Exercise and Chronic Fatigue
Exercise has proven mental health benefits
but being at the mercy of a myriad of symptoms caused by CFS/ME, Long-covid and or Endometriosis can leave you feeling like exercise is the last thing you want to do. When this is the case listen to your body, DO NOT force exercise it can make things worse. When your energy returns there are things you can do to build confidence and neurological pathways to help you recover without exhaustion or post exhaustion malaise (PEM).
Exercise for improved sleep and stress management
As a sufferer myself of diagnosed Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis I can understand the frustrations anyone with this condition feels. It is important to note that Long Covid and Endometriosis closely cross over with regards to a myriad of symptoms. For this reason and because I have coached and completed Alignment work on clients with these diagnoses that I emphasise the importance of learning to understand what causes you stress and focus on rest without apology when you can. Exercise comes at the end of understanding many of your symptoms and how to manage or deal with them. I learned this is long hard way as I ushed my body through workouts and felt worse, weaker, confused and lost confidence. Exercise can look like a small walk or just completing household tasks as these conditions feel to rob you of your capabilities. If you have or suspect yourself of having these conditions do not allow yourself to be active in any capacity to the point of exhaustion. Research shows and the consensus advice is that it can make things worse for you. At the end of this article I will list all the symptoms I have had over the last 13-years and where you can go to get the appropriate support if your GP is unhelpful as mine has been.
Exercise for confidence and mood
There are proven benefits of exercise but exercise needs to have a different approach when you have the above named symptoms. The old way of dealing with this was graded exercise therapy (GET) the premise being to start at a low level of exercise for example 1 minute of walking per day and pushing that to two and three in a set amount of time. This had led to people with these conditions becoming worse off. The reason being is because it involved pushing your already exhausted and stressed mind and body to exertion. Now the approach has been updated to paced exercise. Paced exercise is a more gentle approach as it resolves the stress/pressure of having to complete a physical task. The goal is no longer to have a goal. It’s to listen to the body and only perform physical tasks when you feel like the energy is there, with the caveat of not performing any task to exertion. Little by little is the new way. Do what feels good, not what makes you feel tired. PEM can occur up to 48-hours after any physical or mental event and can take days, week’s, months, in the worst cases years to recover. Through pacing exercise in this way you can build both your confidence and your mood.
How does Body Alignment help with exercising when Chronic illness with fatigue is a main symptom?
During the onslaught on symptoms you will have felt your posture change, whether that is through weight-gain, weight-loss, pain in the abdomen, thighs, hips, knees, feet, hands, neck, head, eyes. These changes can contribute to muscle pain as well as the pain caused by the fatigue.
Body Alignment will help you correct your muscle balance and neurology— that is the nerves that signal the muscles to move. Changes you may have notices will include your balance which will have affected your posture. The exercises prescribed by an alignment consultation will give you the movements you need to pace— do as and when you feel up to it and provide the confidence you need to know that you are re-claiming your body for your future recovery. As these exercise will help you re-gain balance and co-ordination and strength reducing the risk of injury when moving. For me understanding why my alignment went from almost perfect to unbalanced, un co-ordinated leaving me clumsy and in need of permanent rest has been in valuable to understanding the domino effect of my other symptoms. Important to note that was not without robbing me of confidence of what I was doing first. Re-gaining my balance and co-ordination have been big wins for me and further helped me with the cognitive symptoms I have experienced and endured. Some of those ‘exercises’ have been as simple at times as simply massaging my feet and preventing pronation in the ankle when it should not happen and didn’t before those particular symptoms occurred. By pacing my movement I have gone from having to quit exercise all-together back to moderate and moderately-frequently lifting weights again being careful not to exert myself or raise my cortisol as a result of exercise.
This has also has the benefit of me going from being scared to eat a meal because of the onslaught of pain and fatigue as a result to eating regularly again.
Energy and Exercise and why your Fatigue matters
Fatigue happens in your body because your cells are not producing energy. There is a part of the cell knick-named the powerhouse of the cell called mitochondria. Mitochondria produce Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) this is the conversion of food to energy. When you have fatigue this does not happen. If there is no conversion, there is no energy there is just weight, unbearable, painful weight with no energy to move it. The cause for this can be quite complex. working with a nutritionist who specialises in functional medicine and chronic illness can help with the fatigue element. Movement no matter how small when you feel you have the energy is important to help boost mitochondrial function. Paced and not to exhaustion are key caveats to this. Your fatigue is a symptom of your mitochondria being compromised and not producing that all important ATP for the energy required to feel more like yourself— and less like a shell of your former self.
Other Alignment protocalls that can help
Skeletal alignment is just as important as muscular alignment. Muscular alignment will help get all your muscles performing the job they are designed for your skeletal alignment will make this easier, but skeletal alignment has other benefits too. It will make exercise easier. It will help ensure your organs and the systems and processes that help them function optimally are primed for that. It will release pressure of tight muscles a fascia tissue— the membrane that covers the muscles and carries nerves to signal muscle contraction, supporting healthy movement patterns. Chiropractors and Osteopaths are key in this area as it’s their speciality. Osteopaths tend to take a more overall holistic and integrative approach which is more gentle on the body than a Chiropractor. One is not better than the other they are different approaches and the benefits depend on the needs and preferences of the individual.
Symptoms of CFS/ME some will cross over with Long Covid and Endometriosis
Head- Memory loss, amnesia, blurred vision, headaches, ADHD inability to concentrate whilst thinking about many things at once, inability to take in new information. Smell and taste changes. Light sensitivity, clamminess of the forehead, inability to swallow or catch breath, tooth sensitivity, hair loss
Neck and Shoulders- Dull ache, fatigue that won’t subside and heaviness, neck pain, crackling it the joints, stiff neck, stiff shoulders and chest limiting range of movement
Arms- Loss of co-ordination, loss of ability to write. Pan in knuckles that feels arthritic, crackling in the joint, cold hands, eczema like patches on the elbows
Main body- Swelling in the rib cage, stomach and hips, pain from the diaphragm down, shortness of breath, weigh across the chest, weight gain for no reason, weight loss for no reason, feeling full and empty at the same time, wind and congestion, not digesting meals, constipation and hardening of the stomach, diarrhea, food sensitivity, sensitive to all temperature, pain in the thoracic spine, indigestion, heart burn
Hips and lower limbs- Hip pain, crackling joins, lower back pain, stiffness in across the thighs, hamstrings feel heavy, knees feel sore, eczema like patches in the knees and toes, loss of sensation in the feet, clumsy hips whilst walking, persistent cold feet
Other- Unexplained feelings of depression and anxiety, unexplained moodiness and irritability, want to be social, social anxiety. Bloods from doctors all come back normal, biomechanical testing from doctors and physiotherapists return normal, ruling out structural issues as a cause.
These illnesses in my opinion are due to mitochondrial dysfunction or stress of the mitochondria. 60% of doctors in the UK still do not believe in the validity of CFS/ME and Long-Covid and Endometriosis are slow to be diagnosed or accepted. Using alternative therapies that help you feel relaxed are beneficial to recovery. Not all will recover, but many people do. Information is growing and functional medicine testing will help you see why the systems of your body are responding against you. For some seeing a good therapist to treat the mind aspect will be enough. This is a complex and complicated area to understand fully, and very rarely do people match symptoms perfectly— symptoms will occur in each person at different times. The current biopsychosocial model say’s that much of this is all in the mind. For some a stressed mind can be causal and therapy offers relief. For others the physical biomarkers need to be addressed, whilst the cause maybe stress from a biopsychosocial point of view the physical issues are real and not all are directly caused or can be resolved with mind-based therapy. A full holistic approach to understanding what is happening in your mind and body can help with confidence and recovery.
Overview on Body Alignment and Chronic illness/pain
