Swimming with health issues - share your stories?

Then again I'm down about 50 lbs, my BP is now in the normal range, and I'm off the heavy blood thinners, so returning to swimming may well have been a saving grace. :applaud:

Sjogren's Syndrome....has been fun trying to moderate what I can and cannot do...

Podiatrist kept telling me (at least 5 times) to KEEP SWIMMING. He said that it is very important to keep swimming since it will keep me trying to use those muscles. :cheerleader::cheerleader::cheerleader: Whooohooo! Keep on swimming! :applaud:

Well, I've been swimming my whole adult career with Graves Disease. So far it hasn't affected me, except when pregnant and they had to change my dosage of Synthroid. I just keep up the pills and I'm okay. Lately, I'm dealing with my ankle. First surgery was in Nov to fix a sprain. They repaired some damaged ligaments. Then in March I kicked a ball and got a ganglion cyst. So in Aug I'm going back in for surgery. Some days I can kick, other days just walking hurts. Most days, I just modify the work out. When I do kick, I usually get lapped by the other kids (I swim with age groupers). I hope to be back to 100% in Sept!!

Sounds very troublesome with all the diagnoses and stuff ... I guess some of you have tried everything to get better, including changing your diet. Optimising your diet may not heel all your health issues on day one, but it will make you feel much better, now and in the future. If you haven't tried optimising your diet yet, try two weeks where you: - Drink ½ liter of freshly squeezed* vegetable juice every day. - Avoid dairy products - Avoid (or drastically cut down) your intake of sugar, alcohol, caffeine, white bread, red meat and industry processed food. - Eat lots and lots of vegetables (the greener the better) and fruit, the less processed the better. - Eat a small handful of nuts or almonds every day** You may experience headache and dizzyness or feel a bit lightheaded the first few days, particularly if you cut down from a very high caffeine intake. Don't worry, it will get better! If you feel better after two weeks on a diet like this: Keep going! Some people get better if they avoid gluten. This is a bit more difficult, as cutting down is not enough, you must do it 100% for about 4 weeks to feel any effect. For most people gluten-free diet is not worth the effort. However, if you still have "digestive issues" after trying the other tips, you may want to try a gluten-free diet for 4 weeks. If you find my suggestions too drastic, take one step at a time. I suggest you start with the living juice*. It makes you feel sooooo much better. Your body will love you for giving it so much delicious nutrition ;) Once juicing is a part of your daily routines, start cutting down on all the "bad things", one thing at a time. DOn't overdo it, old habits are hard to change, and new habits take time to establish. *Using a centrifugal juicer is better than not juicing at all, but the best gift you can give yourself and your health is a juicer delivering "living juice" i.e. a single auger or a twin gear juicer. You can juice fruit along with the vegetables, if you don't like the taste of 100% veggie juice. Juice vegetables like beets, carrots, kale, any green vegetable you can think of. Add ginger, lemon, lime, mint, parsley or other fresh herb for taste. ** nuts and almonds taste better and are more nutritious if soaked in cold water for some hours.

In 1998 I had a "mild" stroke - the cause, with a qualifier of "we think it was" a disected artery in the brain stem. One of the neuros said it may have been from a repeated twisting of the neck and head, or a head injury. Anyway, until the past couple of years I was advised to not to exercise strenuously - but that may have been more due to the medication and the possiblilty of bruising or cutting myself and bleeding (if I had a bloody nose or cut while shaving I'd bleed for an hour). Anyway, I was terrified of the whole neck twist while breathing during swimming, but after almost 10 years I figured I'd try again and got the OK from my doctor in March 2008. Still I find myself focusing on every twist, my heart rate, every ache or pain. Then again I'm down about 50 lbs, my BP is now in the normal range, and I'm off the heavy blood thinners, so returning to swimming may well have been a saving grace.

PS: Try googling your disease + juicing - see what comes. As an examble, googling - arthritis juicing - reveals that juicing ginger, pineapple, black cherries and raw potato (not necessarily together!!) may be worth a shot. I have suffered from arthritis, headaches, chronic sinusitis during winter time and a LOT of bladder infections. All my symptoms have been drastically reduced after I started juicing, stopped eating dairy and reduced my intake of sugar (I dont smoke or drink alcohol, dont eat much meat). I haven't had a bladder infection or sinusitis since I started juicing. My arthritis has not disappeared, but its much better and at least it doesn't progress. I've stopped targeting my arthritis with the juices I prepare, I just juice because it's delicious and because both my body and mind feel so much better when I drink my homepressed vegetable juice, than when I don't.

IFinally the past 2 months I have been able to swim regularly....Yay! :banana: The energy levels are back to normal......but the shoulders struggle to cope with the swimming with the additional weight that I have put on. It's going to be a long road back to where I was, but I do feel considerably lucky to have discovered my cancer when I was not due for my first test for another 7 yrs. Good luck! :cheerleader: And, give Oz a great big hug for me! I have been in your country several times; the longest being for six months during a one-year South Pacific adventure with just me and my backpack. I love Australia!

Spent the afternoon at Kaiser...here's the status report. Peroneal nerve entrapment in the knee is the preliminary diagnosis. When she tested my strength on all of the other leg muscles I was "5 out of 5," except dorsiflection (lifting the toes up). I am scheduled for a nerve conduction study and Electromyography on Aug 3rd. She gave me a muscle relaxant to try to keep the cramps away at night. Podiatrist kept telling me (at least 5 times) to KEEP SWIMMING. He said that it is very important to keep swimming since it will keep me trying to use those muscles. He also gave me some hints to minimize problems with my stumbling. He also said that these things often resolve on their own, but generally take 6 months to a year. He also said it might have been trauma to the knee that I don't remember that caused it. My podiatrist was a competitive swimmer, I keep trying to recruit him for Masters. I need to be careful at the end of the day, when I'm tired, since that's when I tend to stumble the most. Sounds like an appointment in the right direction. I'm glad you got the best diagnosis of all - keep swimming!

You got no symptoms with graves? All the females in my family have Graves, usually by the time they are 45ish, and it's symptoms galore. Some develop the bug-eyes too, some don't. Depending on how ealy it's caught, I think. My mom had heck of a time getting diagnosed... bit it's 'back home', not in the US. I didn't know till just last few years it runs in the family. Mine is subclinical at the moment, as far as most of the hormones go, but the symptoms have started 3-4 years ago, after a miscarriage (Actually etopic, to be more precise). My body kind of never went back to normal after that. Oh I had symptoms before I was diagnosed but that was 12 years ago (when I was 27). Since I have been regulated on Synthroid, I haven't had any problems with it. I've been lucky in having great endocrinologists. It can run in families but I am the only one in 3 generations that has it. It's autoimmune and my dad and sister got another autoimmune disease.