Guest Post: Exercising Right During Cancer Treatments

Today’s post is brought to you by one of our readers, Melanie Bowen, a blogger at Mesothelioma.com

There is no denying the many benefits of exercise, many of which people do not realize the extent they can be helpful. Exercise is not only great for people who desire to shed unwanted pounds, build their muscles, and develop more lung capacity; it is also very beneficial for cancer patients. Many health care professionals encourage cancer patients to exercise each day.

Mesothelioma and other forms of cancer are very aggressive; however, exercise can even help patients who are battling these diseases. As cancer patients undergo treatments, exercise can help to decrease the possibility of dying from the disease. Also, exercise will allow these patients to become stronger, and once they become stronger, the length of their recovery period will decrease. Cancer patients should strive to exercise because they will see improvements in all of their daily functions, including their motor functions, their level of energy, and their overall strength.

One of the most beneficial types of exercise for cancer patients is aerobic exercise. Aerobic exercise allows the patients to increase their bod’ antioxidant levels. As the antioxidant levels become higher, their bodies will be able to fight off the cancer cells more aggressively. Once cancer patients begin their treatment procedures, they should begin practicing some form of aerobic exercise. Although there are many different forms of aerobic exercise, the best types include cycling, walking, and swimming. However, the patients should be sure to engage in light workouts. If patients participate in more strenuous types of exercise, they can cause more harm to their bodies.

In addition to aerobic exercise, patients should also engage in strength training exercises. Cancer treatments will cause the body to become very weak and fragile. Unfortunately, when their bodies become weaker, they will be more likely to have fractures or torn muscles. However, if the patients engage in strength training exercises, their muscles and bones will become stronger, and their chances of experiencing fractures or torn muscles will be decreased. Also, once the cancer treatments begin, the patients will experience a lot of fatigue, but if the patients are gaining stronger muscles, they will have more energy to handle the treatments.

Exercise also has emotional effects that can help cancer patients cope with their disease. Exercising releases endorphins throughout the body, which boost the mood and increase relaxation. Endorphins help combat depression, which is common with a cancer diagnosis, and help you have a deeper, longer sleep. Regardless of the many benefits of exercise during cancer treatments, patients should always talk with their doctors before they start any type of exercise.

Back in (the) Black

It’s that time of the week once again, to share the results of our weigh-in.

Jenny: +0.8
Jason: -2.8

We both did a good job of tracking this week, though I did fail for a few days as I had vendor lunches and days-long meetings at work so never had a chance to track near meal times and then forgot later in the day when the opportunity did finally arrive. We also made it back to the gym this week. We both took the last couple of days off to recover as we’ve been pushing ourselves to get back into the habit after our schedules got jumbled up back in October which lead to us taking about 3 months off of exercising.

The title of today’s post comes from me finally having lost all of the weight that I gained back over last year’s debacle of not having a kitchen for 9 months combined with our lack of tracking during the holiday season of the year before. That’s been our short term goal since we got back on plan in January, and I’m really glad that I’ve finally made it back into the black.

Jenny wasn’t happy with her gain this week (who’s ever happy with a gain?), especially after she had done so good with her tracking and getting back on track with exercise. As we’ve said before though, sometimes the results of one week don’t show up on the scale until the following week. If you remember from last week’s weigh-in post, we celebrated Jenny’s birthday by ignoring our points values for a day and just eating things that looked and sounded good without stressing about the impact on weight. I think this is just a case of the previous week biting her in that sexy butt of her’s this week. We’ve done a good job, and as long as we don’t make bad decisions this week I think she’s in line for loss.

I made it back to the gym this morning, and decided to spend the day on the treadmill instead of doing weights. I managed 3.11 miles in 42:44 minutes, which isn’t all that fast but then again I’m just trying to complete my runs more so than to cover a certain distance in a certain amount of time. So far today that puts me at just under 6,200 steps for the day. The shin splints are killing me right now, but where I was running for three days and lifting for two days per week last year, I think I’m going to switch it up this year to three days of lifting and two days of running. I probably won’t do it for the entire year, but for a month or two at least. I’ll keep you informed on how that goes and what kind of rotation I settle into.

I’m going out of town on business again next week, and that’s what screwed with our schedules last year and got me out of the habit of going to the gym. I’m determined not to let that happen again this time, and hopefully I can keep myself motivated enough to spend some time in the hotel gym while I’m there.

Oh, and before I forget, I also have an update on my asthma situation and the doctor’s visit. After ten days of using the inhaler, my breathing is significantly improved and so is my energy and stamina levels during my workout. Chest x-rays came back clean, so there’s nothing wrong with my lungs despite whatever it is he heard when he was listening to them that day. I did get a call from my doctor a couple of days ago to talk about the results of my allergy tests. He said, “We got the results of your allergy test back and you did test positive for a lot of different things. You’re allergic to mold, dogs, cats…you know what, I’m not even going to list all of the things you’re allergic to. Instead, I’m just going to send you a copy of the results and everything on this list that has just a 0 beside, you’re not allergic too, but everything else you are. Ok?”

So I’m waiting on the list to arrive in the mail, and hopefully it will show up either today or tomorrow. I’ve tried to cut back on how much I interact with my dogs since he told me that, and sadly I do actually notice the difference now that I’m paying attention to it. It’s going to take a lot more than allergies to make me give up on having dogs, but I can handle a bit more moderation in interacting with them. My doctor wants me to give look over the list of allergies and then seriously consider getting some allergy drops that cost $60-80 every three month that can supposedly fight it. I’ll consider the drops after I get the list, as right now I’m much more interested in finding out what all I’m actually allergic to since I deal with allergies all year long. What else have I been doing to sabotage my body?

Happy Birthday to Jenny

This week (Feb 5th) we celebrated the anniversary of Jenny’s 25th birthday, and on that particular day we decided to celebrate without paying attention to points. It only comes along once a year, so we said screw the planning and tracking we’re just going to enjoy the day.

When it came time to weigh in, both of us actually managed to stay the same, so ±0 for both of us this week.

That’s about all we have to report this week since I also posted earlier in the week. If you didn’t get a chance to see what’s been going on with me and my exercise-induced asthma, then here’s a link to my article, Breathe, which also has an update now concerning those chest x-rays that the doctor ordered.

I’m back to going to the gym every day during the week, and Jenny is going to start back up next week as well, so hopefully we’re both on a good track towards success.

Breathe

[UPDATE: Got a call from the doctor's office today (2/7/13) to let me know that my chest x-ray came back perfectly normal, so nothing to worry about there at least.]

A few weeks ago I mentioned Exercise-Induced Asthma in our results post, and today I wanted to give a follow up that’s all about that rather than squeezing it into a results post where it might be overlooked. Even though I read BJ’s post about Running With Asthma over three weeks ago, I didn’t actually get around to calling my doctor about it until last week (I’m a slacker when it comes to calling doctors).

The appointment was scheduled for yesterday at 2 PM. My doctor is in Amarillo, which is about an hour away from where I live, so I had a full hour worth of driving time alone to think about what we needed to talk about and what he might say and which questions he might ask that I would need to be able to answer and all of that. I got to the office, signed in and then sat down to wait my turn for about 2 minutes before they called me back. I stepped on the scale which showed me at 298 (4 lbs over my last weigh in, granted I had normal clothes and all my junk in my pockets) and as usual I had to prompt the nurse to slide that bottom weight all the way over because I weigh more than I look (can’t decide if that’s good or bad).

As I waited for another couple of minutes for the doctor to show up I wasn’t feeling nervous or anxious, but I was curious and maybe a little excited to talk to him and see what he had to say. My doctor is a fairly young Asian guy that likes to keep things short and sweet, gets right to the point and doesn’t sugar coat anything when it’s important.

He walks in with his little laptop and checks things over as he says, “Alright, let’s see here. Getting back into exercise (nods) and having trouble breathing. Ok, stop exercising.”

Did my doctor just tell me to stop exercising? “Do what?”

“If you can’t breath, stop exercising.” He’s good at keeping a straight face when he’s joking.

From there we talked about symptoms and what not, and he started checking things after verifying that I deal with allergies often, not a smoker, experience the symptoms 3-5 times a week, etc. It was a bit concerning when he was listening to me breathe that he verified again that I wasn’t a smoker and then sent me off to have a chest x-ray. I didn’t hear anything about said x-rays, so I don’t know what they found if anything. I’m sure he’ll let me know if something concerns him, but it does make me a little nervous. My parents smoked though out my childhood (Mom stopped in my teens, Dad’s been “working on it” for about 16 years), so I was certainly around it enough second hand to have had some issues, but…

He sent me out for some blood work to test for allergies as well. I know I have allergies that I fight year around, so I have no doubt they’ll find allergies, but I don’t know whether or not he’s going to want to give me something for that as well. We’ll see how that goes too, and I’ll probably write about it when the time comes as well.

In regards to the asthma, he asked me about all of the symptoms that I mentioned in that post a few weeks ago (trouble breathing, tight chest, wheezing, coughing, etc) and then he stepped outside to grab a SYMBICORT inhaler for me. After he asked about symptoms and I told him about how/when they happen and he didn’t need any more information than that. SYMBICORT contains formoterol, a long-acting beta2-adrenergic agonist, and budesonide. I don’t really know much about what that means, but since most of the people I’ve talked to use an albutrol inhaler, I figured I might as well share what he gave me. He also gave me a prescription for a rescue inhaler, but I don’t recall the info on it and don’t have it with me to tell you. He also gave me a steroid shot in the hip to give me a jump start.

This morning I wanted to give it an honest test, so I took my double-puffs this morning and then went to the gym and hopped on my treadmill. I started with a walk as I always do, bumped it up to a quick jog, back to a walk, and then up to my run speed of 9.0 for 60 seconds and then back down to a walk to see how things were going. I did still have some mucus issues in my throat, but it wasn’t too terrible. As for the breathing?

Results after my first day using an inhaler: HOLY CRAP, I CAN BREATHE!!!

— Psynister (@psynister) February 5, 2013

I had to cut the run short due to some digestion issues I wasn’t anticipating, but it was a nice run that lasted 42 minutes with an average heart rate of 149 (I actually tried to monitor that this time). Afterwards I was certainly breathing heavy from the run itself, but I had my breathing under control in under 2 minutes, and I had no trouble breathing at all.

It seriously makes me regret all the years I’ve spent struggling to breath after exercise because I thought it was perfectly normal for a fat guy to struggle breathing. After today, experiencing the difference between breathing heavy due to exertion and not being able to breath because your lungs are swelling shut, I very strongly urge you to contact your doctor if you struggle breathing during/after exercise. There’s a whole world of difference. If I had had any clue that this was a thing, and something so easily treated, I would have done this decades ago. Instead of feeling completely drained after my workout, I felt fantastic. I could freaking BREATHE, people! And what a difference it makes.

Winning – Or Not

Sometimes winning doesn’t feel like winning.

Until a few minutes ago, I was really happy about this week’s weigh-in. When we pulled into the meeting last night, I didn’t expect great things. I’d been feeling bad all week (or for several weeks) and was feeling bloated and in a lot of pain. I was determined to face the scale though, and was pleasantly surprised with a loss of 4.2 pounds. Jason didn’t fare as well but still had a loss of 0.6. As horrible as I felt, I was really proud of what I had done. It meant that I had increased my weekly weightloss average to 2.6 and had lost 10.4 pounds during the month of January. These are numbers to be thrilled with.

And I was until this morning.

You see, when we pulled up to the meeting last night, I told Jason that regardless of who lost more (the usual deciding factor) he would be doing the blog post. Mainly it was because I was feeling so horrible last night physically and I didn’t even know if I would even go to work, much less how much would be waiting for me. He was disappointed with this smaller loss and since I felt better and had more energy today, he decided I should blog after all. So, I started asking for numbers to update the tagline and be accurate in our results post. I wanted to know how much he had lost during January (7.2) and he started looking at the little milestone icons on his weight tracker.

“I haven’t had a milestone since October 2011.”

“Yeah, honey. We gained over that holiday season and then last year was hell. We’re still losing the weight we had gained during that time.”

I could tell he was upset, but it’s something that had to be faced anyway. I couldn’t help it though; I got angry. Here he was, frowning and beating himself up because he’s been playing catch up and on our last few weigh-ins, I’ve been pulling bigger numbers. He only needs to lose 1.4 pounds to get back down to where he had been before the holiday hiatus and kitchen debacle. I need to lose 36.

Have I told you yet that my body sucks? During the time we were off plan, I gained back way more weight than he did, even though he ate worse than I did. I understand being discouraged. I understand being mad at oneself for backsliding. I even understand wanting to get back to losing faster while watching someone else lose more quickly than you do.

But my hill is harder to climb. I have so much more that I need to lose, just to get back to where I had been. I have so much more to lose to get to goal (he started at a higher weight, but weighs less than me now, and being a 6 foot tall man, his goal is much higher than mine).

I snapped. “I don’t want to hear you complain about this.”

The shock (and maybe a little anger) was plain on his face.

“You can be motivated by this, but I don’t want to hear you complain. You’re almost back to where you were, but I have over 30 pounds to get there.”

Losing over ten pounds in a month shouldn’t feel like a failure. I didn’t want it to, but suddenly it did. Because it wasn’t enough to make up for all the other gains over the last year. I had been doing really well just looking forward, not looking back at the failures of the last year. His analysis of his own journey forced me to and I hate what I saw.

Even more, I hate that it made me lose this sense of victory, accomplishment and success. This isn’t the attitude I want in my weight loss, so I’m telling myself what I told him.

“You can be motivated by this.”

And I am.

I’ll Take Average

Average is good.

Especially when it comes to weight loss. Doctors recommend that you lose an average of 1-2 pounds a week for healthy, balanced weightloss. If you stay within that average, you can lose up to 104 pounds a year, which is nothing to dismiss. Would we all like to lose weight in the double digits, like we see on shows like The Biggest Loser? You bet. Trouble is, most of us don’t have access to hours of gym time a day, dedicated nutritionists (with daily or weekly assistance) or doctors to supervise workouts to make sure we’re not injuring ourselves or depriving ourselves of important vitamins and nutrients. Simply put, the numbers we see on weightloss contests on television are unrealistic for the average person to accomplish safely.

And I’m ok being average.

Jason and I have been back on plan for the last three weeks. Even though we didn’t have mind-blowing numbers on the scale this week (I lost 0.8 and Jason stayed the same) when you look at our current average, we’re both doing really well.

Three week totals with averages:

• Jason -6.6 (2.2/week)
• Jenny -6.2 (2.06/week)

As you can see, we’re both slightly above that recommended average, which is better than either of us did last year by far, and is even a better average that we had during our first year on plan, which so far as been our most successful. At the higher end of average healthy weightloss?

I’ll take that.

 

Back to Business (Results)

We had a successful weigh-in last week, but Friday turned out to be quite a busy day for us so neither of us had a chance to get a post written up for the blog. So it’s a few days late, but here are the results for last week’s weigh-in:

Jenny: -2.0 lbs
Jason: -3.6 lbs

We did a good job on our tracking, we tried to incorporate fruits and veggies into every meal that we had per the challenge from our leader the week before. We didn’t do anything on the exercise front that I recall, but since we’re just now getting back on track with the whole system again after the kitchen debacle last year followed by the “the holidays”, I think we did really well overall.

This morning I got back into my exercise routine of heading to the gym every day around 6 A.M. I felt really tired last night, so I went to bed early around 9:30 which is rather unheard of for me. I did a little reading when I got there since I haven’t finished reading A Memory of Light yet, and as the book tends to do it sucked me right in and I didn’t actually go to sleep until about 11. I got up with my alarm though at 5:45 and had almost convinced myself to just go back to bed when I thought back to a talk I had with Jenny last night about dreams dying and how little we accomplish in our lives on a daily basis right now.

So, I said “screw that” to the temptation to go back to sleep and I headed to the gym. Since I had fallen out of the habit of going to the gym and had almost talked myself out of going today, I didn’t want to go in like I usually do and just come up with a routine or schedule on the fly, so I told myself as I walked through the door that I was going to spend one full hour on the treadmill today even if my feet and shins were killing me. I set a goal that was beyond what I’ve done in the past, but that I thought I could achieve.

So that’s what I did:

Hold on a second while I pat myself on the back here:

Note that the heart rate isn’t entirely accurate since the only time I ever check it is when I first get on and then after each interval where I ran particularly fast. So after I do a quarter mile or so at 9.0 speed, I’ll check my heart rate to make sure I’m not going to kill myself doing this, and then make sure I walk it off before bumping my speed back up for another round of jogging/running. So yeah, it’s an accurate average, but it’s only averaging the highest points since that’s all I ever check. If running with my hands holding onto a bar in front of me wasn’t incredibly awkward, I’d probably keep a closer eye on those things.

Exercise-Induced Asthma Is a Thing
Another thing that I wanted to note today is something that came up last week while I was reading a blog that’s written by one of my twitter friends called Geek Fitness. BJ wrote this post, Geek Fitness: Running with Asthma and it really got me started thinking about how my body reacts to certain forms of exercise. I’ve wondered since high school if maybe I had some freaky form of asthma that only shows up every now and then, and reading his post made me start thinking about it a bit more seriously as I had never heard of exercise-induced asthma before.

So today I decided to do a little research, and here are a couple of links to some sources online that talk about Exercise-Induced Asthma (EIA): WebMD and MayoClinic.com.

The first time I ever noticed this was when I was playing football in 8th grade. It never happened during a game, but it would happen occasionally during practices if we were spending a lot of time running. I figured it was just me being out of shape. You know, fat guy goes for a run he’s going to be winded. Sounds normal, right? While that was the case too, running by itself shouldn’t make you feel like you’ve got a teenager standing on your chest. I’ve also noticed that it’s much more frequent and lasts longer when the weather outside is cold.

I looked at the symptoms: Coughing (check), Tightening of the chest (huge check), Wheezing (not every time, but check), Unusual fatigue while exercising (not sure about “unusual”, so maybe-check), Shortness of breath when exercising (check).

It takes about 5-10 minutes for the tightness to show up, and then the extra mucus production starts and does a fantastic job of clogging me up even further. This is from the Mayo Clinic site under When to see your doctor, “See your doctor if you cough, wheeze, or have chest pain or tightness during or after exercise. Many people don’t realize they have exercise-induced asthma because they think these are their body’s normal responses to working out. Don’t assume your symptoms are caused by being out of shape or short on endurance.”

I started working out today at 6:10, the tightness got to a point where I really noticed it at 6:20, and that tightness stayed with me in full force until 9:25. My lungs are working fine now, but it’s 11:05 and I still feel the tightness a bit but for the most part can breath just fine unless I try to take big breaths. I’m not sure how cold it was this morning, cold enough for the car windows to be frosted, but when I stepped out into that cold air this morning to leave the gym the coughing started and holy cow is it painful. I haven’t coughed in about an hour, so I think we’re done with that for today.

Up to this point I’ve always just dealt with it by recognizing when breathing starts to be too bad and then I walk it off to calm it down a bit by breathing through my nose as much as possible and then going back to the exercise and repeating the process as often as I need to. With this having the potential to be something pretty big, I think it’s about time I actually went to a doctor. Also, since as far as we can tell the trigger for my epilepsy is not being able to breath, I certainly don’t need a double whammy of asthma attack meets seizure. I haven’t had any seizure activity now for over 5 years, but it’s a chance I’d rather not take if there’s a simple prescription that can help me out.