#it’s so hard to have to explain my entire genetic disorder to every new medical professional I see

[chaoticwhenever]

I have only cried once today so I literally gave myself a gold star sticker because I deserve it. I have had at least one meltdown for a multitude of reasons this past month.

[echo-of-sounds]

body hair

Small headcanons with Aizawa, Toshi, Hizashi, Fatgum, and Gang Orca comforting their partner with body hair.

Some of these aren’t definite as to gender, but they do come from my view/perspective as a woman with PCOS. And while the headcanons vary a tiny bit, all these guys are adults. They aren’t childish and immature when it comes to sex and people’s bodies. Having or not having hair won’t make or break a relationship with them. If they want you, they want all of you.

Warnings: nothing incredibly explicit, but a couple of these talk about sex

Aizawa Shouta

Aizawa really doesn’t care. Of course, it feels different but he just doesn’t care. Any hair, no hair, dark hair, coarse hair, none of it matters to him. He knows every body is different for a number of reasons; genetics, a side effect of a medication or a disorder/illness, or that’s just the way you are. 

And even though it doesn’t bother him, he’s very aware if it bothers you. It’s easy to tell by the way you choose your clothing or hide your arms from any onlookers or hold your jaw so the hairs are hidden. Soft and caring words don’t come easy to him. But he tries for you. He tries so damn hard. Those times when you’re shaving and plucking till your skin is raw and dry and itchy, he’ll intervene. Wanting to feel beautiful is one thing. But doing it to the point your skin is damaged and you’re becoming obsessive is another.

He’ll rub your arms and kiss your jaw, whispering that hair doesn’t make you any less feminine or beautiful. If other people are bothered, that’s their problem. And he won’t hesitate to talk to them in his calm but also threatening ‘teacher’ voice and lead you away.

Just as you can enjoy the grazing of his scruff, he enjoys the sensation of hair while he’s eating you out. When he fingers you, the hair is warm and protective. And feeling it get wet the more excited you are, excites him.

Yagi Toshinori

When his hand caresses your stomach and you shy away, his heart breaks. Or when you glare at the back of your arm because ‘women shouldn’t have hair there,’ he hurts at your self-disgust. Or when you spend hours at the mirror, finicking and trying to ‘cure’ yourself until you look at least ‘acceptable,’ he becomes incredibly distressed at your near self-destructive picking and plucking and shaving.

Toshi will step in when it gets to that point. He’ll gently take away whatever you’re using and guide you to the bed. Don’t hide what you’re insecure about. Talk with him. He’s always going to listen to you and kiss your fingers as you curl up and explain the self-doubts. He’ll also make sure your skin is taken care of with face masks or hydrating cleanser. If you ask, he’ll definitely do them with you.

Allround, he is not a hairy man and he rarely needs to trim what little he has. For his partner, he has no expectations of body hair. He enjoys shaved, trimmed, or natural. What truly matters to him is your comfort and preference. And, of course, your pleasure when he’s licking and fingering you.

Yamada Hizashi

Hizashi knows the most about beauty out of the guys and he completely understands how standards affect people’s self-esteem. Hair on your arms or upper lip or breasts means nothing to him. Days when you’re insecure, he’ll cuddle and go on and on about your beauty. Anytime you’re looking into some new product, he’ll join, making sure it’s good enough for you. Because his baby deserves the best.

If you want help shaping your eyebrows or shaving anywhere (literally anywhere), he’s your man. After, he’ll apply lotion everywhere (literally everywhere). His hands learn your body quickly, shaping over your legs and stomach in reverence, kissing any skin and marks and parts you’re insecure about. You can sit on his lap, back to his chest, legs spread, and he’ll massage oil into your thighs and stomach while slowly and gently circling your clit.

When Hizashi’s eating you out, he absolutely delights in pressing his nose into your hair, doesn’t matter if it’s long curls or shorter strands. He simply wants to smell and taste you as much as possible. Though he does find it extremely cute if you shave in designs. And he’ll totally borrow your stencils so he can do it too. You can match with little hearts.

Fatgum

Whenever you hesitate to show Taishiro your body because you don’t like it, he’s saddened to the extremes. He loathes you hating any part of yourself. Or thinking it isn’t feminine or charming. He’ll poke between your eyebrows and rub your jaw, convincing you of your beauty.

Magazines, posters, advertisements, and even just social media filters want to make you flawless, hairless. You look at your arms, hands, and fingers in comparison and the noticeable, dark hair is never portrayed. It’s seen as ugly, too masculine, almost unclean. Everything’s trying to get you to be a perfect, plastic doll. A hand on your back will guide you away from the beauty posters. To let you know you’re not alone, he confides his own insecurities: his stretch marks, his stomach, and how he sometimes feels unattractive in his fat form. 

Tai treasures any hair on your lower tummy. He’ll slowly lift your shirt, making sure you’re comfortable every inch of the way, and kiss the line of hair leading to your panties. He tickles and blows raspberries to hear your laugh. As your underwear is gently lowered, flattery and fawning tickle your thighs, lips and teeth bruise your skin, swelling and worshiping your entire body.

Gang Orca

Hair isn’t on Kugo’s radar because he doesn’t have any. He’s never thought about it for himself so he’s never thought about it on his partner. Humans have hair. It isn’t manly or feminine. It’s just basic biology.

Once in a relationship and through other people’s smutty conversations, he’s quite surprised to learn how many opinions there are on it. He’ll pay attention to where you stand. He’d despise anyone or anything making you feel uncomfortable with your own body. That commercial is utter bullshit- your arms and face don’t need to be hairless. That article is just plain dumb- pubic hair isn’t gross. You don’t need to shave to please your partner.

As much as he hates seeing you self-conscious, he’s a little stumped when it comes to comforting you. He knows what it’s like to feel frustrated with your body but he doesn’t know how to express his love and how beautiful you are in a consoling way. Words get jumbled. Frustration with himself worsens it. To make up for any tangled compliments, he snuggles you… preferably naked so he can nuzzle and cuddle your nerves away.

And since Kugo doesn’t have hair, he actually really adores feeling it on his partner: running his hand down your arms, caressing the soft hairs, licking your jaw and stomach, loving the tactility on his tongue, and sliding his fingers into your panties, exploring any curls and strands and fluff.

[crushaa]

Explaining the long break and how I got diagnosed with ADHD:

This is a post about mental health. There’s a TLDR at the bottom :) 

“Apply yourself, Cien. If you wanted to pass this class, you would be trying.” 

When I was 15, I got my tonsils out. I got the same kind of statement from a few friends and even family members; “Oh yeah, they used to take EVERYONE’S tonsils out! Even if they didn’t need it, it was the cure to everything. But now everyone’s got ADHD, so that’s the new trend.” 

Around the end of July 2019, I was running out of steam. I still had plenty of creative energy, but I couldn't understand why I wasn't able to work on anything anymore. The truth is that I knew I would hit another music block, and I wouldn't be surprised if anyone else expected it too. My posting history has always been very irregular, even back in high school with long unexplained breaks in between new songs. Knowing it would happen, I felt confident in my ability to tackle it and change my pattern of behavior.

I never thought it would last this long. With each month passing by I began to feel guiltier and guiltier, trying to find out why I couldn't do it. I'd sit in front of an empty FL Studio project for hours, and all my Paint Tool Sai canvases never had more than a few lines.  As the months went on, some pretty dramatic life events took place- various family deaths, 2 near death experiences myself, an abusive doctor. For whatever reason, I just could not recover. 

I used the tragedies as excuses as to why I couldn't do it. It would be reasonable to not be able to do anything. My antidepressants were definitely working for the first time in my life, but why couldn’t I work? I spent the New Year holiday feeling just as guilty and frustrated as ever…. I couldn’t do it anymore. I decided that I was going to go back to my doctors loaded with new theories and ideas as to what could possibly be wrong with me. It never occured to me to tell anyone I couldn’t write more than 2-3 songs in one year when it’s literally my job to write music. 

I began speculating the possibility of another psychiatric disorder, and that made me nervous. Would she think I was lying? Or faking it? I could no longer stand the treatment from the nurse practitioner who had been treating my psychiatric illnesses. I’d always been very uncomfortable with how she treated me, but she’d found the rare genetic disorder I had. I felt that I owed my progress to her and that I should stick it out. But I was still leaving her office in tears at the end of every session. An off color comment, passive aggressive reminders to take my medication, the feeling that I had no say in my own treatment plan… it was too much.  But she was the only one in town who was available to see me. So I went, and I was administered an MMPI by a psychiatrist in that same building. At the end of February, I’d get the results.  

The next appointment with her was the last time she’s ever going to see me. The results of the test had come in as inconclusive, and my world fell apart. She asked what I thought of the results, and I answered truthfully. I told her I was afraid that she saw me as a hypochondriac. 

“Well what if you are?” I didn’t answer. “Well, you are,” she went on with a cocky smile. 

She began to tell me it was my own fault. She told me I had brain damage. But it was fine, because she told me I could be treated for believing I was still sick. 

It affected me deeply, for days I couldn’t stop crying or eat a full meal. The guilt, frustration and embarrassment swallowed me whole; the problem was me. Of course I was making it up. I felt suicidal for the first time in 4 years. There was no point in trying anymore because I as a whole was defective. This world would be better off without a lost cause like me. 

I pulled myself out of this headspace for a while one day, and realized that a HEALTH CARE PROVIDER made me feel this way. 

WHERE WAS THE BRAIN SCAN, BITCH????

 All the guilt, embarrassment, shame- it morphed into a new red hot burning rage. I fired her immediately and revoked any permissions she had. I went to my primary care doctor and asked him to prescribe me my psychiatric medications while I looked for a new psychiatrist, to which he agreed. I asked him for an ADHD test, but he wasn’t comfortable doing it himself. He referred me to a psychiatrist with a 6 month waiting list who then tried to refer me to the abusive nurse practitioner. I set up the six month appointment wait and began to look into doctors in other towns.

On Monday, April 6th, I went to go see a different doctor for something completely unrelated and walked out with an ADHD (Inattentive type) diagnosis. And now less than a week later, everything about my life has changed. 7 long months of executive dysfunction came to an end in the 1 hour it took for the first half-pill to dissolve. Hot damn. 

It felt like everyone else in the world was allowed to use the sidewalk to get from place to place, but there was a rule that I had to dodge incoming traffic to get anywhere. Now, I can use the sidewalk too. I am relearning everything that I know. 

I am no longer ashamed that I have the GPA of a baked potato. I know that I am not lazy, I am not stupid, and this was NOT my own fault; I was sick and nobody knew. The signs were there, but how we view ADHD has changed entirely since I was a child! People still called it ADD. So why was it so hard to get diagnosed in this day and age?

The stigma has shifted into something far more dangerous than I’ve ever realized it was. I don’t hear “I have ADHD OO SHINY” jokes anymore, you know? We believe it to be a grossly overdiagnosed behavioral disorder meant to punish children for having a lot of energy. We wave it off, calling it the new tonsil removal surgery trend. Of the three types of ADHD; Predominantly Hyper-Impulsive, Predominantly Inattentive (that’s me!), and Combined Type; a mix of the two, there tends to be more stigmatized attention towards the hyper-impulsive type. We believe in what we see, breaking the first rule of mental illness: Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. 

This leaves those suffering from both inattentive type and combined type to rot. Attention deficiency itself doesn’t have much of a stigma because it isn’t even seen as having a seat at the ADHD table. This is catastrophic and will continue to destroy lives because people don’t feel hyper enough to even consider that they might have ADHD. In turn, those who are told to try harder, apply themselves, stop procrastinating, and to stop being so lazy do not receive the proper care they need. Those who suffer without treatment get worse over time; they lose confidence in themselves, they don’t start new things in fear of the inability to finish, they break promises to friends and family with the inability to follow through, damaging important relationships beyond repair. 

My confidence has been shattered. I was the artist who failed art class. College was never an option because I knew I’d go straight back to failing every class I took. I feel like I am a burden and the token “lost cause” of my family, the one everybody worries about because I’m not right in the head. I’ve grown to become a reclusive, bashful adult who struggles to make and answer phone calls and emails. ADHD devastated my life in deeper ways than my OCD, my PTSD, my anxiety or depression ever could. 

The number of diagnoses are going up because we can recognize it better. This is not a bad thing- science is evolving to show possible causes of the disorder itself. We know not to smoke while pregnant anymore, we know not to eat and drink high fructose corn syrup, we know not to sit in front of blue light screens all day, and we’ll continue to learn.

As soon as I started my medication, I was able to start taking care of myself and working again. The symptoms of my other mental illnesses began to let up, and I felt like a human being for the first time in my life. I have control over my own emotions- I can walk on the sidewalk with everyone else, I am free. 

However, it’s going to take the rest of my life to unlearn the methods I came up with to perform basic self-care functions. It will take many years to gain confidence in myself, to make phone calls without shaking or to even consider the thought of college, potato grades and all. But my mindset has transformed from “I can’t” to “Maybe I could try,” --a first for me. 

Question everything, don’t settle for the minimum, and don’t stop fighting. Thanks for reading this post. I'm hard at work on Propaganda part 2 and hope to post it on May 31st. See you then :-) 

TLDR: ADHD destroyed my life in ways my depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses never could. The stigma surrounding ADHD is shifting to become more dangerous than it has been in the past.  

We live in a society.

[tailahjanbash]

The Christian, Mental Illness, and The Cure

Mental health has been a topic that has been circulating around culture and around the church a lot in 2019.

As a girl, I struggled with an eating disorder. I had anorexia for about a year. I weighed around 95 pounds, and hardly ate anything. I remember feeling ugly, worthless, and trapped inside a body I hated. The thing was, I had been a Christian my entire life. I knew Jesus loved me, I loved him back, and I knew that he healed people… but I never personally invited him into my mess. As a result, I suffered from mental illness.

I vividly remember being in a worship service, lifting my hands and surrendering every area of my life and pain to Jesus. In that moment, I physically felt weights being lifted off of me, and I knew my eating disorder was gone. I didn’t know it at the time, but The Lord had cast an oppressive spirit out of me.

As Christians, it’s absolutely possible to go to church every week, know all the stories, believe and still. be. oppressed.

So why are there so many Christians tormented by mental illness, if Jesus already conquered every sin, death, and disease?

Some people might argue that it is because we live in a fallen world. There will always be pain and sometimes we just have to suffer. But this completely undermines scripture and the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross. When we come into agreement with our mental illness or pain, we are saying “Jesus, you died for me so I could get into heaven, but your sacrifice wasn’t powerful enough to take away the pain of this world.”

Yes, we live in a fallen world. Yes, life is going to be hard. Will we face difficulties? Absolutely. But we are promised that we will overcome, because the true word of God says:

The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. Deuteronomy 28:7

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. John 10:10

But the question still remains:

Why are there so many Christians tormented by mental illness, if Jesus already conquered sickness and death?

There are three common reasons that I have found:

1. We are not empowered by the Holy Spirit – We talk so much about God the Father and King Jesus, but the third part of the God Head is often overlooked in the contemporary church. The Holy Spirit. He is a person and he is a gift. The Holy Spirit empowers us, strengthens us, and delivers us from sin. We are instructed to undergo two baptisms—water baptism, then baptism of The Holy Spirit (Luke 3:16). That means simply praying and inviting the Holy Spirit to come and fill you.  It is impossible to live the Christian life fully when we are apart from the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

You will know when you have been baptized in the Holy Spirit because you will be filled with new power. You will be able to operate in the spiritual gifts that the bible describes in 2 Corinthians 14, you will have the power to be able to live in freedom, and to command the Enemy to leave. You will begin to develop the fruits of the spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) and hear God’s voice.

If your relationship with God feels dry, powerless, or stagnant, that is a good indicator that you are in need of the Holy Spirit. It is also important to note that being baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit is NOT a one-time thing like water baptism can be. There is the initial asking/baptism experience with Him, but we have to continuously be filled with the Holy Spirit. This means asking the Him to fill you daily.

2. We are uneducated about deliverance. Deliverance ministry is a ministry of the church that concentrates on spiritual freedom. When we study scripture, we learn that there are demons, they constantly work to oppress humanity, and that we must be on our guard, ready to fight and conquer the schemes of Satan. (Ephesians 6:12, 1 Cor 16:13-14).

Deliverance ministry often happens when the afflicted person takes a step back from their situation and realizes that they cannot keep living this way. The oppressed Christian realizes they need rescuing from compulsive sins or behaviors they cannot stop committing or have little control over, such as alcoholism or a drug addiction.

In my case in 2017, I was horribly tormented by anxiety. I reached a point where I could not take it anymore. I had panic attacks every single day and tried taking supplements and different forms of “self-care” remedies. They did not work.

I finally went to my spiritual mentor and told her that I had been ridden with deep anxiety for months.We prayed together and a demonic spirit of anxiety left my body. Since that day, I have not had panic attacks and am no longer bound to anxiety. I have total and complete healing from that mental illness.

Many times, especially when someone initially goes through deliverance, it looks like what I did–partnering with a spiritual leader or mentor who is filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit and breaking off demonic strongholds by the power of prayer. Deliverance is a serious step towards freedom, and those seeking it should be fully accepting of the lordship of Jesus in their life and ready to turn away from their sin.

3. We do not take authority over the enemy. A lot of Christians pray, plead, and hope that God will someday take their illness away instead of standing ground and taking authority over the spirits attacking their mind. This of course, comes after deliverance once that bondage has been broken and you have freed yourself from the oppressive spirits.

Imagine your teacher gives you an assignment to complete. She has given you all of the instructions on how to complete the project, but you refuse to read the directions and instead have a melt down and send her countless emails begging her to complete the assignment for you. Is your teacher going to do that? Doubtful.

Why do we do that with God? We refuse to read our bibles—the instructions for how to live a free and whole life—then beg him to take away our torment. Will he do it? If you wish and hope and pray, I mean He’s God… He can. But if you continue to sit back and let the enemy bully you, you will never grow in your faith. When we refuse to learn spiritual warfare, we live a life of spiritual immaturity and compromise—you will survive but never be able to thrive. You will be powerless over every wave the enemy throws at you and be swallowed up in torment.

The good news is, that is not what God has intended for your story.

The bible tells us to take every thought captive (2 Cor 10:15). We are to call out those invasive, compulsive, and negative thoughts and cast them back into the pit of hell where they belong.

Christians must understand that their identity is royal because they are a child of God and are not subject to any kind of torment from the kingdom of darkness.

You have all authority and power over the enemy because the king of kings lives inside of you.  When we don’t know our identity in Christ and who He says we are, we allow darkness to push us around.

    Part 2: Examples from the Bible

Pastor and theologian Neil T. Anderson writes, “Christians who think demons were active when Christ was on earth, but their activity has subsided are not embracing the whole counsel of God in light of what His word says, nor are they facing reality.”

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:10-12

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 1 Peter 5:8

If demonic forces are not actively trying to oppress believers, why would Paul instruct us to wear the armor of God and continuously fight against our enemies?

Now that we have established that there are spirits, the bible continues to go into even more details about the kinds of spirits that attempt to torment us.

For God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control. 2 Timothy 1:7

We see from this verse that fear/anxiety is not simply a chemical imbalance, but a spirit. Does your body have a physical reaction to the Spiritual climate? Absolutely. That is why psychologists can only tell you what is happening in your body once that anxiety enters. It cannot explain how or why anxiety got there. A Harvard Medical article stated, “Nerve cell connections, nerve cell growth, and the functioning of nerve circuits have a major impact on depression. Still, their understanding of the neurological underpinnings of mood is incomplete.”

Neurological scans and doctors can only tell you the physiological affects that mental illness, in this case depression, can cause you. Their best guess is either the mental illness was passed down genetically, or that it is the aftermath of trauma.

Can I tell you something, friends? We are not just bodies. You are a complex being, made up of a spirit that God breathed into, a soul that contains your will and emotions, and a physical body. All of these work together and affect one another. They are not separated but work together and make up YOU!

Scripture tell us that generational curses are the cause of illnesses passed down throughout our families, and that they are not only physical but spiritual (Exodus 34:7) . They can be broken by the power of Christ through deliverance, and we can receive total and complete healing. This doesn’t sound like science and faith bumping heads, but actually explaining one another!

When you really think about it, it makes so much sense. They work together because He is the author and creator of our body, spirit, soul and science.

If we write off what the bible says about mental illness because it wasn’t around when modern medicine was, then we are undermining Gods word and authority. We are picking and choosing aspects of the bible to believe and parts to throw away. When we do this, we are saying that the bible is not truth, but just good teaching that we can pick and choose where to apply and where to ignore. In other words, it is being your own god.

The Bible does not shy away from talking about mental illness, so the church shouldn’t either.

Scripture actually tell us not to be afraid 365 times! One for every day of the year. Jesus even tells us not to be anxious about our lives! (Matthew 6:25-34)

If we are instructed not to be anxious, but instead to cast out fear, then this means that we have dominion over it!

The bible even goes beyond depression and anxiety—it discusses insanity, confusion, madness, epilepsy, self-harm, and suicide. These are only a few references that I could find quickly.  The scriptures do not tell us that these people only had medical issues, but spiritual ones, and that these mental illnesses came from unclean spirits, or demons. Ref: Isa 61:3, 2 Tim 1:7, 1 Sam 16:14, Matt 4:24, Mark 5:5

Throughout the gospels of Jesus, multitudes of mentally and physically ill people were brought to Jesus and he rebuked demons out of them. We see this in the cases of epilepsy, Tourette’s, self-harm, even crippled people were physically healed by Jesus simply rebuking a spirit out of them. From this we learn that demons can cause mental and physical illness. Do they cause every single form? No, some people that were brought to Jesus were just sick. But the same resolution was found every time a sick person, mental or physical, was brought to Jesus: he healed them.

And that same healing is available to you through Jesus.

The Young Boy With Epilepsy (Matthew 17:14-20)

And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to him and, kneeling before him, said, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly. For often he falls into the fire, and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.” And Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.” And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly.

Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

There is SO much to unpack here, we don’t have time to get into all of it. But BELIEVING for the healing is what caused this young man to be healed of his mental illness. The disciples all followed and loved Jesus, but they did not have any faith that he could cure the young man from epilepsy! Jesus then rebukes his followers and calls their generation perverse because they didn’t believe he could cure the disease.

So often, we are the disciples in this story. There was a season of my life where I was overwhelmed with severe depression. During those days, the darkness felt more real than the presence of God. It wasn’t until I cast out that spirit of heaviness that l could see that I was believing the lies it fed me: My sorrow was too great for God to take away. That I was unlovable and meant to be alone. That God hated me, and my depression was punishment for being a bad daughter.

What lies have you adopted?

We must see through the lies of the enemy, even when our emotions and mental state seem so out of control and wounded. People are in bondage to the lies they believe, which is why we must reject every statement about ourselves that does not align with scripture. We do this by reading the word and learning about who he says we are.

This is why Jesus says, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” John 8:32

I do want to bring up medication briefly, because I know there will be questions and people will probably make inaccurate assumptions.

I am not telling anyone to go to their kitchen and dump out their medicine or neglect what their physicians have told them. Doctors, medicine, and therapists can be wonderful help, but they are not the hope.

In the words of pastor Henry Seeley, “I’m not here to give you medical advice. But I believe that God has more for you than just spending the rest of your life dependent on medication. Medication might take a season, and that’s okay, that could be part of the journey for some of you. But if I went to the doctor, and the doctor told me there was something wrong and I need to take Tylenol every day for the rest of my life, I would question what that kind of advice that is. Because that is acknowledging that something is wrong, but rather than fixing what is wrong, we are just going to cover it up so you can cope for the rest of your life.”

Part 3: Walking In Freedom

What does it look like to practically walk out everything we just discussed?

We must be filled with the Holy Spirit daily

We should seek deliverance and spiritual freedom if we notice there are areas in our lives that are not submitted to and ruled by The Lord Jesus.

We must put on the armor of God daily (Ephesians 6)

We should spend time daily reading the bible, worshipping, and praying in the presence of God.

We must stand firm, speak scripture over ourselves, and pray against the enemy when the attacks come.

All of these steps can be accomplished by having a healthy and vibrant prayer life. The more time you spend talking with God the more truths he will reveal to you about the journey you are on.

One of the pastors at our church said something profound the other day. He said, “The dark places where the church doesn’t go and spread the gospel, will come to infiltrate the church.”

I heard the Holy Spirit say, “That is what has happened to my church with mental illness.”

My heart broke when I heard that. And I began to work on this blog post.

As the church, we must be vigilant followers of Jesus who do not conform to the thinking patterns of our culture and society. We must take the narrative back and view contemporary issues through the lens of the one we are following, who IS truth.

Our world is so starved of the truth right now—we are constantly lied to in news, media, politics, and religion. We cannot follow the world and choose to be our own source of truth. We have seen where this has gotten our world. Mental illnesses, addictions, racism, divorce rates, murders, suicides, and terror attacks have continued to rise. People are lost and in despair because they do not know healing is available to them. What is the church going to do about it?

Are we too busy bickering about if mental health is a spiritual issue? The differences between doctrines? We have the answer, we have the healing, we have wholeness because we have Jesus.

His sacrifice was so powerful, it erased sin, death, sickness, and disease. When Jesus rose from the dead, it was so you didn’t have to cope and live with mental illness. He overcame it so you could have life to the full!

If you are still waiting for the healing, then it is for a reason and that reason will be revealed in His perfect timing. But hear me when I say, the healing will come as long as we seek Him and seek spiritual freedom.

It’s okay to not be okay, but it’s not okay to stay there. We have a hope greater than and outside of medicine, doctors, or a diagnosis. We have Jesus.

[lotsofdogs]

More On Set Points And Why I'm Not Fond Of Them

Seems my last post struck many different chords depending on the lens with which it was read. Some people read it as stating that they're not trying hard enough. Others read it as there's no point in trying. Others agreed with me. So for clarity, here's a bit more. Me stating that lifestyles matter, that sociology matters, that our lives' patterns matter, and that they in turn help to explain why people often regain all of their lost weight when what's usually an overly restrictive weight loss effort is abandoned isn't me stating that people ought to be able to just tough out overly restrictive weight loss efforts. It's me pointing out that if your weight is currently stable, you're in equilibrium. You have, like we all do, an average daily caloric intake and output which of course includes things beyond your control (including genetics, medical co-morbidities and medications, job requirements and responsibilities, caregiver responsibilities, and more), out of the realm of your conscious ability to control (food marketing, societal and social norms, the constant, usually well-intentioned thrust of food at every turn, and more), and things that are unfair to expect you to control (largely the normal use of food to socialize with your friends and families). These are the sorts of the things that make up something some refer to as your "expososome", and I think the impact emigration tends to have on weight, which depending on your starting and finishing countries may well increase or decrease yours, is a clear example of how it influences your equilibrium. But regardless of your expososome, yes, there are things within your control to change that can affect your weight (though definitely not free from being influenced from many of those out of control factors) like how many meals you cook and your cooking skills, your liquid calorie consumption, your frequency of meals and snacks, the macronutrient composition of your diets, exercise, and more. And it's also true that for some, their lives' realities preclude intentional behaviour change. What I was talking about yesterday, are the people who regain all of the weight they've lost with any given effort. These tend to be people who ultimately, for various reasons, are unable to continue with their change efforts. Instead, likely, not all at once, their efforts wane, then end, and those people find their way back to all of the original behaviours, factors, and choices that they were living with prior to their changes, which in turn brings back all of their old calories, eventually bringing their weights back to that same place where they were before (or perhaps even slightly higher consequent to metabolic adaptation leading them to burn fewer calories at a comparable weight than prior to their weight loss effort). Why does this happen? I think for a significant percentage of people it happens because the changes they employed were too severe. Maybe they were perpetually hungry, or denying themselves foods they loved and enjoyed, or they cut out entire food groups, or they found themselves unable to enjoy a meal out with friends, or regularly having to cook multiple meals (one for them, and one for their family). In short, the efforts many people undertake aren't by definition sustainable. They're for-now efforts, not for-good efforts. And I think the reason so many choose those types of approaches is that society (including the public health and research communities) generally describe total weight loss as the goalpost, and so people take on extreme efforts, because that's pretty much the only way to get there. On the other hand, those individuals who lose weight and keep it off? While they nearly never are people who lose every last ounce that some stupid table says they should, there are huge numbers of them who've managed to lose a subtotal amount of weight and keep it off. Knowing these people, reading about these people, their most common denominator is that they enjoy the new lifestyles they've crafted sufficiently so as not to perceive them as suffering. So if you want to lose weight, you're going to have to change some of those things that are within your control to change, but you're also going to have to pick changes that you can honestly enjoy if you want to keep the weight you lose, off. And different people, for a whole host of reasons, will have fewer things they're able to change, not to mention the fact that life and circumstances will also have a say as time goes by. But for everyone, change generally means embracing imperfection, still eating food for comfort and celebration, still socializing with friends and family, and more. And the degree of changes you'll be able to sustain will undoubtedly be impacted by many things beyond your control, and your physiology will undeniably limit your losses and the amount you're able to change without suffering. But that doesn't mean that physiology will prevent you from ever making any changes. Maybe, if we all aimed for smaller, more realistic, less extreme, but all the while plainly sustainable changes, and as a society we stopped with Biggest Loser style efforts, and we redefined success, we'd see a great deal more of it.

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Why I Still Have Issues With Set Point Theory And Weight Regain

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[arabellaflynn]

I keep going through cycles where I try to convince myself that there's nothing wrong with me, I'm just a lazy sod, and I'm whining over nothing. Symptoms are subjective. Nobody likes getting up early in the morning, they do it anyway. Nobody likes hot muggy weather, but they don't let themselves melt into a useless puddle on the bed all afternoon. Then shit happens, and I am reminded that not only are all the things I think are wrong with me actually wrong with me, I am usually introduced to a brand-new symptom that I didn't even fucking know was a thing. The tech who did my hip imaging mentioned in passing that low body temperature was a known feature of EDS. Judging from the comments I got when the nurse couldn't get an IV into me last week, and the fact that she tried to fix that by heaping me with heated blankets, I don't just think my hands and feet are always cold, or feel chilled when I'm short on sleep, I actually am having temperature regulation issues. I have kind of given up on asking people to diagnose me officially and just started telling medical people I have Ehlers-Danlos. If they ask where I got the diagnosis, I say 'me'. It hasn't started an outright argument yet, but I'm waiting. A word on medical self-diagnosis: Don't. If you want a few more words on it, don't bother unless you've already exhausted all the reasonable options, are willing (and able) to essentially put yourself through med school lite via getting your university-affiliated friends to steal things off PubMed for you, and are willing to concede the argument to your actual doctor if in fact you turn out to be wrong. Because you will turn out to be wrong a lot, and while your doctor might not actually know what you have, s/he probably has a better idea of what will outright kill you than some random yobbo who put a FAQ up on Squarespace and called it a day. This is also one of those things where I'm going to go 'do as I say, not as I do'. I've gotten away with a lot of incredibly dumbass things in my life. The fact that I'm here to tell you about them is just survivor bias. If any one of them hadn't worked out, you wouldn't be hearing the story. There's a phrase in medicine: "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras". There are horses all over the world, but zebras only live in one chunk of Africa. If you hear something clopping up to your boring suburban practice, the odds that it's anything but your average everyday horse are extremely low. The odds of it being a zebra, however, are not zero. They do exist somewhere. Ehlers-Danlos patients have adopted "zebra" as a sort of collective nickname. The best research I can find gives a rate of 0.02-0.04%, although that's probably way low -- the severity of symptoms varies from person to person, and it's possible to just not have any idea there's a reason why your elbows pop backwards. So far all of the other medically bendy people I've run into weren't diagnosed until well into adulthood, simply because nobody thought to ask. There's no good lab test for hypermobility type, which is the one I have. They can test for genetic markers, but unlike some of the other varieties, HT is not associated with any one specific mutation, so it's kind of worthless. I am quite sure I have it anyway. It is the only potential diagnosis I've ever run into that I can explain without having to involve the phrase, "but I'm weird." Take anxiety, for example. The definition of an anxiety disorder is "huge amounts of anxiety that may or may not have any relation to reality or logic, but are nevertheless ruining your life," so I definitely have that. It's listed on my records as "anxiety disorder NOS" i.e., 'not otherwise specified', because it doesn't really fit any of the standard listings. Most anxiety is at least partly psychogenic -- you talk yourself into having panic attacks, or at least have a hard time asserting enough logic to talk yourself out of them. There's an emotional element of sheer terror. People who have panic attacks have been known to mistake them for heart attacks or strokes and hie themselves to the ER, more than once. They're not stupid, and they don't think the doctor's incompetent; it's just that when you're in the middle of it, the fear convinces you that, yeah, the first three turned out not to be pulmonary embolism after all, but what if this is the one you can't ignore?  I always weirded out the psych personnel, because I don't do that. I always know what it is, I know that I'm not dying, and I know what they can give me to fix it. My stress levels are obviously high at that point, but it's always over some kind of life events that are legitimately stressful. 'Talking myself out of it' doesn't work because there's nothing to argue with myself about: I know I'm not in mortal danger, it just doesn't make any difference. When something startles me, first I hit the ceiling. Then, a few milliseconds later when it's time to file the Incident Report, my brain scrawls some completely random shit on the form, jams it in the outbox, and congratulates itself on a job well done. It immediately gets bunged through the reality tester, where it fails harder than an absentee stoner in a DiffEq course ("Mr Amygdala, you cannot throw the entire system into panic mode every time the Weather Service flies a Cessna overhead, on the grounds that it -- and I quote -- 'might be carrying a nuclear payload.' Unquote."), but it doesn't matter. The fight-or-flight thing is off and running. And I can't withdraw to calm down, because by that point, I am startled by almost literally everything in the entire universe, and there just isn't enough time between the air molecules giving me jump scares. Ehlers-Danlos is the only diagnosis I have ever found that would make all of the bizarre things I run into on a daily basis completely normal. It doesn't just explain all the crazy seemingly-unrelated shit that goes wrong, it also explains a lot of the crazy seemingly-unrelated shit that goes right. I span several Fächer in singing -- I'm not record-breaking or anything, but if I'm in regular practice, I can sing most of "Phantom of the Opera" by myself, less the Phantom's bottom note, and Christine's top 1-2 whistle voice shrieks. EDS is a collection of mutations affecting collagen production, and I bet you can guess what vocal cords are made of. The ability to hit the specific note I'm aiming for is a matter of practice, but I have extra singing range in my voice for the same reason I have extra rotational range in my hip joints. from Blogger http://ift.tt/2nrkCm7 via IFTTT -------------------- Enjoy my writing? Consider becoming a Patron, subscribing via Kindle, or just toss a little something in my tip jar. Thanks!

[ihearticie]

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

The fetal echocardiogram was scheduled for 10 am. I couldn’t help but judge the other pregnant women in the waiting room that already had healthy children with them. I was not happy. I was trying to disconnect myself from the situation I was in. I wanted to not feel. Once in the sonogram room it was the same ol’ song and dance. The tech was really nice but I wanted no parts of conversation at that point. I just wanted to get it over with and get answers. I had the entire weekend to think about what horrible things could be going on with our baby’s heart and could care less about small talk. The tech told Carl and I that the pediatric cardiologist was following along remotely in the other room as the fetal echo was taking place. The sonogram was all based around our daughter Icie’s heart. I did get see her little self moving around from time to time on the screen and it just made me want to cry. Once done we were moved to the pediatric cardiologists room. She wasted no time telling us what she saw and what was going on with Icie. Carl and I were told that Icie had Tetralogy of Fallot. The doctor had a printout of a heart and showed us what she meant. It is a heart defect that has four problems. 1. A hole in the lower chambers of the heart 2. Pulmonary valve is to narrow 3. The aorta lies right over the hole in the lower chambers 4. The muscle surrounding the lower right chamber becomes overly thick. I sat there wide eyed and just listened to what she was telling us. She told us to let her know if she was going to fast because she understood it was a lot to take in. I’m pretty sure I told her that I had no idea what that diagnosis meant, like in real world situations. I understood the physical issue of the heart but what does that mean for our baby? She went down the list of what it means. Once born, Icie would be taken from me, wiped down and would have her O2 levels monitored. The cardiologist told me that mothers of babies with TOF usually don’t get to be close and hold their baby after birth. ( This was another instance that I felt my first time mother experience was being taken from me.) If her O2 levels dip below 85 Icie would get transported to Children’s Hospital. Once there she would have open heart surgery to patch the hole in her heart and to slit the pulmonary valve then stitch a piece of gore tex material over the valve to make it wider. She would stay at Children’s Hospital for ????? amount of time till she improved. During this time I’m expected to stay in the hospital for 3 days after giving birth while Carl runs to Children’s Hospital to be with Icie. Good luck with keeping me there! Unless I am physically unable to walk for some time I plan on leaving against all medical advice. I totally trust Carl to be there watching over our daughter alone that isn’t what this is about. There is no way I see myself trying to take naps and relax while my first child is having open heart surgery in a different part of town. Hell to the Fucking no! Stitch my ass up, give me some Tylenol and too-da-loo.✌I’ve told my midwives and doula about that plan and they all say they understand and I shouldn’t be forced to stay away from Icie. Now after birth if Icie’s O2 levels were 85 and up she would be able to go home with us but only stay at home for 4 -6 months. That time is basically “ Fatten her up and make her as big as possible” time so that open heart surgery can occur while she is bigger. Babies with TOF have a hard time eating because they become tired easily. If she has issues staying awake to eat it would be difficult for her to gain weight. Icie would have to be fed more often than normal babies to try to get the nutrients she need. I was told that formula may be incorporated into the breast milk supply for greater nutrient density. She could also have a hard time swallowing which could make feeding more difficult. Another issue we would be dealing with if she did get to come home is she could possibly be deprived of adequate oxygen or cyanotic, and could have “tet fits.” Tet fit meaning Tetralogy fit. When those occur Icie would turn blue and could possibly not catch her breath. Babies with this congenital heart defect do typically have a blue tint to their lips, skin, and fingernails. That being said, Icie could turn even more blue than normal. Things that could set it off would be if she got startled, if she was crying, if she got to excited, basically anything that made her heart beat faster than normal. Once in a tet fit we would need to try to calm her down and put her knees to her chest to help with O2 flow. If that didn’t help we would be calling 911. It’s a lot of information, and I am sure that I didn’t catch everything that was told to me that day. Carl and I will learn more as we go. What we do know is surgery will happen, either right after birth, or after 4-6 months to correct the issues. Then surgery will need to happen again, usually not to long after the first surgery, to put a flexible piece of material in the pulmonary valve. Icie will have to see a cardiologist for the rest of her life to check up on the valve and hole in her heart. She will need to have the valve replaced, how often we really won’t know till it’s happening. Some kids need it every 7 years, some 10 years some 20 some 30, it’s all case by case. After hearing all the ins and outs of the heart defect we were told that if TOF is evident usually DiGeorge Syndrome is too, since DiGeorge is known to cause this type of defect. Digeorge syndrome can be a mutation that occurs randomly or passed down from parents who have it. My husband and I will be tested to see if we have DiGeorge but we are both pretty sure we do not. The only way to tell if Icie had DiGeorge Syndrome was by doing a procedure called amniocentesis. By getting samples of the amniotic fluid that Icie has been shedding chromosomes into we can tell what if any chromosomal issues she has. Terminating the pregnancy was brought up also. I was 20 weeks at the time. I honestly don’t know how it was brought up, I may have asked, it may have just been in the list of things to discuss with patients but I am happy she brought that to the table as well. I like to know all of my options. The pediatric cardiologist had us meet with a woman to help us schedule another set of appointments. The woman in the next room made our next fetal echo appointment. Since we know there is an issue we have to have sonograms of Icie’s heart every 4 weeks to monitor it. The scheduling lady brought up risks of having amniocentesis done but my husband and I agreed that we wanted to go ahead and have it done. She left the room to go try to find the doctor who would be doing the procedure to see if we could be seen that day. Her room was small and she has Christmas music playing. If you know me you know my feelings on Christmas music. I hate it. Sitting in that room with the news we just received, knowing a procedure was about to be done to see if there were even more problems with our daughter, while Christmas music was playing made me sick. I remember thinking “ now I really hate the fucking song” to what was on. Thank god I don’t remember what it was. Here it is, days before Christmas and people all over the place are celebration, playing Christmas music, being all happy and me and Carl are in a small room feeling like our lives are falling apart. I was becoming really angry. I contemplated turning her music off and just being like “really??” when she came back in to a silent room. Does anyone actually think sad ass depressing Christmas music is great background noise for a family who just received horrible news? I HATE CHRISTMAS MUSIC! Anywhoo! She came back in and said they wanted to have the amniocentesis done that day. They really were trying to get us as much information as possible before the deadline for pregnancy termination. It really scared me that they were jamming me in for these tests. I was thinking" is something seriously wrong with our baby to be working this hard to be in termination time constraints?" We were scheduled and off we went to the genetic counselors waiting room once again. Once there, google fest 2016 occurred. DiGeorge wtf is it? What are symptoms? What does it do why, how , all of it. What stood out to me was the possibility of cleft palate, learning disabilities, schizophrenia once an adult, breathing problems, and some with it develop autoimmune disorders. It was all scary to read. Once in the genetic counselors office we went over the risks again of the amniocentesis, signed some papers and off to a waiting room again to wait for the procedure. Carl and I had blood drawn while we waited. If any abnormalities were found in Icie’s results they could possibly be explained by looking at our blood. It was probably an hour of waiting when we were called into the procedure room. The procedure was straight forward. An ultrasound guided needle was poked through my abdomen then through the uterus and into a space away from the baby that had a good pocket of amniotic fluid. Then 2 tablespoons of fluid were taken to be tested. It didn’t hurt much. Me stubbing my toe would feel like pure hell level 14 pain compared to what it felt like, which was like a 2-3 on the pain scale. I did get light headed once it was done. I thought for a second I was gonna pass out but I just kept breathing and the feeling dissipated. We were told 10- 14 days for results but some could come as early as 3 days. So off we were. Mentally drained, angry, crampy, shocked, terribly heart broken, back into life outside the hospital. I cried more that day than any day so far. I would go upstairs to the bathroom to cry because even though Carl is no stranger to me crying ( I’m a Cancer OK…I’m emotional and I cry lol) I didn’t want to make a stressful situation even worse by breaking down right in front of him every 15 min. I could hear him crying quietly downstairs and it just made me cry harder. It killed me knowing he was upset. I’m fine dealing with my own self but having my husband be upset and hurting and me not being able to do something about it was a feeling that just crushed me. We were going through it together. Something new, horrifying, heartbreaking and so out of our control. Something so exciting became so upsetting within a few days. I could feel Icie moving around inside of me. So I just sat on the bathroom floor holding my belly letting her know how much I loved her while I cried. All we could do at that point was wait for the test results.

#tetralogyoffallot #tof #congenitalheartdefect #chd #heartmom #heartwarrior #firsttimemom #daughter

[drlindamurraytenacity-blog]

Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories and false naming of real events . . .Adrian Richt . . sp

In the Beginning----I started life in a small place called 'Bridge of Allan' in Scotland June 20th  1956. My parents were Margaret Joy Latimer (suicide at 27) and Derek Andrew James M. Apparently, my birth was very difficult and my father told me, much later in life, that they did not think I was going to make it. My mother suffered from some form of toxaemia possibly due to Rh difficulties which were also going to also impact me. This information is sketchy since my father was the only source of this information and he wasn't talking. My father told me much later in life that it was touch-and-go for a while for both of us. I wasn't named until it was clear that I was going to survive. My mother was apparently warned about having other children. Yet, she gave birth to Desmond Thomas in September 15th 1957 (committed suicide when 20) and another boy Kevin on June 20th  1960 (attempted suicide at 23). When they came home with the baby, Kevin Derek my mother handed me the baby and told me that since he was born on my birthday, “he was my birthday present and my responsibility.” I remember this scene so clearly, I actually remember where I was standing in the home and where my father was standing to my mother’s left and to my right. I took my responsibility very seriously. I could, and did, warm bottles, changed nappies [diapers], and washed dishes by the time I was five years old. It was like at five years old I became my brother’s keeper and a mother all in one. Desmond at this time was three years old. My mother was sad a lot and cried all the time. It was the beginning of the 1960s. But, then there was very little they could do for serious depressive mood disorders.

“When truth is buried, it grows, it chokes, it gathers such an explosive force, that on the day it bursts out, it blows out everything with it”....... Neil Zola....(sp)

“Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive, easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.” . . . Henry Peter Brougham

The Slap-----I am not sure exactly when this event occurred but it was before I turned five years old and while my mother was alive. We were sitting in her and dad's bedroom facing the mirrored chest of drawers opposite the bedroom door. My mother was crying, but I can’t remember why. My father came into the room and they were arguing. I don't know about what. He slapped her on the face and I charged at him. He picked me up and threw me down on the bed. He later denied ever hitting her or throwing me on the bed. But if his version is the truth, why are my memories, even now, are so clear and vivid? I remember after he left that we both sat on the edge of the bed crying, me on her left side. I was on her right when he hit her. We sat and cried together. My mother cried a lot. I was very upset and to help me feel better she pulled out a small ivory-covered jewellery music box and she opened it up, up popped a small ballerina who turned to the music. Both of us sat there and cried for a long time and she had her arm around my shoulder. I have chosen to believe my version of the events that day. Part of the reason for this was my father, when I was 15, offered me a choice of two jewellery boxes, a larger wooden one and a small ivory-covered  one. I picked the ivory music box and I told him at the time that I knew it had belonged to my mother, the other was his mothers. I asked what had happened to the ballerina in the white tutu. The box was still lined with the blue velvet I had remembered.

My Father’s Father----Apparently my father’s father was a lingerie sales man. I thought that he was some form of a carpenter for the longest time. I know nothing of my father’s family or his history. I believe he told me once that he was a child born late in his parents’ lives and when they died he was cared for by a much older spinster sister. To this day I know nothing of my father’s side or the mental health history that may have also been clear on his side. I do know he said he was raised by his much older sister and that his parents were not in this picture. The difficulty with trying to find out where mental illness originated in genes is often compounded by secrecy and missing relatives. In our family, it was clear that there was mental illness on my mother’s side from my mother and maternal grandfather. But this does not explain why ALL three of us siblings were mentally ill. To have this high a prevalence rate in three related siblings clearly indicated a dominant gene or recessive gene combination problem of some sort.  Given this, I’m almost certain, that there was at least one-person who was not well on my father’s side of the family and could have been the source of the genetic ‘double whammy’. But I’m only guessing, however by now, it is a very well educated guess at this point. Having a hundred percent prevalence rate and, as of the date of this writing, a fifty percent mortality rate, it is clear that there must have been something wrong on both sides of the family. The risk should been, according to published medical information in 1995, less than % 30. The only logical explanation I have arrived at is mental illness in both sides of the genetic pools.

“Nothing fixes a thing so intensely as you wish to forget it”-----Michele DeMontagn . . .sp

The Cat in The Hat------Another memory of my mother while she was alive, was her teaching me how to read a Dr. Seuss book called “The Cat in The Hat” and sing Frere Jacques. You start grade one in Scotland when you are five years old. By that time I could read this book almost from memory. I have never had the chance to thank her for my love of reading or anything else for that matter. I read a lot now and always have, mostly text books and journal articles and anything else I get my hands on. Unfortunately, I was not able to gain as much understanding of what I was reading by every one else. I needed to read something about 4 times to get out of it a good reader who only required one reading, My reading helped me escape from life when I was a child. I still use it to help me through the rough times. I don't know what happened to the original copy of the book. It was probably thrown out like everything else was when we moved to Canada when I was eight and a half. In my 59th year I  purchased a new copy to keep as a reminder keepsake. It is not the original but that is not the important part of the memory.

Sheets - - I have a very clear memory of playing in a fort made of bed sheets in the back yard. The sheets were yellow or white and they were hanging on the clothesline. But they made a magical place inside the fort. I do not know why this was important. I don’t know why this memory came into the fore front of my memory. I do know I still had my mother and thee safety of the sheets I can remember the feeling but I remember the feeling of safety and warm.

Wanting to Be Dead-----When my mother died I was devastated. I hurt so badly. I wanted the pain to stop. This is the kind of pain that is unbearable. This kind of trauma for anyone is hard. But when you are 5, I don't know if you ever recover. I think that the feeling of abandonment never leaves you. Apparently this is common. The trauma and loss never heals. It hasn't left me. I believe that it may be pushed below the surface but it never leaves. It seems to be just under the surface all the time. There is, I have discovered, a difference in wanting no longer to be in pain and truly wanting to be dead. Many professionals believe that mood disorders erupt in the late teens and early 20s mine clearly started with early symptoms, at least when my mother died. The kind of pain I felt was physical and emotional in the depth of my being. I know crying about it hurt my father so I only cried at night or when I was alone. All three of us kids were in the same room at night so I had to be quiet so I wouldn't wake my brothers. Desmond was in the lower bunk and Kevin was in the crib. My father heard me crying one night and came into the room. He told me that he was sad too but we couldn't be with her anymore. Even as a five-year-old I knew my crying was making things worse for my father. So I had to stop. I learned to hurt in quiet. He said I had to keep quiet or I would wake up my brothers. I was screaming in pain inside. My entire being was in pain and it almost never left me. I tried not to grieve publicly and to keep this pain inside along with the anger. Yes, I was angry too. I think. I wanted to die, but I couldn't. I had responsibilities too. I was responsible for my father’s hurting and my older brother’s sleeping, my younger brothers hurting. Kevin was going to depend on me now. He was my ‘birthday present’ and I would have to stay alive to take care of him. I had promised my mother. Now, when I think of the pain I was in I realize that I was depressed then. I was five, and I truly wanted to be dead.

“Children begin by loving their parents, as they grow older, they judge them. Sometimes they forgive them” . . . Oscar Wild

logic will get you from a to b but imagination takes you everywhere . . . Albert Einstein

Chips and Babies ----A clear memory of my mother was when she fed my baby brother Kevin ‘chips’. Chips are what we now call french fries in Canada. Back then, we made them at home and deep fried them in the ‘chip pot’ using slices of potatoes we cut into ribbons. When she gave them to the baby and us, she would bite the ends off all of them. I asked her once why she did that. She explained that she did it for two reasons. The first was to make sure that all of the sharp points were removed so we would not hurt our throats. The second reason was to make sure that none of them were too hot for us. She told me that it was important to remember not to feed little children like Kevin chips with sharp ends on them. Was this another attempt at preparing me for what was to come? It felt weird at the time and the memory is very vivid I can even remember where I was sitting at the table in the dining area. This memory is also rather interesting. As I write it, I realize that I like the sharp ends. Today whenever I eat chips I pick through the pile to find all of the crispy ones. I have never tied this together before now.

Swinging While We Walked----I have a clear picture of my mother and my Aunt Joan one day. We were going down the sidewalk to a larger department store. We were walking to the left of my gran’s store and I remember going into a large store with big red letters for its name. I think we were getting things ready for my Aunt’s marriage. My mother was on my right side and my aunt was on my left side and they had both of my hands. They would go 1-2-3 than pick me up by my hands or arms and swing me into the air. Every time I see parents do this with their children I see the picture and almost feel the experience. I’ve never forgotten this. It is weird what you remember of a very fragmented past. When I did some searching in Edinburgh on our 2001 visit to Scotland I could only find birth records that did not include my Aunt Joan being born to the Latimer’s. I have to do more research into the missing records

Snow-----I remember the fist time I saw snow. It is so clear. I was sitting in this great big armchair positioned at the picture window in the livingroom. My mother was on my right but I don't remember my brothers being there. She explained that we were so lucky to get snow at Christmas time. I sat there forever watching it all fall and felt warm and loved as she sat with me. Apparently, snow in the lower altitude places in Scotland was rare. I only remember this time and I shared it with my mother. I knew that she loved me but I don’t hear I love you all the time and I did not hear it from my father. It seemed like my grandfather was the only person who said I love YOU to me.

[asraobscura-blog]

day 0.

Hi. I’m Sara. I’m 27 years old, French, a cis woman, and anorexic.

Warning: some of the material below the cut may prove triggering to people with a history of eating disorders and/or of mental illness.

I have suffered from anorexia for the past two years. The creation of this blog is an effort towards healing – a means for me to reflect on my illness and my responses to it, to document my recovery, and possibly to encourage myself to do better. It isn’t necessarily meant for others to read, though it may be inevitable that people will stumble upon it, and I might eventually point friends and relatives in its direction, to explain what has been happening to me, why I have been so profoundly altered, and what changes are still occurring in my life. If you do read this, and if you have something to say, don’t hesitate to do so; but be patient and be kind.

Though I am (and have been for the past year and a half) on medication, and am being medically monitored by both a GP and a psychiatrist, I am still severely underweight for my height and my age. I won’t go into numbers or BMI on this blog, as such numbers could become triggering in the long run; moreover, I am growing increasingly persuaded that BMI calculations are arbitrary at best, and fail to take into account plenty of factors, including bone mass, musculature, fat vs. fat-free mass, water retention, age, genetics, natural body shape, and beyond.

Until very recently, I was convinced that there was simply no way out of the illness. I had relapsed once already, after painstakingly and painfully gaining weight for a year, and meeting with a number of medical professionals, none of whom were truly able to address the illness at its source. I was stagnating. Nothing was changing. Nothing was ever going to change. I was just going to be in pain, forever.

This is one of the things I have learned about anorexia: it fucking hurts. It is often, so often, accompanied by symptoms of depression, anxiety, and profoundly morbid thoughts. It makes you think that anything, anything at all, is preferable to the utter despair of starvation; and yet that despair seems inevitable. You will live in this state of half-life forever. There is no way out. I thought this over and over.

There are recent studies indicating that anorexia may be related to a genetic predisposition, which becomes triggered by a number of factors – diets, sure, and societal expectations and demands too, but also physical or emotional abuse, excessive exercise, or responses to trauma. In my case, I can pinpoint two sources: my starting a new, highly stressful job that demanded a lot of physical and mental energy, in September 2015, and, at about the same time, starting a low-carb diet for various looks- and health-related reasons.

The nutritionist I visited at the time put me on a regimen that I’ve since come to view as nothing short of criminal. Not only did she eliminate most carbs from my intake, as well as nearly all fruit, any source of added sugars whatsoever, and most meats and fatty fish, but she also insisted that this new diet would do well to become a permanent one, and sowed doubt regarding foodstuffs that any nutritionists worth the degree on their walls would consider perfectly acceptable – like, say, salmon. Or tomatoes. Or carrots.

I lost over a third of my entire body weight in six months.

For most of these months, I was actually pretty happy. I was eating a lot of lean protein, so I was feeling adequately full at the end of a meal. I was trying out recipes, adapting them to fit my new parameters. I was losing weight that I loathed at a speed that astounded everyone – and ought to have alarmed me. And I was working a new job that was challenging, interesting, emotionally engaging. Though, to be sure, I was growing tired, too. And, little by little, I was eating less and less – fewer and fewer items of food were allowed. I began cutting out fruit (that single ration I was allowed per day), bread (ditto), any kind of full-fat dairy (cheese was right out), and compensating hard for any extra I allowed myself. I had begun, too, to read nutrition labels on the back of packages, obsessively. I was terrified of saturated fats and added sugar. I knew exactly how many grams of each were in any given item of food. I would add them all up in a little notebook, and every day the total had to be lower than the last … Everything was calculated, most of all my weight.

It was hell.

And then I collapsed at my place of work. Twice. Within less than a month.

I was immediately put on paid leave (thank everything for French government jobs; at least if you fall ill you are taken care of) and assigned bed rest. I would remain in bed for three months, eating almost nothing but thin-pounded turkey breasts and cucumber.

When I did start eating again, it was in fits and starts, and still very much in a very, very restricted way. It was a long time until I allowed myself to eat carbs again, and even then in such ridiculously small amounts that they did little to satiate me. As a consequence, my weight gain was torturously slow. I’ve since understood that, though I came close to being physically weight-restored, my mental restrictions were such that my illness itself remained whole – sometimes wounded, of course, by my efforts to eat outside of my comfort zone, but otherwise all-powerful, and certainly there to stay.

Perhaps inevitably, I relapsed. I started restricting again; I started losing weight again; every dark and awful thought came roaring back.

That was a dark time. Difficult months, both for myself and for my family: my parents and my brother, who have stayed staunchly by my side since the beginning of this illness; who have held my hand – held me – through the very worst of it; who have endured the panic attacks, the screams of rage, the hatred and the bile, sometimes with pain of their own, sometimes with miscomprehension, but always with unflinching loyalty and love.

It got better. It had to get better. I began to eat more, slowly, slowly.

But you must understand that when it comes to treating eating disorders, France is eons behind Anglo-Saxon spaces. The first psychologist I consulted put me on antidepressants and expected Freudian-style talk therapy to be my way out – my only way out, with no side treatment. The psychiatric ward I was briefly hospitalized in, and had to forcibly check myself out of, gave me anxiety-relieving pills and put a food tray in front of me, tut-tutting when I could barely eat my way through a plateful of broccoli, let alone a roll of bread or (this happened!) a slice of cake.

CBT is barely known here. Family-based treatment, or FBT, also known as the Maudsley method, one of the few evidence-based treatments for childhood and adolescent sufferers of eating disorders, never even came to my attention until earlier this year – and believe you me my parents and I looked far and wide for any kind of treatment. We looked into hypnosis, into magnetism, into acupuncture. We made a million meal plans. We looked into intuitive eating. I flirted with the idea of becoming vegan, or gluten-free, or paleo – any kind of restrictive diet that would satisfy the anorexia’s destructive patterns while allowing me to eat; and, most importantly, eat all that I needed, as much as I needed.

Because it hurt like motherfucking hell. Lack of satiety is immensely painful. I had an astounding hunger inside of me – what felt like a bottomless pit that demanded more, more, more! Food was (and still is in many ways) all that I could think about. I wrote about extraordinary meals I’d never get to taste. I pored over cookbooks and countless food magazines; I researched recipes; I even debated the idea of writing a cookbook.

I didn’t know then, and still have difficulty convincing myself now, that this hunger was not abnormal for someone who has starved her body for months on end, and has also actively continued to restrict entire food groups from her diet throughout her first efforts at recovery. I had never heard of the Minnesota Starving Experiment; I knew nothing about the Maudsley method’s approach to refeeding patients by gradually upping caloric intake.

But I kept looking for solutions, nonetheless. I would obsessively research ‘normal’ caloric needs for a woman of my age, knowing that I was failing to meet those averages, and knowing that, if I did begin to meet them, I would absolutely fail to be satisfied by them. Calorie in, calorie out, right? So if I was still hungry after eating the, erm, ‘recommended’ 1800 cal a day, it stood to reason that a) I would never stop gaining weight if I ate more, or indeed if I even ate that amount, and b) I would always, always be hungry. And if I did give in to that hunger, I would promptly develop bulimia.

I’d like to say that this fear has left me. It hasn’t. It’s still there, insidious, like a smoldering torture – the dread to gain beyond all control. If I eat this much … if I allow myself that pleasure …

(There is I think a great deal to be written about the way the illness uses moralistic – puritanical – tactics against the simple act of eating. More on that in a later post. I have a lot to write about.)

Today, I eat. I eat what appears to me to be a lot, and I have to tell myself that I am allowed to eat this much – that I am allowed to eat much more – that I have a great deal to make up for. As an anorexic, my requirements are altogether different from those of a person with no history of an eating disorder. My brain, my muscle tissue, my organs, my guts, my skin, my bones – they all have to be re-fed and repaired, and no medication or willpower will do this; only food will. Only food can.

I’ve read a lot in the past few weeks. I’ve read about FBT; I’ve read about the Homeodynamic recovery method about energy debt deficit and about mental hunger. I’ve read about refeeding syndrome and weight restoration – what it means to be weight-restored, physically and mentally – about triage and hypermetabolism and hypercaloric needs and extreme hunger. (It baffles me that none of these things were volunteered by the medical professionals who have taken on my case.)

I know, consciously, that I need food to keep surviving. Food; rest. Convincing my brain and my body of this is the hard part. Battling the ugly voice that tells me I am never, never stop being in pain is the hard part. But I do it. I still do it.

And I write this, words into the void. In a way, they are themselves an oath. Fealty to my own body.

I rather like that.

[enzaime-blog]

Caitlin’s Brain Tumor Story

New Story has been published on https://enzaime.com/caitlins-brain-tumor-story/

Caitlin’s Brain Tumor Story

Caitlin was diagnosed at the age of three with a central nervous system tumor known as optic pathway glioma behind her left eye. Two years later, the tumor grew and Caitlin was at risk of losing her sight. Her parents sought treatment with the pediatric brain tumor team at Memorial Sloan Kettering, where Caitlin underwent an extensive regimen of chemotherapy.

Caitlin Mullin was born with a cataract, which was screened every three months throughout her young life by a pediatric ophthalmologist at the Mullin’s local hospital on Long Island, New York. During one of these routine screenings, the ophthalmologist noted that Caitlin’s left optic nerve was swollen. Around the same time, she developed trouble with her eyesight and had to start wearing glasses. The doctors explained to her parents, Chrissy and Terence, that there were two possible causes for these developments: it was either an anomaly she had been born with or it was a new growth.

We Were in Shock

“She’d been screened since she was a newborn,” Chrissy says, “so we knew she hadn’t been born with it. Still, I wasn’t that worried. The doctors told us that it could easily go away on its own.” Caitlin was sent for an MRI, the results of which came as a terrible surprise to the Mullins: Caitlin had an optic nerve tumor known as an optic pathway glioma (also called optic nerve glioma) behind her left eye. “We were in shock,” Chrissy recalls.

The doctors at their Long Island hospital recommended that the Mullins schedule an appointment with pediatric neurologist Roger Packer at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC. After Dr. Packer examined Caitlin, he explained that she was a very unusual case. Such tumors in children can be associated with neurofibromatosis, a genetically inherited disorder in which tumors develop on nerve tissue. But of the seven disease markers that usually go along with neurofibromatosis, Caitlin only had two. Since the tumor did not appear to be life-threatening, Dr. Packer advised the Mullins to watch for any changes in the tumor and in Caitlin’s vision, a process known as active surveillance, rather than to treat it at that time. “We went for a second opinion, which confirmed this advice, so we were all pretty relieved,” Terence explains.

As part of her active surveillance plan, Caitlin received regular eye exams and MRI screening tests — initially every three months, and then, after a year, every six months. There was no sign of tumor progression until June 2008, when the MRI revealed that the tumor had grown.

“Our local doctors told us that the tumor had grown significantly and that we needed to discuss treatment options,” Chrissy remembers. “The way they described it, Caitlin would need to go through 64 weeks of chemotherapy. Her immune system would be compromised, which meant she wouldn’t be able to go to school for that entire period. The picture they painted was pretty scary.”

Caitlin was just five years old at the time, so the Mullins explained everything to her in the gentlest way possible. “She was so young,” Chrissy says. “We told her that she had a lump on her eye and that she would need to get some special medicine to shrink it.”

The nurses are there for you whenever you have a question or a problem. You receive all this love and attentiveness from everyone, which makes you feel like your child is the only kid there.

Chrissy MullinCaitlin’s Mother

A friend of the Mullins had a daughter who had developed a rare cancer of the sympathetic nervous system known as neuroblastoma. Because her daughter had been successfully treated for her cancer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the girl’s mother suggested that Chrissy bring Caitlin there for a second opinion about treatment options. Chrissy was referred to Memorial Sloan Kettering pediatric oncologist Ira Dunkel, who specializes in the care of children, teenagers, and young adults with brain and eye tumors.

“I called and left a message, and he called me back the very next day,” Chrissy recalls. “I had never met the man before, and he ended up talking with me on the phone for half an hour.”

Going to Memorial

After sending all of Caitlin’s scans, her parents scheduled an appointment for her with Dr. Dunkel’s colleague on the pediatric brain tumor team, pediatric neurologist Yasmin Khakoo. Dr. Khakoo examined Caitlin, reviewed her scans, and agreed that treatment was necessary.

“This sounds stupid,” Chrissy says, “but I initially considered going to our local hospital for the treatment because it was easier logistically than going into Manhattan. But then one of my friends reminded me that we lived 45 minutes from one of the best cancer hospitals in the country. Once I met Dr. Khakoo and the other doctors and saw the facilities, there was no more debate. Caitlin was going to Memorial.”

Caitlin’s treatment started on October 10, 2008, when she had a port surgically placed under the skin in her chest. (A port is a small medical appliance that uses a catheter connected to a vein to allow chemotherapy to be injected into the bloodstream.) Her chemotherapy regimen, which included the drugs vincristine and carboplatin, would last 64 weeks, following a schedule of ten weeks of active treatment followed by two weeks of rest.

During an “on” week, Caitlin would come into the hospital on either a Thursday or Friday to receive her chemo infusion for the week. “Her first day back on treatment after a break was when Caitlin felt the most nauseous,” Chrissy explains. “But they started us on some new antinausea pills that helped. Either way, the nausea went away after about a day or a day and a half, and she was fine the rest of the cycle.”

Before each chemotherapy session, Caitlin had to undergo a neurological examination. “Caitlin was always playing and jumping around during the exam,” Chrissy remembers. “I’d get frustrated and say, ’Caitlin, sit down!’ But at one point, Dr. Gilheeney [pediatric oncologist Stephen Gilheeney was one of the doctors on Caitlin’s treatment team] said to me, ’I know where you’re coming from, but we love this. We don’t get this that often.’”

While the doctors at her local hospital had warned that Caitlin would be unable to attend school during this period, Dr. Khakoo was of a different opinion. “When we asked her about school,” Chrissy remembers, smiling, “Dr. Khakoo’s response was, ’Of course she has to go to school! Why wouldn’t she?’”

64 Weeks

At the beginning of the treatment regimen, Chrissy and Terence Mullin wondered how they would make it through the 64 weeks.

“But the doctors at Memorial and the nurses — especially the nurses — including Caitlin’s favorite, Maureen Higgins, they all made it as comfortable and bearable an experience as possible,” Chrissy explains.

“Maureen is now one of our best friends. She and the rest of the nurses are there for you whenever you have a question or a problem. You receive all this love and attentiveness from everyone, which makes you feel like your child is the only kid there.”

To make the time spent in the hospital go faster, Caitlin liked to keep busy. “There would be two or three hours out of the day that we wouldn’t even see her,” Chrissy says, laughing. “She took a ’tween’ drama class for kids aged eight to 12 … when she was only five. She was always cooking or doing art projects with the child life specialists in the Recreation Center — all while hooked up to her chemo IV pole.”

As often happens, Caitlin experienced some chemotherapy-induced side effects. The first was weakness in one foot caused by neuropathy, a condition of the peripheral nervous system that can cause pain, numbness, and muscle weakness. The second, more obvious side effect was hair loss.

A Touching Show of Support — Bandanas and Baseball Caps for All

“The hair loss started one night when Caitlin was in the bathtub,” Chrissy recalls. “Her hair started falling out in clumps. It really upset her, so I called her teacher, Mrs. Lindner, and told her what had happened and that Caitlin would need to wear a hat to school the next day, which was normally against the school rules.” When Caitlin arrived at St. Francis De Sales in Rockaway, Queens, the next morning, the entire first grade was wearing pink bandanas and baseball caps in a show of support for their classmate after Mrs. Lindner had spent the night calling every family. The Mullins still tear up at the memory of that day. “That’s one of the real pluses with living in a small, close-knit community. We received so much support from our friends and neighbors, and it made all the difference.”

Fortunately for Caitlin, her doctors were able to adjust her medication doses to address the neuropathy, and her hair grew back before the end of her treatment, in November 2009. As hoped, the tumor shrunk back to its original size and, as a result of the treatment, it is no longer growing. And, most importantly, her vision remains unaffected. Caitlin now goes for MRI surveillance every three months.

I have been honored to work with this lovely girl and her family. Without the rest of the team who works in the Pediatric Day Hospital, I could not have provided the level of care that Caitlin received.

Yasmin KhakooPediatric Neurologist/Neuro-oncologist

Looking back, the Mullins are amazed at how their view of treatment changed over time. “It went from being overwhelming in the beginning to just being a normal part of our lives,” Terence says. “I’d go to work on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, go to Memorial Sloan Kettering on Thursday, and then go back to work on Friday. When people heard about what we were going through and asked how we managed, the answer was pretty simple: You have no choice. No matter how hard it is, you do whatever’s necessary.”

Caitlin, the Rock Star

“You wouldn’t think it from looking at her, but Caitlin is very tough,” Terence says with pride. “She plays on two weekly soccer teams and performs in a step-dancing troupe, and she never let her treatments stop her from participating in any of them.” The Mullins point to one week in particular as an example of Caitlin’s resilience, when after finishing a chemotherapy treatment on a Friday, she played a soccer game the following day, after waking up in the morning feeling ill. “She woke up sick, but she told us that she wanted to play,” Chrissy marvels. “They had to stop the clock three times for her, but she ended up playing the whole game. Dr. Gilheeney calls her a rock star, and we totally agree.”

[docboots]

On How I Learned I Had Hereditary Angioedima

I initially wrote this in an attempt to get it published. Well, that was the ultimate hope. My more realistic goal I was hoping sending it to editors might give me input so that I could edit accordingly. Like the teachers I came across in the public education system had assured me.

I really should have been more skeptical of people giving me advice on how to get published when they were oddly reluctant (read: never produced) to show they followed their own advice and got published. This is not how, at least in my experience trying a number of magazines over the past few months, it worked out.

Instead, they say something like, 'It was well written, but not for us'. Maybe a little 'You have a nice voice and it a deep and touching read. But not for us'. Basically, a lot of brushing me up with a compliment before the normal rejection that all reads the exact same. (Much like my emails from the lawyers and the claims handlers of social security!) There is no real input. Nothing of substance nor anything constructive. Nothing negative even! There is nothing on WHY I wasn't accepted so I may improve. As they want a "unique creative voice, that story only YOU can tell, and blah blah" it'd be nice to know how I do not fit their mold so I could possibly use this apparent skill in writing I have for profit. Maybe get more knowledge on HAE out there. Maybe make this just a little easier.

Since that doesn't seem to be working with this particular article, and that response is getting tired given what it involves, it is better to have it here so I don't have to repeat myself to lawyers and doctors.

On that note! Hello new attorney, should you be reading this. You see, I finally got a letter back from my attorney. It simply said that I had my case transferred to someone new, who was writing the letter, and yet another copy of the memo they have explaining that the average wait time to be heard by an attorney is between 15-17 months. The only difference is somehow the wait is even longer.

All avenues say to pester and be heard, so I am sorry but I am aiming to do that. Especially now that I am being handed around like a hot potato legally, federally, and medically. I got a letter sent to me saying I am no longer eligible for Medicaid. More distressingly, it says the reason is that Medicaid is ending.

No more therapy, no more dentist, no more overpriced painful medication that at least is something, no more doctor visits, nothing. I can not afford it, and I am not going to waste money that can be spent on the thing that at least won't' be pulled out from under me. Where there are potheads, there will be someone who grows and sells it.

The sad thing? Those "criminals" (mostly) treated me a hell of a lot better than this system. Than medical marijuana. They at least let me wait out in the cold in my fucking car. They at least ADMITTED I had a god damn blood disease.

Enraged rant from 9/27/2017 over. Not a rant on when I was 16, when I first found out that I had this drama coursing through my veins. Hopefully, this new madness doesn't make me have to repeat it out of the stress, eh?

========================

There had been signs, but I did not know I had the genetic blood disease that would reprogram how I approached life until I woke up with the worst stomach ache of my life a little more than a decade ago. The dread of waking up for high school washed away with a sucker punch from life. The sharp stabbing from my gut should have made me realize this was no ordinary stomach bug, but I have a terrible tendency of ignoring my gut instincts. I only grew mildly concerned when I began to puke with the cadence and fervor of a dying banshee. Every heave feeling like my muscles were testing the tensile strength of my ribs while simultaneously trying to send my stomach on a whimsical journey through my esophagus. Not only was my body violently rejecting what looked to be a liquid combination of every meal I had ever had or dreamed of, but it adamantly refused to let even water back down my overworked throat.

I’d, of course, nurse water down at every opportunity in an attempt to wash away the bitter bile that clung to my throat like an oil, as well fight against the dehydration creeping in. This would end up being a fruitless effort. It would give me relief from the dehydration, only for it to be replaced with spiraling nausea. The dry feeling of a void in my throat spreading into my gut would return shortly, a few sips of water hardly held it back. All the while the jabbing pain in my stomach only seemed to grow worse. It even seemed to be warm, possibly burning. It is hard to tell if something is a particular flavor of pain when there was a far more notable kick in the same area. I would later find out this was due to a portion of my gastrointestinal system swelling up. I would also later find out this would be a pain I’d become intensely familiar with.

This would go on for two to three days before my parents realized how serious it was. They were worried, of course, it was just clear at that point I was neither sick with a stomach bug nor performing some form of elaborate ruse to get out of school. Though I was, at that point, still weighing whether or not getting to miss school for a few days was worth the agony. Not when you can’t enjoy Pokemon Snap, was my reasoning. While I was certain it was just that food poisoning thing everyone was talking about, as I was experimenting with cooking, my parents feared that this was a sign they had been dreading. My birth mother, having been adopted by my grandmother in a chapter of my life worth its own essay, had a genetic blood disease called Hereditary Angioedema. I had a 50% chance of getting it at birth, and I have come to learn that this game is rigged in Nature’s favor.

Surprisingly, a juvenile puking like Pazuzu had an interest in his soul did little to hasten the eternal waiting that is common with an emergency room. Parked between someone with a mild fever and another with a few twitches, we spent an eternity waiting to be seen. As the hours ticked by I became more and more familiar with the pulsing in my gut, having leaped beyond the stage reserved for crying and whining and now locked firmly in the anxious groans and curses towards nature and any deity that I could remember. Luckily I had always had a fondness for mythology, so I had a nice list of fresh legendary gods and goddesses to gripe towards.

It was rather embarrassing carrying around the black trash bag, what with it smelling like an inside-out stomach while sloshing with every step to make certain people knew of its presence. Given the pain in my stomach and the overwhelming exhaustion that comes from dry heaving through the night, I figured it easier to use that to dry heave into. Nothing was really going into the bag, but I figured it’d put people's’ minds at ease. At some point, I had ditched it in exchange for the toilets. Any hope I had that people might think I was in there doing something natural was squashed by the rather disheveled looking man. The man was waiting in a lobby far enough for me to have an idea of the radius of my retching, which by this marker was already alarmingly vast, and made it clear he had heard by courteously asking if I was alright. The concern in his eyes and hanging in his voice made it clear it wasn’t purely an attempt to be cordial. Given the pained noises that your own swollen stomach will cause as it gyrates to the beat of your hoarse vomiting, the man may have just been wanting to be sure I would not respond in tongues or by crawling away on the ceiling. Possibly he feared something worse, like whatever the news was frantic over that year.

As haunting as this situation may be, It is surprising how quickly you get used to pain. It might burn and pulse so that every second has you thinking of it in some capacity. It might make it so every tiny movement makes your every nerve scream and your brain berate you for attempting to function, it might strike when you are too young to process the reason or too old to overcome. It might be due to an immature belief that ‘big boys don’t cry’ or from being hardened due to previous experiences. Like a bad smell, you can grow accustomed to the agony. To the point your every twitch doesn’t cause you to bark out a yelp of pain.

It got to where even I was surprised that I didn’t fully freak out as I was loaded into an ambulance. Shock and adrenaline is a hell of a drug. As nice as the doctors there were, they were not set up to house an adolescent in a hospital bed at that facility. The fresh hell I had been whisked to, however, was another matter entirely. Thankfully I had been given a lovely dose of morphine to keep the pain and nausea away. Also helpful was the IV that I was now attached to pumping me with all the glorious liquids one normally has when in deep stages of dehydration. I was told that if I hadn’t come in when I did, I’d have been at a high risk of complications or death from the lack of liquids, or anything for that matter, in my stomach for the past few days. The anxiety and fear were not so easily stifled. It was here I learned of my disorder, mostly from my parents, something that took quite a long while to sink in.

Hereditary Angioedema is a genetic blood disease that is rare enough that, now a decade later, I still spend far more time explaining my disorder and symptoms than getting any headway in my care. This was proven through my doctor’s insistence on cutting into me and putting a camera in there to be certain. Luckily, my parents talked them out of it, for you see this disorder causes swelling in random places when mental or emotional stress is involved while if I have any physical stress, such as a hit to the arm or merely overexerting myself) the area will swell. The swelling tends to be to the point, should my hand swell, I am unable to bend any of my joints and lasts anywhere between two days to a month. If I am so lucky. So should the doctor have made headway on his desire for a bit of surgical spelunking for what was wrong, I would have likely had to deal with the areas cut into swelling. Our arguments were treated as if we were belligerent, not that my stepmom had experience dealing with this with my birth mom and grandfather (step-great grandfather? My family tree is mildly complicated) who both had the disorder, given you know, genetic.

Luckily, in spite of the Doctor being a prat, the nurses were immensely nice. They even had this small tv on a cart with a ps2 plugged in they let me use occasionally. As the entire experience was maddeningly stressful, the distraction and escape helped me process the new tidbit of knowledge about my biology. Specifically, it didn’t seem to be my biggest fan.

This might sound like I am allergic to stress, and in a sense I am. Antihistamines and the typical allergy medicine don’t do squat and the actual medicine has been hit and miss. 98% miss. Not many companies have room for such genetic shenanigans either. All this I fretted over as I sat in that hospital room as they observed me and made sure my liquids would be back to normal.

How do you escape stress? This demon that escaped the mouths of every living being. Vibrates from every object and every mild action. How could I possibly live when the world itself has potential to kill me? Google did nothing to soothe my worries. It instead believed it would be helpful to fling the statistic that 33%-66% of sufferers died from complications, most often asphyxiation, due to swelling. Life has taught me many things, but this one event taught me that the internet was terrible for anxiety. It did wonders for making mildly stressful situations evolve into a full-blown fit of hypochondria.  Another thing I learned, for the curious, is 85% of all statistics are bull. As that statistic has steadily dropped since. Be it modern advancement or better information, it no longer festers in my mind.

Back then, however? It festered. It consumed my every thought and action before I even realized it. I began quitting hobbies left and right that used to fascinate me. Worse? No one could blame me. In fact, everyone encouraged it. When your own body is puffing up like a balloon at the drop of the hat spurred on by not just these physical hobbies but the everyday madness of life coupled with the special circumstances life decided to dole out to me to be CERTAIN I did not live a single second without madness and anxiety itching at my cortex. I struggled through the pain in others though, and I found what was worth holding on to.

I often remember sitting in that hospital room bouncing between wallowing in self-pity and rage only to tug myself up with an imaginary pep talk. Only to crumble. Then rise. A tremendously annoying cycle that repeated in those few days. As I am sure many do in their darker times, I often think of what I would tell myself then to improve my situation now. There is one thought I seem to always want to say.

It might have even started off as denial, but really, I was right in this sense. Everything would be alright. It’d be a struggle, it will continue to be. Even when my knee is swollen, even when I need a cane or a bit of help, I will get back up. Eventually. Maybe the pain is too much, or my energy is zapped. It is fine to relax, to contemplate. Maybe even veg. I will rise back to my feet. Even if every fiber of my being tells me I should give up, that nothing is worse this much struggle. I know at the bottom of my heart I will learn something from the experience. Be it something as small as the situation itself.

Sadly I would not be able to ease his concerns when it came to avoiding stress entirely. It lurks like an angry beast. Nestled in people's actions. I often relate it to being allergic to wasps, only everyone and everything produces them. Every word, every step, every thought. It takes a lot of time and patience to learn how to avoid the swarms. It was necessary to keep the stress from stinging me.

 That wouldn’t be the first time I would have to deal with that exact situation, nor the last. Life is still hard, and I may write more on what I learned from those struggles one day, but I will always write. I will turn my situations into something I will be proud of. Maybe a piece of horror, maybe a bit of the blues. Maybe I can turn it into a painting or maybe I can warp it into a 10 part mini-series. The disorder might try its damnedest to stand in my way. Be it having my gastrointestinal system swell the night before my first day on a job, leading to being fired, to the pointlessly difficult struggle that trying to get Disability is. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger after all. It builds your characters. It might slow me down for a short time, but I will never, ever stop.

Being stuck is far too stressful, after all. Got this thing about stress.

[drawandbewell]

Draw Well, Be Well

My Daughter’s Reminders 

My daughter grew up falling down, with a black eye here and a broken leg there. She doesn’t have enough balance to stand or walk, not without falling that is.  

She’s crashed face down on floors, and scraped herself roughly against sidewalks, all while trying to take just a few more unsteady steps. She’s fallen off chairs and sofas, and struck hard, sharp things, like table corners, one of which left a crooked hairline scar on her lily white chin. 

But as these wobbly pictures of Jenny’s remind me, she’s often been able to draw herself back to a steadier state of mind – faster than she might otherwise have – by reaching for her pencils and pens. I call these pictures of her’s my daughter’s reminders. They remind me of things, bitter and sweet, about her struggling childhood and adolescent journey towards a challenged adulthood.

They poignantly recollect the people, places, and things she’s been drawn to while moving over the thin ice of her tippy 29-year life. They remind me, too, of some of her most black and blue times; times so fracturing that simply picking up a marker was a Herculean task. A picture drawn with a swollen hand and a black eye is to her just another picture. For me it is a badge of courage.

Made during a painful, difficult time 13 years ago, these particular pictures remind me that with a well-inked marker in her wobbly left hand, Jenny can find the inner strength to draw herself towards a kind of greater equilbrium. Again and again she’s leaned on drawing to reach towards a greater awareness of herself and others.  

She draws rapidly, rarely pausing, and never erasing. Her pictures, which she mostly tosses away, have served her about as well as any images can. Perhaps because they help remind her that while she can’t skate, swim or run, she can handily picture a world of real and imagined things. Transforming her idea of a bird’s feathers into bright pink and purple plumes, for instance, isn’t a matter of image-making. It’s a rhytmic, physically rewarding act that is brimming with muscular release. She can draw for hours, and generate fresh energy as she goes. 

“I have zero paper fright,” she says in her halting speech, adding, “When I make pictures they can go out to anywhere.” This oft-repeated phrase “go out to anywhere” speaks to Jenny’s wish to be unbounded, free, and able to do anything. And, so she says, “It is great to be drawing-able.” 

Looking at these pictures, my memory swings back to her third birthday when she was coming out from under the fierce weight of a painfully drawn-out illness.  She was struggling to hold onto a red crayon which kept falling from her tiny hand. When she finally produced the first bold marks that she had in a very long time, her pale face rouged up, and she declared in utter delight, “Look, momma, look! I make go!” The action of making things go -- partly serves as an antidote to her movement disorder -- and is yet another reminder of why she clings so tenaciously to her picture-making habit. 

I hope never to forget the night when she drew her fast-falling peanut shell and broken, ice-cubed clock in a furious sprint in our New York City apartment. They flew from Jenny’s hand on a dark, blue December night as she labored to speed her recovery from one of her longest falls ever: her shattering fall through her REM cycle. It happened in late August, four months before, when she crashed in that hard to find place in the human mind where unrecoverable sleep falls. 

She was 16 and had been a frightened, unhappy camper at a special sleep-away camp for youngsters with disabilities. While she went sleepless over several nights, the young counselors and nursing staff completely misread the alarming signs of her incoherance, incontinence, and loss of appetite. My wife and I were in the dark until we received a call from the mother of one of Jenny’s camp-mates. “Katie’s afraid that Jenny’s cracked up,” she told us. Katie, had it right.

In the wake of that fall, Jenny was so lost and disconnected that she couldn’t draw a simple picture or sing a solitary song from late August until the last week of December 2004. Sleep deprivation becomes a torturous thing when it crumbles the mind of a person with a fragile, cognitively impaired brain like my daughter’s. Like Jack following Jill, I myself became exhausted and sleep-deprived trying to keep vigil over her. There was little comforting her as she reeled backwards into reawakened memories of her scariest fears. I remember her swatting the air around her head of brown curls as if she were shooing away August’s mosquitoes. 

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“Seizure monsters want me,” she said warily. “They’re going back to my brain.” 

She wasn’t suffering from seizures or skin rashes. Those maladies had stopped buzzing her several years before. But as these drawings remind me there’s no erasing the difficulties drawn in permanent ink by her hard to pronounce genetic disorder. It’s name – Incontinentia Pigmenti – still freezes on her tongue. 

It is owing to this rare, X-linked chromosomal disorder that Jenny’s vision is impaired, that she sits forever on the edge of her next fall, and struggles to retrieve her spoken language. And it’s why she lacks the precise kind of graph-o-motor control that her artist mother and artist brother have. It is this fine motor shorfall that may help explain why at the age of 29 her pictures resemble those of a much younger person’s. Some might say a child’s. 

Clearly, Jenny looks half her age, if not younger. She’s small in stature, has a high-pitched voice, and gaps in her warm smile where a handful of teeth refused to grow. And yet, as these pictures also remarkably remind me, she has grown up to be 29, a nice warm age I once really feared she might never reach. As her black and red seizure monster recalls to me, her childhood resembled one long convulsive time, an eleven year stretch in which she regularly fell through her own conscousness. Those long, seizurous falls ripped entire weeks out of her school calendar. They left her as floppy as a Valium-soaked rag doll.  Yet just as soon as she could manage to hold a marker again, she wielded it tenaciously. The results, even the scratchiest, most indecipherable, became energizing spring-boards. 

She doesn’t draw for my sake nor for art’s sake, but for her own sweet sake. I can see now, in my sixty-fifth year, that her picture-making has rarely forsaken her. By reaching for her place on the ancient red line of drawing, Jenny has repeatedly found a pathway on which to keep herself living as well as she possibly can.  

Is it any wonder why these pictures are worth a thousand pictures each to me? A thousand, if not more. Their value reaches beyond their immense worth to her. For me, there is something gorgeous and uplifting in her left-leaning shapes, shaky lines and triumphant colors flying incontinently over thousands of freshly started pieces of paper. 

Jenny doesn’t recall drawing her backwards facing rooster or purple head rolling down August. It took a year from the time of her depriving fall at that sleep-away camp before she fully recovered. And it wasn’t until several years later that I was able to take them out of the desk drawer where I had hid them from myself. They were too potent like a once familiar song heard on the radio from long ago that absorbs one in a by-gone gloom. They had a wicked bite to them, but when seen a few years later in light of her enormous progress and a growing foreground of her newest joys, next greatest loves, and generally happier self-portrait, they looked altogether positive, hopeful, and important. They looked like a parade of curious icons and images, marching boldly, if unsteadily across the pinstriped lines of difficult times passing by. 

They are nothing more than the handi-work of a pencil-thin,16-year-old daughter strenuously drawing herself through a dark winter’s night to recover her healthier rhythms. In this rediscovered cadence are the notes of the first song she sang as she began reconnecting her severed memory to the rest of her lonely self.  The glue she needed to hold her delicate sleep genie in its fragile bottle didn’t come from a new medicine or her hospital stay. It was squeezed from her pens and pencils. 

We have since given names to a few of these images. Some she has offered captions for. Others appear to be of no interest to her whatsoever. But taken together they evoke that time of sleep-disordered days and nights, crying-jags, sweat-soaked pillow cases, and embarrasing public explosions of inappropriate laughter. But they also underscore her return to hope, and the wellness which followed right behind it, because just when I feared that she might have landed permanently down Humpty Dumpty’s wall, she spotted the red placemark that dangled from my outdated appointment book, and with it she found her spark again.

I was about to trash my 2003 appointment book in a pique of anger. My frustration had turned to rage as we hung in the limbo of her un-wellness. With the New Year just a few days away, I watched her push away another bowl of pasta. How could she still have no appetite? As she sat staring blankly out the kitchen window I wanted to shake her. That’s when I swept up an armful of my old hard-covered journals, diaries, and calendars from a nearby bookshelf and hurled them into a plastic trash can. The crash startled her. She could see that I had lost it. I was bent on getting rid of every single datebook I had ever bought. There were mover a dozen, and each reminded me of my worst frustrations. They marked years of my fruitless work, wishful thinking, and her countless medical appointments. They were mocking me with their dust, and rubbing it in about my obsessive habit of writing things down in little printed boxes, in hopes of bringing some order to my disordered daughter’s life. What good had they done? Here we were, drawing a complete blank in our boxey, low-ceilinged Bronx apartment. Home had never felt so bleak, so stale, so drab. 

It was a good thing that the bright red cotton ribbon placemark leapt from the binding of my 2003 Lettes of London diary as I aimed it at the trash. Serendipitously it landed in her sight.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“It’s a book mark, it remembers your place.” 

“Really?” she said. “I want to draw in it, where are my markers?”

They were piled high in a long, wide tray exactly where they had been resting since August.

She hungrily opened the dairy. And as she began drawing, her eyes brightened and her skin pinked up.  After three hours of continuous picture-making she could barely hold up her head. I mader her stop and carried her to bed. She rested with the book alongside her pillow and awoke a little bit after five a.m. "Can we get up yet?” she asked, “I want to draw some more." I told her to wait a while, at least until the morning sun rose. When we returned to the kitchen table at a nine she looked much better. She drank some light, sweet coffee and had a few bites of buttered toast. For the next three hours later her images continued moving along the meridians of weekly reminders. Every time she turned the pages to draw across a new area she moved the crimson ribbon along with her. “It’s a bookmark, it reminds you,” she said.

 "Look at all these amazing pictures you made," I told her. 

 "Thanks," she said, “can I please draw some more?"

 “Sure, you can. You draw so well.”

She set down her pencil, quickly picked up another, and with the hint of a lilt in her voice reminded me, "Well dad, you know, draw well, be well."

[itsjaybullme]

6 Habits That’ll Affect Your Workouts More Than Sex

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We’ll admit it: Fitness enthusiasts are intrigued with how sex, or abstaining from it, can make or break their training.

Plenty of athletes—from boxer Manny Pacquiao to entire soccer teams—have claimed to swear off sex before big fights, games, or during high-intensity training phases because they fear it’ll affect their performance. (A counterpoint: Ronda Rousey claimed to have even more sex to boost her testosterone while training for fights.)

But does it make a difference?

Muscle & Fitness took a deep dive into whether having or swearing off sex truly affects athletic performance. The verdict? A resounding maybe.

Before you get yourself, ahem, engorged with pent-up sexual energy in the name of committing to a strict fitness regimen, you should know: We spoke to two doctors—Dr. Erich Anderer, chief of neurosurgery at NYU Langone Hospital – Brooklyn, and Dr. Daniel Marcovici, who specializes in sports medicine at One Medical in New York City—about the habits that are really affecting your workouts. Start by remedying these bad habits first.

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1. Poor Sleep

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“There are definite links between lack of sleep and the derangement of normal body processes important in fitness,” says Anderer. “Sleep deprivation disrupts the body's response to insulin, can impair fat-burning mechanisms, and can even affect the decision-making processes in your brain.” This can result in overstimulating the brain’s reward center, which can lead to other bad habits like overeating.

Marcovici suggests improving your sleep by checking your sleep hygiene. “Invest in blackout curtains or an eye mask to reduce ambient light, especially if you’re living in a big city,” he explains. You need to make your bed a space that your brain associates strictly with sleep. “Make sure you’re using your bed only for sleep and intimacy—no computers, phones, social media in bed. Engaging in other activities in bed trigger to your brain that it’s time to be awake and active.”

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2. Maintaining a Poor Diet

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As a general rule, you should be eating small portions that consist of lean proteins, unprocessed foods, and vegetables. “The old food culprit used to be fat. Now we're finding out that sugar is really the enemy,” Anderer says. “Drink plenty of water and unsweetened drinks, and when you get a sugar craving, think fruit not chocolate.”

When it comes to timing your macros to optimize your workouts, Marcovici suggests consuming your simple carbs, such as fruits, oats, and dextrose immediately pre- or post-workout. “Your body preferentially burns carbs, especially during high-intensity exercise, such as CrossFit or boxing, and you’re going to want something quick-burning to help fuel the workout,” he says. “Immediately post-workout, muscles have burned through their fuel source, glycogen, so carbs are useful here as they are preferentially taken up by muscle for repair and restoration of glycogen stores.”

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3. You're Stressed

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From an evolutionary standpoint, stress is a good thing. It activates quick fight-or-flight responses that are essential for survival. “A small build-up of stress before a competitive event, a race, or an intense workout can actually augment an athlete’s focus and performance,” Marcovici explains. “The problem is that this system is not designed to be chronically turned on, and we’ve built a society around ourselves that actually rewards people for constantly experiencing high levels of stress—just ask any of my lawyer or finance patients.”

While many people associate stress with mental health, it has serious physical repercussions as well, and these physical manifestations of stress wreak havoc on your gains. “Stress causes the release of cortisol which, in excess, can have detrimental effects on your workout,” Anderer says. “It can reduce protein synthesis and tissue growth through the reduction of growth hormone. These processes are detrimental to the recovery phase after a hard workout and the subsequent building of lean muscle mass.”

On the upside, exercise has been shown to be a great stress reliever, so be sure to continue your fitness regimen. That said, make sure you’re making real strides to relieve everyday stress—or you won’t be making the fitness progress you want.

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4. You’re Not Taking Care of Your Mental Health

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At the base level, your mood can simply kill your motivation to get to the gym. But depression has real physical manifestations—fatigue, decreased appetite, soreness and muscle pain, and insomnia, to name a few. “Depression is a common problem I see in my patients, and it impacts every aspect of their life,” Marcovici says. “Undiagnosed or untreated depression can not only impact your ability to exercise, but can also be dangerous.”

Thankfully, exercise has been proven to alleviate depression. “The body produces natural endorphins which can cause a sense of well-being,” Anderer says, “but exercise has also been studied as a natural treatment for depression.”

But chronic depression is serious, and if you think you’re dealing with depression or anxiety, Marcovici stresses that you need to speak with your doctor immediately. (Yes, your general practitioner can refer you to a mental health specialist.)

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5. You’re Not Recovering Correctly From Your Workouts

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For some hardcore fitness buffs, taking a few days off from training is painful, but it’s absolutely essential if you’re serious about improving. “Overtraining is a problem and can cause people to stop making gains in performance. Although some people don’t believe in overtraining—a couple Eastern European Olympic weightlifting coaches come to mind—I think there is something to it,” Anderer says. “The mechanism isn't fully understood, but it could have something to do with the lack of adequate amino acids to heal, repair, and build the muscles necessary for performance.”

For people who can’t stand the idea of going a day without being active, Anderer and Marcovici agree that rest days don’t mean you need to sit on the couch.

“It’s a common misconception that a rest day means you should be completely sedentary,” Marcovici says, “but you’re better off doing a low-impact, low-intensity activity on a rest day, such as yoga, walking, light swimming, spending some time on mobility and range of motion exercises. It keeps your body active and makes it easy to dive back into a good, hard workout the next day.”

Anderer adds: “At least lay off the primary muscle groups that were just worked on. If you're into high-intensity interval training or have really fried multiple muscle groups, you may want to cross-train with an easy bike or swim. Allowing the muscles to heal up will result in greater gains with your workouts.”

And if you want to take a day of being lazy on the couch, you don’t need to feel bad about that either. “There’s nothing wrong with the occasional lazy day,” Marcovici says.

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6. Blaming Genetics and Body Chemistry

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Let’s face it: some people are genetically predisposed to gain muscle, lose fat, and excel at certain physical activities. But don’t let that mindset poison your gains. “Certain parameters in body composition and performance—such as VO2 max, the body's oxygen-consuming capacity, or slow- vs. fast-twitch muscle dominance—are either partly or wholly determined by factors unique to our individual bodies,” Anderer explains.

But both Anderer and Marcovici are quick to point out that any genetic limitations shouldn't deter you from customizing your workouts to hit your goals. “While there’s something to be said for people with a genetic predisposition to look a certain way or perform better at a certain sport, no amount of raw talent or genetic odds should affect how intense you’re actually able to train,” Marcovici says.

Anderer suggests playing to your strengths. “Doing interval runs or fartlek workouts can increase your VO2 max, for example,” he suggests. “If you've determined that you're more fast-twitch muscle-dominant, you tend to excel in exercises employing bursts of speed and power, but probably fatigue quickly. You should generally play to your strengths, but also add in a workout or two a week targeting the slow-twitch muscles in your body. One way of doing this would be to generally lift heavy with a low-rep scheme and work in kettlebell or medicine ball workouts, and then to alternate this with some isometric or circuit training to round things out.”

Remember: All the raw talent and genetic gifts in the world won’t make a difference if you’re not putting in the time to train and making a plan toward your specific goals.

Dr. Erich Anderer, a board-certified neurosurgeon and graduate of Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, completed his training at NYU Langone Medical Center.  He has expertise in both cranial and spinal disorders, with a special focus on spine surgery. He is currently the chief of neurosurgery at NYU Langone Hospital - Brooklyn and is an avid runner, skier, and CrossFit athlete.

One Medical’s Dr. Daniel Marcovici’s main focus is on prevention, working with patients to identify lifestyle modifications that will help achieve their health and wellness goals. In his spare time, he leads an active lifestyle including weight training, gymnastics, and trying new healthy recipes. After graduating from the Sackler School of Medicine NY Program in Tel Aviv, Israel, he completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital.

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from Bodybuilding Feed http://www.muscleandfitness.com/features/edge/6-habits-ll-affect-your-workouts-more-sex via http://www.rssmix.com/

[lukegibbspublication]

Internal-View

Psychiatric practices have come quite a long ways from their origins in insane asylums and their practices in lobotomies but one thing has remained constant- the view that there is a right and wrong when it comes to the matters of the mind. What actually constitutes a mental illness today can be traced back toKraepelin’s idea that all mental illnesses stem from biological deviations as well as Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of where these emotions and outward effects can originate from. But is this true? Or do humans just determine what is considered socially expectable and what is not? The concentration of this article is on individual personalities such as anxiety, depression, schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder and wether or not there is always a biological unbalance associated with a mental condition. I’m personally interested if the mind truly has the power to “right to body” in a sense and if these are really conditions or instead simply personalities of the mind and intern part of the individual. Do mental conditions hide a person’s true self or revile it? Ultimately, what would provoke someone to want to change, that is change who they have been their entire life?

According to Anxiety and Depression Association of America, Anxiety is the most common mental illness in America making up 18% of the population. Depression closely follows at 6.7%, Schizophrenia at 1.1% and Bi-Polar at 2.6% (National Institute of Mental Health). Often times, people suffer from more than one. Anxiety and depression are becoming quiet common in young people today. In fact 13% of college students have been diagnosed with anxiety or depression. There are also people who experience  some of the symptoms but are never diagnosed, lacking the biological evidence as was the case with my sister. During her junior year in college, she experienced a panic attack followed by periods of insomnia. One night she was rushed to the hospital after being unable to breath. But after running a few tests, they deemed her “fine”. But what is the definition of fine and whose definition is it?

On April 18, 2013 I interviewed Dr. Carole Harris who has been practicing psychiatric treatment since 1991 in areas such as: adolescent psychiatric programs, the Country of Orange’s Drug and Alcohol Program and now has opened up a private practice in Huntington Beach, California where she provides traditional therapy as well as equine assisted psychotherapy. She invited me to her new facility at Orange Park Acres in Orange, CA. There she gave a demonstrated what they do there in regards to equine assisted psychotherapy.

Up a few windy roads, secreted in a quiet and peaceful neighborhood, I knocked on the new red door. Dr. Harris along with Marissa Walker, the team’s horse professional, greeted me warmly into what appeared to look more like a home than a facility. Immediately, they brought me though the spacious house to the dusty backyard. Around a mossy-green pool and behind a barn they showed me a slightly larger, brown horse. Walker explained that horses have the ability to mirror human emotions and intern communicate what an individual is feeling. I proceeded to follow them into the space, enclosed by a rusty, white fence. Silence prevailed as they stepped back and left me with the horse. I started to ask what his name was, how old he was and how many years he had been in training. But instead of answers Dr. Harris responded with questions. What would you call him? What do you think? Everything that happened in the reserved space represented something in my life. I felt pressured and on edge, as they continued to comment on everything the horse was doing and speculate of what it might entail. Midway though, a grey speckled pig entered the space in which the horse quickly scared it away. It scampered back to underneath some nearby trees. More questions resumed. I tried to answer them best I could, but I felt as if they were pressing for answers to questions that did not exist. Eventually the session ended, in which Dr. Harris explained what she believed I was feeling. I was surprised by the over simplified nature but at the same time knew that this was not how the world worked and truly how I felt. Following her back into the house, we sat down in the kitchen. Here we switched rolls. I became the interviewer, she the interviewee.

Interviewer: What was your childhood like?

Dr. Harris: I grew up by my identical twin. I have an older brother and younger brother and younger sister so I grew up with a big family.

Interviewer: And you grew up with two parents?

Dr. Harris: Two parents up until the age of ten. (She takes a long pause)…and than we went though a divorce.

Interviewer: Do you have any relatives or close friends that suffer from a mental conditions?

Dr. Harris: I have a cousin…he’s two years older than I am, very close. He, after 9/11…he broke down and had a sever bi-polar episode for 5 years. He’s better now. He went from doctor to doctor, taking medication and couldn’t sleep…he went into a manic episode…sever…he didn’t sleep for weeks.

Interviewer: Did you aid him in any way?

Dr. Harris: I took him to see a psychologist and tried to get him to stick to one…but he didn’t want to and I tried to help him get his medications together.

Interviewer: Has the use of medication and diagnosis changed during your time?

Dr. Harris: When I first started learning I was taught not to put a diagnosis on someone because you are putting a label on them. And I still believe that. Cause when people get a label on themselves, they go with it and think that, even if they don’t have to be. And there are many better medications than they had back than….And I try and help people not take medication unless they need it because I think they can do things if their brain is strong enough. They can…don’t have to be medicated since there are so many side-effects. It depends on the situation though….if it’s genetic or situational.

Interviewer: Are all mental conditions genetic?

Dr. Harris: No.

Interviewer: Can your mind produce biological off-balances?

Dr. Harris: Let’s say this person that had a gun held to her head, has taken that to extreme and become mentally ill because of that. So trauma. I think death is a very difficult thing to get though….like being the only survivor of something but I think that you can look at this and live life to it’s fullest.

Interviewer: You said that you don’t like to put a label on people but do you know ahead of time when they come in.

Dr. Harris: They tell me on the phone sometimes but I only know that much, they say the rest.

Interviewer: Are there any specific mental conditions that you focus on?

Dr. Harris: Post traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety. I stay away from the hard core ones like schizophrenia.

Interviewer: Say that someone has depression and it’s been biologically proven, does the mind have the power to right the body?

Dr. Harris: I think so. But it takes a lot of work and constant thought about it. But sometimes you have to take the medication.  I think you have to have a strong mind to do it, not a lot of people do. It takes practice maybe every second of the day. I think exercise and getting out of the house helps.

Interviewer: Does this mean a change in life style?

Dr. Harris: Yes. Because when you are depressed, you want to stay in the house and isolate yourself. But you can’t do that you have to go outside, exercise and meet people. But that’s not what depressed people feel like doing.

Interviewer: Is a mental condition ever just a person’s personality?

Dr. Harris: No….not depression. Well (She pauses, glancing away)…you can tell the difference some people like to be negative and that is their personality. Some people just like to focus on the negative. But you can tell the difference.

Interviewer: Is there a fine line between the two?

Dr. Harris: Well someone can throw themselves into depression by being negative. Or they just like to complain.

Interviewer: Is this bad?

Dr. Harris: I don’t think it’s healthy, because the person feels unhappy. And I think we are all searching for happiness and they don’t find it because everything is bad or wrong. And they distance themselves because no one wants to be around that negativity and it gets worse for them. It’s like a….it just doesn’t work. Self fulfilling prophesy.

Interviewer: Do you believe that someone can change their perspective or are they born with say this negativity and that is who they are?

Dr. Harris: I think people are born pessimistic or optimistic. But you can really work on it, if you want to change it.

Interviewer: Is it wrong to not want to change?

Dr. Harris: If it works for them….Some people like to get a lot attention. They say pessimistic people live longer because they don’t take many risks. (She laughs lightly)

Interviewer: Than if you always take medication, does this not take over who you are as a person?

Dr. Harris: No….like an anti depression just allows you to cope with things differently but doesn’t change your personality. But say a bi-polar or schizophrenia takes medication, it does change their personality and level it out but they are happier in life. Like in a schizophrenia if you interacted with them you’d think they were erratic but once they are on the medication, they are just like you.

Interviewer: Is that not than based on what someone else is telling them what the norm is?

Dr. Harris: Yeah.

Interviewer: So in a sense do they change who they are, since the definition of what the norm is changes from them based on what someone says it is?

Dr. Harris: On a natural level yeah…because if we didn’t take a medication…I think everyone wants to be normal and happy. It would change their natural state but they change it to feel happy. (She places one leg over the other).

Interviewer: What does someone have to give up to be happy if they have a mental condition?

Dr. Harris: They have to give up their past beliefs…like everything is bad, or they had a bad childhood or everyone is against them.

Interviewer: Where than does the imagine of yourself come from if you have to give up your past?

Dr. Harris: Maybe not give up…but accept and coming to terms with that is what happened and making sense of it so that it doesn’t make you unhappy.

Interviewer: Do you ever have patience that feel fine again but end up falling back into their old self?

Dr. Harris: All the time.

Interviewer: Than why not just take a pill?

Dr. Harris: Because if someone works though it,it shows me they are willing to look at their new situation and work though it. Take a pill is a quick fix, like putting a band-ad over the problem. Because eventually you are going to stop taking the pill.

Interviewer: Do you ever have anyone that is brought in and doesn’t want to change?

Dr. Harris: Yes, like sometimes a wife will bring her husband in and he will say that he doesn’t have a problem but that his wife does and doesn’t need help. I try and tell them  that they cannot change other people only yourself.

Interviewer: How do you determine if theory is needed?

Dr. Harris: If they want it and feel like they need it. It’s a perspective…some people have very minor conditions but if they are struggling and need someone to talk to and need help working something out than I will. And those people are typically short term opposed to long term.

Interviewer: Do you ever deny services?

Dr. Harris:Yeah.

Interviewer: What would be some of the reasons?

Dr. Harris: If they are someone I am not comfortable working with or if they need a lot of attention…if they want to call me all the time. Or children…who I am not trained to work with.

Interview: How much of the control do humans have over the future?

Dr. Harris: I think we have 100% control over our own lives…99% of control over our own lives. I can go live anywhere I want to, I can have kids if I want to. If I biologically can’t have kids, I can adopt. You can do things and get around other things…I could be broke but I could go and rob a bank and find ways to get money. So I think we have total control. It’s just the way you think about things…you put limitations on your life.

Interviewer: Do you have less control as an adolescent?

Dr. Harris: Yes. You don’t know much….experience or knowledge of the world. People treat you differently. You can’t get a job. You could rob people though.

Interviewer: What would you say to a person in this situation?

Dr. Harris: Self esteem makes a big difference…you can always leave or talk to a teacher. I think we are either born with drive or pessimism.

Interviewer: Do you think that it is wrong to not contribute or influence the world around them?

Dr. Harris: I think those people make up the world. It’s not wrong. Some people are unhappy because they don’t have drive and feel like failures in life. Everybody wants to be rich or famous or whatever. If everyone had drive than there would be too much competition.

[itsjaybullme]

6 Habits That’ll Affect Your Workouts More Than Sex

1 of 7

martin-dm / Getty

We’ll admit it: Fitness enthusiasts are intrigued with how sex, or abstaining from it, can make or break their training.

Plenty of athletes—from boxer Manny Pacquiao to entire soccer teams—have claimed to swear off sex before big fights, games, or during high-intensity training phases because they fear it’ll affect their performance. (A counterpoint: Ronda Rousey claimed to have even more sex to boost her testosterone while training for fights.)

But does it make a difference?

Muscle & Fitness took a deep dive into whether having or swearing off sex truly affects athletic performance. The verdict? A resounding maybe.

Before you get yourself, ahem, engorged with pent-up sexual energy in the name of committing to a strict fitness regimen, you should know: We spoke to two doctors—Dr. Erich Anderer, chief of neurosurgery at NYU Langone–Brooklyn, and Dr. Daniel Marcovici, who specializes in sports medicine at One Medical in New York City—about the habits that are really affecting your workouts. Start by remedying these bad habits first.

2 of 7

1. Poor Sleep

paul mansfield photography / Getty

“There are definite links between lack of sleep and the derangement of normal body processes important in fitness,” says Anderer. “Sleep deprivation disrupts the body's response to insulin, can impair fat-burning mechanisms, and can even affect the decision-making processes in your brain.” This can result in overstimulating the brain’s reward center, which can lead to other bad habits like overeating.

Marcovici suggests improving your sleep by checking your sleep hygiene. “Invest in blackout curtains or an eye mask to reduce ambient light, especially if you’re living in a big city,” he explains. You need to make your bed a space that your brain associates strictly with sleep. “Make sure you’re using your bed only for sleep and intimacy—no computers, phones, social media in bed. Engaging in other activities in bed trigger to your brain that it’s time to be awake and active.”

3 of 7

2. Maintaining a Poor Diet

Catherine Douma / FOAP / Getty

As a general rule, you should be eating small portions that consist of lean proteins, unprocessed foods, and vegetables. “The old food culprit used to be fat. Now we're finding out that sugar is really the enemy,” Anderer says. “Drink plenty of water and unsweetened drinks, and when you get a sugar craving, think fruit not chocolate.”

When it comes to timing your macros to optimize your workouts, Marcovici suggests consuming your simple carbs, such as fruits, oats, and dextrose immediately pre- or post-workout. “Your body preferentially burns carbs, especially during high-intensity exercise, such as CrossFit or boxing, and you’re going to want something quick-burning to help fuel the workout,” he says. “Immediately post-workout, muscles have burned through their fuel source, glycogen, so carbs are useful here as they are preferentially taken up by muscle for repair and restoration of glycogen stores.”

4 of 7

3. You're Stressed

XiXinXing / Getty

From an evolutionary standpoint, stress is a good thing. It activates quick fight-or-flight responses that are essential for survival. “A small build-up of stress before a competitive event, a race, or an intense workout can actually augment an athlete’s focus and performance,” Marcovici explains. “The problem is that this system is not designed to be chronically turned on, and we’ve built a society around ourselves that actually rewards people for constantly experiencing high levels of stress—just ask any of my lawyer or finance patients.”

While many people associate stress with mental health, it has serious physical repercussions as well, and these physical manifestations of stress wreak havoc on your gains. “Stress causes the release of cortisol which, in excess, can have detrimental effects on your workout,” Anderer says. “It can reduce protein synthesis and tissue growth through the reduction of growth hormone. These processes are detrimental to the recovery phase after a hard workout and the subsequent building of lean muscle mass.”

On the upside, exercise has been shown to be a great stress reliever, so be sure to continue your fitness regimen. That said, make sure you’re making real strides to relieve everyday stress—or you won’t be making the fitness progress you want.

5 of 7

4. You’re Not Taking Care of Your Mental Health

Shutterstock

At the base level, your mood can simply kill your motivation to get to the gym. But depression has real physical manifestations—fatigue, decreased appetite, soreness and muscle pain, and insomnia, to name a few. “Depression is a common problem I see in my patients, and it impacts every aspect of their life,” Marcovici says. “Undiagnosed or untreated depression can not only impact your ability to exercise, but can also be dangerous.”

Thankfully, exercise has been proven to alleviate depression. “The body produces natural endorphins which can cause a sense of well-being,” Anderer says, “but exercise has also been studied as a natural treatment for depression.”

But chronic depression is serious, and if you think you’re dealing with depression or anxiety, Marcovici stresses that you need to speak with your doctor immediately. (Yes, your general practitioner can refer you to a mental health specialist.)

6 of 7

5. You’re Not Recovering Correctly From Your Workouts

Nomad/ Getty Images

For some hardcore fitness buffs, taking a few days off from training is painful, but it’s absolutely essential if you’re serious about improving. “Overtraining is a problem and can cause people to stop making gains in performance. Although some people don’t believe in overtraining—a couple Eastern European Olympic weightlifting coaches come to mind—I think there is something to it,” Anderer says. “The mechanism isn't fully understood, but it could have something to do with the lack of adequate amino acids to heal, repair, and build the muscles necessary for performance.”

For people who can’t stand the idea of going a day without being active, Anderer and Marcovici agree that rest days don’t mean you need to sit on the couch.

“It’s a common misconception that a rest day means you should be completely sedentary,” Marcovici says, “but you’re better off doing a low-impact, low-intensity activity on a rest day, such as yoga, walking, light swimming, spending some time on mobility and range of motion exercises. It keeps your body active and makes it easy to dive back into a good, hard workout the next day.”

Anderer adds: “At least lay off the primary muscle groups that were just worked on. If you're into high-intensity interval training or have really fried multiple muscle groups, you may want to cross-train with an easy bike or swim. Allowing the muscles to heal up will result in greater gains with your workouts.”

And if you want to take a day of being lazy on the couch, you don’t need to feel bad about that either. “There’s nothing wrong with the occasional lazy day,” Marcovici says.

7 of 7

6. Blaming Genetics and Body Chemistry

Shutterstock

Let’s face it: some people are genetically predisposed to gain muscle, lose fat, and excel at certain physical activities. But don’t let that mindset poison your gains. “Certain parameters in body composition and performance—such as VO2 max, the body's oxygen-consuming capacity, or slow- vs. fast-twitch muscle dominance—are either partly or wholly determined by factors unique to our individual bodies,” Anderer explains.

But both Anderer and Marcovici are quick to point out that any genetic limitations should deter you from customizing your workouts to hit your goals. “While there’s something to be said for people with a genetic predisposition to look a certain way or perform better at a certain sport, no amount of raw talent or genetic odds should affect how intense you’re actually able to train,” Marcovici says.

Anderer suggests playing to your strengths. “Doing interval runs or fartlek workouts can increase your VO2 max, for example,” he suggests. “If you've determined that you're more fast-twitch muscle-dominant, you tend to excel in exercises employing bursts of speed and power, but probably fatigue quickly. You should generally play to your strengths, but also add in a workout or two a week targeting the slow-twitch muscles in your body. One way of doing this would be to generally lift heavy with a low-rep scheme and work in kettlebell or medicine ball workouts, and then to alternate this with some isometric or circuit training to round things out.”

Remember: All the raw talent and genetic gifts in the world won’t make a difference if you’re not putting in the time to train and making a plan toward your specific goals.

Dr. Erich Anderer, a board-certified neurosurgeon and graduate of Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, completed his training at NYU Langone Medical Center.  He has expertise in both cranial and spinal disorders, with a special focus on spine surgery. He is currently the chief of neurosurgery at NYU Langone Hospital - Brooklyn and is an avid runner, skier, and CrossFit athlete.

One Medical’s Dr. Daniel Marcovici’s main focus is on prevention, working with patients to identify lifestyle modifications that will help achieve their health and wellness goals. In his spare time, he leads an active lifestyle including weight training, gymnastics, and trying new healthy recipes. After graduating from the Sackler School of Medicine NY Program in Tel Aviv, Israel, he completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital.

Previous Next

from Bodybuilding Feed http://www.muscleandfitness.com/features/edge/6-habits-ll-affect-your-workouts-more-sex via http://www.rssmix.com/

[itsjaybullme]

6 Habits That’ll Affect Your Workouts More Than Sex

1 of 7

martin-dm / Getty

We’ll admit it: Fitness enthusiasts are intrigued with how sex, or abstaining from it, can make or break their training.

Plenty of athletes—from boxer Manny Pacquiao to entire soccer teams—have claimed to swear off sex before big fights, games, or during high-intensity training phases because they fear it’ll affect their performance. (A counterpoint: Ronda Rousey claimed to have even more sex to boost her testosterone while training for fights.)

But does it make a difference?

Muscle & Fitness took a deep dive into whether having or swearing off sex truly affects athletic performance. The verdict? A resounding maybe.

Before you get yourself, ahem, engorged with pent-up sexual energy in the name of committing to a strict fitness regimen, you should know: We spoke to two doctors—Dr. Erich Anderer, chief of neurosurgery at NYU Langone–Brooklyn, and Dr. Daniel Marcovici, who specializes in sports medicine at One Medical in New York City—about the habits that are really affecting your workouts. Start by remedying these bad habits first.

2 of 7

1. Poor Sleep

paul mansfield photography / Getty

“There are definite links between lack of sleep and the derangement of normal body processes important in fitness,” says Anderer. “Sleep deprivation disrupts the body's response to insulin, can impair fat-burning mechanisms, and can even affect the decision-making processes in your brain.” This can result in overstimulating the brain’s reward center, which can lead to other bad habits like overeating.

Marcovici suggests improving your sleep by checking your sleep hygiene. “Invest in blackout curtains or an eye mask to reduce ambient light, especially if you’re living in a big city,” he explains. You need to make your bed a space that your brain associates strictly with sleep. “Make sure you’re using your bed only for sleep and intimacy—no computers, phones, social media in bed. Engaging in other activities in bed trigger to your brain that it’s time to be awake and active.”

3 of 7

2. Maintaining a Poor Diet

Catherine Douma / FOAP / Getty

As a general rule, you should be eating small portions that consist of lean proteins, unprocessed foods, and vegetables. “The old food culprit used to be fat. Now we're finding out that sugar is really the enemy,” Anderer says. “Drink plenty of water and unsweetened drinks, and when you get a sugar craving, think fruit not chocolate.”

When it comes to timing your macros to optimize your workouts, Marcovici suggests consuming your simple carbs, such as fruits, oats, and dextrose immediately pre- or post-workout. “Your body preferentially burns carbs, especially during high-intensity exercise, such as CrossFit or boxing, and you’re going to want something quick-burning to help fuel the workout,” he says. “Immediately post-workout, muscles have burned through their fuel source, glycogen, so carbs are useful here as they are preferentially taken up by muscle for repair and restoration of glycogen stores.”

4 of 7

3. You're Stressed

XiXinXing / Getty

From an evolutionary standpoint, stress is a good thing. It activates quick fight-or-flight responses that are essential for survival. “A small build-up of stress before a competitive event, a race, or an intense workout can actually augment an athlete’s focus and performance,” Marcovici explains. “The problem is that this system is not designed to be chronically turned on, and we’ve built a society around ourselves that actually rewards people for constantly experiencing high levels of stress—just ask any of my lawyer or finance patients.”

While many people associate stress with mental health, it has serious physical repercussions as well, and these physical manifestations of stress wreak havoc on your gains. “Stress causes the release of cortisol which, in excess, can have detrimental effects on your workout,” Anderer says. “It can reduce protein synthesis and tissue growth through the reduction of growth hormone. These processes are detrimental to the recovery phase after a hard workout and the subsequent building of lean muscle mass.”

On the upside, exercise has been shown to be a great stress reliever, so be sure to continue your fitness regimen. That said, make sure you’re making real strides to relieve everyday stress—or you won’t be making the fitness progress you want.

5 of 7

4. You’re Not Taking Care of Your Mental Health

Shutterstock

At the base level, your mood can simply kill your motivation to get to the gym. But depression has real physical manifestations—fatigue, decreased appetite, soreness and muscle pain, and insomnia, to name a few. “Depression is a common problem I see in my patients, and it impacts every aspect of their life,” Marcovici says. “Undiagnosed or untreated depression can not only impact your ability to exercise, but can also be dangerous.”

Thankfully, exercise has been proven to alleviate depression. “The body produces natural endorphins which can cause a sense of well-being,” Anderer says, “but exercise has also been studied as a natural treatment for depression.”

But chronic depression is serious, and if you think you’re dealing with depression or anxiety, Marcovici stresses that you need to speak with your doctor immediately. (Yes, your general practitioner can refer you to a mental health specialist.)

6 of 7

5. You’re Not Recovering Correctly From Your Workouts

Nomad/ Getty Images

For some hardcore fitness buffs, taking a few days off from training is painful, but it’s absolutely essential if you’re serious about improving. “Overtraining is a problem and can cause people to stop making gains in performance. Although some people don’t believe in overtraining—a couple Eastern European Olympic weightlifting coaches come to mind—I think there is something to it,” Anderer says. “The mechanism isn't fully understood, but it could have something to do with the lack of adequate amino acids to heal, repair, and build the muscles necessary for performance.”

For people who can’t stand the idea of going a day without being active, Anderer and Marcovici agree that rest days don’t mean you need to sit on the couch.

“It’s a common misconception that a rest day means you should be completely sedentary,” Marcovici says, “but you’re better off doing a low-impact, low-intensity activity on a rest day, such as yoga, walking, light swimming, spending some time on mobility and range of motion exercises. It keeps your body active and makes it easy to dive back into a good, hard workout the next day.”

Anderer adds: “At least lay off the primary muscle groups that were just worked on. If you're into high-intensity interval training or have really fried multiple muscle groups, you may want to cross-train with an easy bike or swim. Allowing the muscles to heal up will result in greater gains with your workouts.”

And if you want to take a day of being lazy on the couch, you don’t need to feel bad about that either. “There’s nothing wrong with the occasional lazy day,” Marcovici says.

7 of 7

6. Blaming Genetics and Body Chemistry

Shutterstock

Let’s face it: some people are genetically predisposed to gain muscle, lose fat, and excel at certain physical activities. But don’t let that mindset poison your gains. “Certain parameters in body composition and performance—such as VO2 max, the body's oxygen-consuming capacity, or slow- vs. fast-twitch muscle dominance—are either partly or wholly determined by factors unique to our individual bodies,” Anderer explains.

But both Anderer and Marcovici are quick to point out that any genetic limitations should deter you from customizing your workouts to hit your goals. “While there’s something to be said for people with a genetic predisposition to look a certain way or perform better at a certain sport, no amount of raw talent or genetic odds should affect how intense you’re actually able to train,” Marcovici says.

Anderer suggests playing to your strengths. “Doing interval runs or fartlek workouts can increase your VO2 max, for example,” he suggests. “If you've determined that you're more fast-twitch muscle-dominant, you tend to excel in exercises employing bursts of speed and power, but probably fatigue quickly. You should generally play to your strengths, but also add in a workout or two a week targeting the slow-twitch muscles in your body. One way of doing this would be to generally lift heavy with a low-rep scheme and work in kettlebell or medicine ball workouts, and then to alternate this with some isometric or circuit training to round things out.”

Remember: All the raw talent and genetic gifts in the world won’t make a difference if you’re not putting in the time to train and making a plan toward your specific goals.

Dr. Erich Anderer, a board-certified neurosurgeon and graduate of Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, completed his training at NYU Langone Medical Center.  He has expertise in both cranial and spinal disorders, with a special focus on spine surgery. He is currently the chief of neurosurgery at NYU Langone Hospital - Brooklyn and is an avid runner, skier, and CrossFit athlete.

One Medical’s Dr. Daniel Marcovici’s main focus is on prevention, working with patients to identify lifestyle modifications that will help achieve their health and wellness goals. In his spare time, he leads an active lifestyle including weight training, gymnastics, and trying new healthy recipes. After graduating from the Sackler School of Medicine NY Program in Tel Aviv, Israel, he completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital.

Previous Next

from Bodybuilding Feed http://www.muscleandfitness.com/features/edge/6-habits-ll-affect-your-workouts-more-sex via http://www.rssmix.com/