Welcome to Mellie's mind...

Where thoughts can be funny, can race at all hours of the day and night and can sometimes not make any sense!

Enjoy the ride!

Monday, November 25, 2013

MS and exercising

"The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied." ~Proverbs 13:4

The day I was diagnosed this October with MS my Neurologist, Dr. Zarellie, discussed with my hubby and I not only my medication plan but also how important it was for me to get plenty of exercise.  

Dr. Zarellie explained to me that patients with MS who participated in aerobic activity tended to have less symptoms and relapses than those who do not. My hubby was quick to point out to Dr. Zarellie that I had been working out and actually transformed my body over the past few years with exercise and nutrition.  Dr. Zarellie contributed my lack of further development in MS due to the fact that I was so active while not on any kind of medication.

Knowing that aerobic exercise would possibly decrease my flare ups and possibly prevent anymore lesions from developing you would have thought I would have been on my treadmill that night running my little heart out.  However, that was not the case.

Much like my other posts I have found myself up and down in emotions towards this disease and how it is and will affect my life.  Knowing that there is a disease inside my body has taken a toll on me in more ways than I had ever expected.  There are days I am so angry that this is happening to me I want to scream out to my God asking why.  With all the struggles in my life as a child, a young adult and even now, why do I have to have this on top of it?  But with those fleeting moments of anger, bitterness and hate I tell myself I have to calm down and just deal with it just like I deal with everything else.

I have a Facebook page called "The Monthly Challenge" I created this page about two years ago and I use it to help motivate other people on how to change their lives and get healthy.  I talk about food, workouts, water consumption... anything and everything to try and help just one person change their life for the better and live the life they were meant to live.  I am finding that running this page is not only helping others it is helping me get myself back on track.  

On most days I will put out a daily challenge for the members of this page.  Heading into this week I decided there was to be an AM challenge for all willing to participate.  The AM challenge is a 35 minute cardio session.  It can be running, walking or doing the following routine that I created:

The purpose for the AM challenge for the members of the page is to burn stored fat.


This must be done within 20 minutes of waking up.

As Coach Dos discusses in his book Power Training, when you eat carbohydrates, your body stores them as glycogen in your liver and waits for your body to use them as fuel. When performing an aerobic activity, like walking, running on a treadmill, or doing a body weight cardio session your body has the option of using glycogen stores or fat stores. The problem is that your body won’t use any fat stores until your glycogen stores are used up.

At REST, your body burns its stored glycogen. Think as carbs/ glycogen as fuel in a gas tank. Your liver is your bodies' gas tank, and the carbs/glycogen is it's fuel.

After sleeping for 8 hours, you wake with an empty liver (no stored glycogen). Your body now MUST and WILL burn fat stores to fuel your am cardio session....provided you do not eat (which refills your liver/fuel tank).

So when you awake and cardio on an empty stomach, you WILL BURN FAT STORES.

It is imperative that you eat within 20 minutes of completing your cardio so your body does not consume it's muscle that you already have to continue to fuel your movement.
The purpose for the members of the page is to get them up and  moving to help reduce their stored fat,  but the purpose for ME is to assist in my MS as described by The National MS Society.
"In addition to being essential to general health and well-being, exercise is helpful in managing many MS symptoms. A study published by researchers at the University of Utah in 1996 was the first to demonstrate clearly the benefits of exercise for people with MS. Those patients who participated in an aerobic exercise program had better cardiovascular fitness, improved strength, better bladder and bowel function, less fatigue and depression, a more positive attitude, and increased participation in social activities. Since 1996, several additional studies have confirmed the benefits of exercise." ~National MS Society
I could have came up with a handful of excuses of why I did not want to do my cardio session today, one of them being my hubby had already given me my injection.  But I knew as I stood there staring at my treadmill that was all it was... an excuse.  I deserved to get my cardio session done. I deserved to treat my body the way it should be treated and no matter what kind of pain my leg was in I knew I had to push through it.
Having MS is about changing your current life in anyway you can to improve your ability to live a normal life.  It's about learning how to reduce stress and accepting what you have and making the best of it.  MS, for me, is about not being a victim of the disease but triumphing over it while they find a cure.  To do that I have to live the best possible life I can live and do everything in my power to do so.  For me, today, that was 35 minutes of a cardio session.... and now I feel on top of the world!

 
I finished my run/cardio session off with a cool down period and a song that really spoke to me this morning.  The words of this song speak to me because in MS we have black days, stormy nights but if we get our minds right... our lives right and know our God we will hear the sweet song of salvation.
Make it a great day today!  
~Mellie

The Cross Lyrics


Black day, stormy night
No love, no hope in sight
Don't cry, He is coming
Don't die without knowing the cross

Ghettos to the left of us
Flowers to the right
There'll be bread for all of us
If we can just bear the cross

Sweet song of salvation
A pregnant mother sings
She lives in starvation
Her children need all that she brings

We all have our problems
Some big, some are small
Soon all of our problems
Will be taken by the cross

Black day, stormy night
No love, no hope in sight
Don't cry for He is coming
Don't die without knowing the cross, no

Ghettos to the left of us
Flowers to the right
There'll be bread for all, y'all
If we can just, just bear the cross, yeah

We all have our problems
Some are big, some are small
Soon all of our problems, y'all
Will be taken by the cross, no

The cross
The cross

Songwriters
NELSON, PRINCE ROGERS
 


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