For awhile now I've been realizing the need to get back into some form of exercise. Now in years past I was never a fanatical exerciser, that is I never jogged, never did calisthenics, nor weight lifting, I certainly didn't do any of those grueling DVD exercise programs like Tae Bo, yet I had kept myself trim by doing yoga.
Up until maybe four years ago, I was extremely flexible and limber, and I guess due to my childhood years where I studied ballet. I also was introduced to the world of yoga way back in the middle 1960s via my mother who used to watch the Richard Hittleman yoga show on PBS. I would watch her attempts to do the various yoga postures and copied what she was doing. It wasn't until say maybe my high school years that I did a regular regiment of exercise doing a combo of both yoga and various ballet barre exercises, and I kept up this routine almost religiously all through my college years and beyond. Somewhere along the line though I stopped, yet was still in a sense active as I would take long, long walks. That changed however, some four years ago when I started getting severe symptoms of RA (Rheumatoid Arthritis) and ironically it was triggered off by the antibiotic "Cipro" (Ciprofloxacin), which when I took it had no dire warnings about. Not long after I took it, I began noticing arthritic type symptoms, joint pain, swelling of my joints, I also lost my flexible and limber qualities. I didn't connect the dots until sometime later I was doing research about something else, and came across "Cipro" again. Now that medication had dire warnings about it and was one of the medications with class action law suits against it. Gee, thanks pharmaceutical and FDA land.
My RA issues have gotten progressively worse, but if you think I'm going to take a medication again, forget it. Do you think I would trust a medication again? Instead, I have been trying to find more natural alternative means to help my symptoms. But yes, I'm also realizing I do need to exercise again. I've read tons of material suggesting anyone with RA or even Fibromyalgia needs to do some form of exercise, to get moving again, the irony is how can one with RA or Fibromyalgia even think of exercise when it can be so painful to do.
Some months ago I did actually go back into trying my attempts with yoga, but got frustrated. The same yoga postures I did years ago without a thought and could manage easily proved difficult, or and yes, that yoga posture in the photo was one of many postures I could do with ease. If I tried that now, heck, I'd probably fall over.
Still, I do need to get back into yoga/exercise again, not so much for weight loss as thankfully that has never been a problem for me, I've always been rail thin all my life, if anything I wouldn't mind gaining some weight! (Dons helmet to ward off wet noodles being flung at me…with take those noodles with Alfredo Sauce please).
I do have the realization of needing to do exercise to keep my joints flexible and to build up muscle tone. Anyway, if any of you also experience RA or Fibromyalgia, and if you do some form of exercise I would gladly welcome suggestions how you manage and cope.
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