The mountains have 6 feet of fresh snow. I might have had difficulty reining in despite the struggle I've been having. COVID19 stopped me from jumping on my car and going instead. All ski resorts are closed and probably are not going to reopen till the next season.
It's been the same old struggle: Scrub the bathtub, then I get knocked out for 3 days. Walk 2 km, and the same thing. The laundry, dishes and dusts have been piling up sky high. The feeling of recovery back in December is all but a distant memory now. The water hose I bought then is gathering dust in the garage. I was feeling so well, I thought I'd wash the dirt from the mountain off the car whenever I come back from skiing. I haven't got to it yet. And now I'm like, just what was I thinking?
The whole CA is now under shelter-in-place order. It is a familiar way of life to CFS patients: we stay home, go out only for essential errands and bi-daily walks. We don't have much social contact anymore, we are already socially distanced. All we have to do is just keep 6 feet away from other people when we are out. This is an opportunity for normal people to learn how CFS patients live and feel. Sans fatigue, ache and sickness, of course.
Friday, March 20, 2020
Sunday, March 8, 2020
End-of-Season Assessment: You Can't Exercise Your Way Out Of CFS
Well, not exactly the end of the season yet. It's still snowing and there probably is another month worth of skiing left. But I'm calling it a season for now, though I might go up once more. But certainly no more weekly skiing. That's been too detrimental to my health and daily living.
The analysis of the skiing #1 through 9 has been done already and it showed the novelty effect fading away after a month. My condition has been getting only worse since then. Take a look:
All of them were easy skiings on green Nob Hill and blue Christmas Tree, with occasional Gerome only to get to/from Judah lodge. Yet the difference is stark. At the beginning of the season, I was getting 1 bad day at most out of 4 after the skiing. At the end though, I was having 3 bad days at least. I've been getting weaker as the novelty effect faded and my exercise tolerance came down to normal.
Here is another measure. The red rows below denote 2 or more consecutive bad days, my definition of PEM/flare-up/crash, from November to early March:
(Ignore the activity column text from 12/13 to 12/15 that showed multiple days of skiing. They got corrupted and I wasn't able to recover).
As you can see, there was no crash from November to late December. That's despite of the 12 day trip to NJ/NY in November when I took 20,000 steps every other day. Then I started crashing in late December and it became more frequent as time went on. It's another stark evidence that I've been getting weaker as time went on after a month of skiing.
It's the opposite of what you would expect from a healthy person: you should get stronger as you exercise, not weaker. We already know that PEM -- the sickness the day after an exertion -- is the hallmark feature of CFS. This getting progressively weaker with exercises over 3 months period is yet another incontrovertible proof that you just can't exercise your way out of CFS. That's been obvious for severe/moderate patients and I've already written about it when I was in the deep end of the CFS spectrum. Now if anybody wonders about it for mild/moderate patients, they just need to look at my experience with skiing.
The analysis of the skiing #1 through 9 has been done already and it showed the novelty effect fading away after a month. My condition has been getting only worse since then. Take a look:
All of them were easy skiings on green Nob Hill and blue Christmas Tree, with occasional Gerome only to get to/from Judah lodge. Yet the difference is stark. At the beginning of the season, I was getting 1 bad day at most out of 4 after the skiing. At the end though, I was having 3 bad days at least. I've been getting weaker as the novelty effect faded and my exercise tolerance came down to normal.
Here is another measure. The red rows below denote 2 or more consecutive bad days, my definition of PEM/flare-up/crash, from November to early March:
It's the opposite of what you would expect from a healthy person: you should get stronger as you exercise, not weaker. We already know that PEM -- the sickness the day after an exertion -- is the hallmark feature of CFS. This getting progressively weaker with exercises over 3 months period is yet another incontrovertible proof that you just can't exercise your way out of CFS. That's been obvious for severe/moderate patients and I've already written about it when I was in the deep end of the CFS spectrum. Now if anybody wonders about it for mild/moderate patients, they just need to look at my experience with skiing.
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