BTW Twitter is blocking (at least for me) liking and commenting on your post there about this article. They appear to be limiting posts linked to Substack. Which is a pity as it has given me a lot to think about as regards my own issues.
Thank you! I agree but sometimes I imagine I wrecked my muscles since the slightest thing, like moving a potted plant, makes them sore. I wonder if muscles can be permanently damaged? I think you already answered by saying exercise intolerance is a symptom and not a cause, but I don't know if the fatigue after doing anything is different than muscle pain. Probably it's all part of the big, ugly, life-ruining package.😡
I might add, at the risk of inducing you're ire, if the fact that I was completely disassociated from my body and totally in my head for many years made it possible for me to continue doing something I was too old for and didn't have the build for. I'm 5’7” and weigh about 12 lbs. If I had built up muscles, I never saw them!
So that's a roundabout way of saying mind/body stuff matters in this, I think. There again, you seemed to have had plenty of body awareness! Aaarrrrggghhhh!
If I have to ask myself once more, “Ok, I'm sad, where do I feel it in my body?” once more, I'll shoot myself in the face. Ok, that was violent, but it's a tough road back to a body I hate. Ya know?
Thanks for being your intelligent, undeterred, and amusing self.
This was an interesting article. I've been wondering for years if I exercised myself into this state of Myofascial Pain Syndrome/Fibromyalgia/CFS/ME or WHATSTUPIDEVER this is. Maybe my story will add to your research. 2015 was also my own year of saying goodbye to everything fun I'd ever known. I was in my 50’s and a huge athlete. For 30 years I had been a triathlete so I happily ran, swam, cycled, hiked, mountain biked, etc., etc. before work. I did 100-mile bike rides regularly. For my 50th birthday, I did the 15-hour hike to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite. All of this, the harder the better. I loved it. I never got injured, I wasn't sore after stuff, and I never even felt tired. While still doing one sport before work each day, I settled into my eventual (and hardest) favorite, mountain biking. We were locally famous women. We were older ladies who could bike as long and as strong as the young men. We loved the work of it. I would come home all muddy after three hours of hammering the hills and before I'd go inside I would work in the garden for a few hours. No prob.
Then in 2015, one unfine day, I came home from a ride and felt tired. I didn't feel like gardening. I just wanted to sit around. I thought it was an off day but it kept happening. No pain, I just felt tired. Too tired. Eventually, the tiredness forced me to stop everything altogether. I was 57. You'd think I could then just take easy road bike rides around town, go for easy hikes, and swim a little. Nope, everything made me tired, and eventually, AFTER I STOPPED everything, it all began to hurt. My muscles felt worthless. I had to retire early. Here I am, eight years later and the same things hurt even though I haven't done ANYTHING to speak of. If I do the smallest thing I'm in pain for days.
So I had to wonder all these years, “Did I do this to myself?” Once I began to feel too tired to even think about biking, it only took a few months to be unable to do anything.
Other than you're continuing on in terrific pain for your sport, what is the difference in our experiences? If we caused our own weird illnesses, why we're the way we ended our sports so different? I stopped almost right away and you kept going yet we both landed here.
I'm no scientist and you are the brilliant one! What do you suppose?
Some of the causality may have run the other way... i.e. giving up ultimate became thinkable *because* your baseline & recovery capacity were dropping...? I often find myself mysteriously giving up on activities, and blaming my mood, or my character, only to find the next day that a virus has got ahold of me: my body knew I was sick, and took measures to accommodate it, before I did. (Whatever "I" means. Cognition is a weird gig.)
I've had an identical experience with hiking. Greatly exasperated symptoms after hiking, but when I took a break from hiking - exasperated symptoms! I'm trying to split the difference by taking it slower and mixing up my exercise (gym, bike, hike.) I tell myself it's down to age (I'm in my 60s) but I'm not convinced, and I miss the joy of a beautiful and strenuous 10 mile hike.
I’m sorry that that is happening.
Other people have said it more eloquently but… we want our lives to make sense. To have a certain narrative.
Looking back, I try to put things that happened to me in some sort of context, cause and effect but it doesn’t work. It doesn’t make sense.
What if it just doesn’t work that way? We don’t have control over our lives. Things just happen for no reason we can comprehend?
Sorry, that’s a bit meta. Again, sorry that your experiment did not have the result you were hoping for.
Thank-you. One less worry...
BTW Twitter is blocking (at least for me) liking and commenting on your post there about this article. They appear to be limiting posts linked to Substack. Which is a pity as it has given me a lot to think about as regards my own issues.
Thank you! I agree but sometimes I imagine I wrecked my muscles since the slightest thing, like moving a potted plant, makes them sore. I wonder if muscles can be permanently damaged? I think you already answered by saying exercise intolerance is a symptom and not a cause, but I don't know if the fatigue after doing anything is different than muscle pain. Probably it's all part of the big, ugly, life-ruining package.😡
I might add, at the risk of inducing you're ire, if the fact that I was completely disassociated from my body and totally in my head for many years made it possible for me to continue doing something I was too old for and didn't have the build for. I'm 5’7” and weigh about 12 lbs. If I had built up muscles, I never saw them!
So that's a roundabout way of saying mind/body stuff matters in this, I think. There again, you seemed to have had plenty of body awareness! Aaarrrrggghhhh!
If I have to ask myself once more, “Ok, I'm sad, where do I feel it in my body?” once more, I'll shoot myself in the face. Ok, that was violent, but it's a tough road back to a body I hate. Ya know?
Thanks for being your intelligent, undeterred, and amusing self.
This was an interesting article. I've been wondering for years if I exercised myself into this state of Myofascial Pain Syndrome/Fibromyalgia/CFS/ME or WHATSTUPIDEVER this is. Maybe my story will add to your research. 2015 was also my own year of saying goodbye to everything fun I'd ever known. I was in my 50’s and a huge athlete. For 30 years I had been a triathlete so I happily ran, swam, cycled, hiked, mountain biked, etc., etc. before work. I did 100-mile bike rides regularly. For my 50th birthday, I did the 15-hour hike to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite. All of this, the harder the better. I loved it. I never got injured, I wasn't sore after stuff, and I never even felt tired. While still doing one sport before work each day, I settled into my eventual (and hardest) favorite, mountain biking. We were locally famous women. We were older ladies who could bike as long and as strong as the young men. We loved the work of it. I would come home all muddy after three hours of hammering the hills and before I'd go inside I would work in the garden for a few hours. No prob.
Then in 2015, one unfine day, I came home from a ride and felt tired. I didn't feel like gardening. I just wanted to sit around. I thought it was an off day but it kept happening. No pain, I just felt tired. Too tired. Eventually, the tiredness forced me to stop everything altogether. I was 57. You'd think I could then just take easy road bike rides around town, go for easy hikes, and swim a little. Nope, everything made me tired, and eventually, AFTER I STOPPED everything, it all began to hurt. My muscles felt worthless. I had to retire early. Here I am, eight years later and the same things hurt even though I haven't done ANYTHING to speak of. If I do the smallest thing I'm in pain for days.
So I had to wonder all these years, “Did I do this to myself?” Once I began to feel too tired to even think about biking, it only took a few months to be unable to do anything.
Other than you're continuing on in terrific pain for your sport, what is the difference in our experiences? If we caused our own weird illnesses, why we're the way we ended our sports so different? I stopped almost right away and you kept going yet we both landed here.
I'm no scientist and you are the brilliant one! What do you suppose?
Jody Eastman
California
Some of the causality may have run the other way... i.e. giving up ultimate became thinkable *because* your baseline & recovery capacity were dropping...? I often find myself mysteriously giving up on activities, and blaming my mood, or my character, only to find the next day that a virus has got ahold of me: my body knew I was sick, and took measures to accommodate it, before I did. (Whatever "I" means. Cognition is a weird gig.)
I've had an identical experience with hiking. Greatly exasperated symptoms after hiking, but when I took a break from hiking - exasperated symptoms! I'm trying to split the difference by taking it slower and mixing up my exercise (gym, bike, hike.) I tell myself it's down to age (I'm in my 60s) but I'm not convinced, and I miss the joy of a beautiful and strenuous 10 mile hike.