercise and MS. I try to stay pretty active when it comes to exercise (My figure may not reflect that.. or it may… just depends on your perspective!) and, at one point in my life, my primary care physician told me, “Exercise is almost always the best medicine”. Although exercising in my late 20’s through mid 30’s may been a bit sporadic, I always prided myself on being able to go on a long hike or knock-out a quick fifty push-ups when the mood struck me. Looking back and seeing some of the inconsistencies in my activity routine, it’s easy to point to MS… I just didn’t know it was there and impacting me.
Fast forward to my late 30’s when I was finally diagnosed (I won’t go into that boring old story again… see my prior posts…), I went into hyper-exercise mode. If I was dizzy… exercise! If I was really tired… exercise! If it was Monday… exercise. You’d think I was prepping for the Olympics. Of course, we’re talking about things like… it’s embarrassing to admit to this sometimes when I think how hard others “hit it” at the gym… 2 miles on the treadmill at 16 minutes a mile! 3 miles on a stationary bike! 10 lengths in the pool! It’s about all I could do! All that exercise and you might look at me and think, “That guy needs to lay off the potato chips!”. It is what it is… <sigh> 🙂
Typically, I meet with my MS doctor twice a year unless something weird is going on. It was probably my third, maybe fourth, appointment that I mentioned how hard I was working out and that I hoped it would be helping me! My doctor looked at me and, in a very patient voice, said, “You know Steve, you can’t exercise your way out of MS. Right?” CRASH BANG BOOM… oh.. let me throw in a big old “DUH” as well. Those words, for whatever reason, were incredibly impactful to me! Hadn’t I been hearing for years that exercise was great for controlling stress, high blood pressure, cholesterol… everything? Even my primary Doc had said that exercise was the best medicine? What’s a body to think? Do? Can’t just lay around all day… right? Nope… you can’t! Unless, of course, you can’t do anything BUT lay around.
My MS doctor was not, of course, telling me to stop working out. He was simply cautioning me to have realistic expectations for what working out was going to accomplish. Can I still build muscle? Yes. Can I still build up endurance so I can jog a bit or do a long swim? Yes. Can I even train my body to do a race or … anything like that? Sure! If you look online you’ll see a lot of stories about people with MS doing “Incredible things”.. like running a marathon or something along those lines! So, the potential to be active and to stay in shape is certainly real, but today’s workout may be very different from tomorrow’s workout. Exercising this year may be a much better year than last year. We just have to be ready for the unpredictable nature of having a disease like MS.
I realize I’ve gone into some detail on this in other posts, but just to tie this in very personally…. My last exacerbation (MS activity) resulted with me having a new, lesion on my spinal chord. This started… hmmm.. somewhere in the September/October time frame of 2019. All the way through September I was “Training” to do a Spartan Mud Race with a friend in Mid-October. Unfortunately, by the end of September or early in October, it was a struggle to just drag myself out of bed. I sat in a chair and did little else until late November when I finally went to see my doctor. Of course, I knew something was going on and after an MRI it was confirmed that I had the new lesion. Even after a round of steroids and a change to a new, more powerful MS drug, I did not feel good enough to exercise for almost a full year.
Fortunately, as we all know, 2020 was the year of COVID, so we all had a good excuse for not hitting the gym! They were all closed! 🙂 Even if the gyms had been open, I probably could not have gone and done anything productive. Thank goodness, this past Winter and moving into Spring I have been able to work out with few issues! Today, for example, I swam almost a mile, which is awesome! Sure I’m tired now and will probably nap or have a low-key day, but knowing I can do that after my last bout of disease activity is… I guess I’ll use the word … comforting! I will not be doing that distance very often, but once in a while just to “push things”… it’s good to know I can! 🙂 Good times!
Ok Ok Ok… I’m rambling and some of this writing feels a bit jumbled! Forgive me? My next post is probably going to be focused on the fact that, at least to the best of my knowledge, I’ve had MS for over 30 years! I passed into the 50+ age bracket at the end of April and it got me thinking… Man… it’s been a long time since my 20’s. So, expect something on that!
Hope you all have a great week!
