MenopauseMenu guest blog post by Rebecca Francis, movement coach.
Author’s note: This is part 1 of a 2-part series on navigating exercise with a chronic health condition. In this post, I share my own history and experience with Hashimoto’s. In part 2, I will share some specific tips you can use to help you navigate your own journey with exercise and autoimmunity, or other chronic health issues.
I can’t say exactly how long I’ve had Hashimoto’s, but if I had to approximate, I’d say the constellation of symptoms that it brings began to come to the fore some time not long after giving birth to my daughter nearly 17 years ago.
At the time, I didn’t know anything about autoimmune diseases, and had never heard of Hashimoto’s. It wasn’t until 8 years later that I connected the dots and went to a doctor and asked to be tested for thyroid antibodies.
The lab work confirmed that what I had been experiencing was indeed Hashimoto’s, an endocrine autoimmune disease affecting the thyroid.
It’s easy to find out about Hashimoto’s now, if you look online, but I never really had reason to do so years ago. For a while, I wrote off my symptoms to prolonged postpartum depression. And I thought maybe that’s why everything else was so difficult.
Depression, by the way, is a significant feature of Hashimoto’s.
Hashimoto’s disease, as it happens, shares symptoms with many other autoimmune diseases and chronic conditions. They include, but are definitely not limited to: joint and muscle pain, fatigue, weight gain, hair loss (goodbye, eyebrows!), irregular and/or heavy menstrual periods, difficulties with thermoregulation, brain fog, digestive issues, etc.
In the three years leading up to my diagnosis, I was pushing myself hard. I was a newly single mom. I was working multiple jobs (a day job as a personal trainer and group exercise instructor, and a night job waiting tables).
I was doing frequent high-intensity workouts apart from the classes I taught, as well as training in Kung Fu three times per week. My sleep was erratic, and I was subsisting on a vegetarian diet.
The year of my diagnosis was the year I also found out that I was having a reaction to just about every single food I had been eating from fruits and vegetables to eggs, dairy, legumes, nuts and grains.
The realization that–due to my food sensitivities–I was limited to a very small number of foods, none of which would provide adequate nourishment, was a major turning point for me. It was a moment in time that demanded that I consider eating animals after over 15 continuous years of vegetarianism.
There are many directions I could go in sharing my journey with Hashimoto’s, but the main purpose of writing this particular piece is to talk about how I navigate exercise with a chronic health condition.
Exercise intolerance, while sounding like a fake thing that someone makes a jokey meme about, is a very real thing that happens to many of us with chronic health conditions, and isn’t just limited to exercise but includes performing regular daily activities, causing sufferers to feel extremely fatigued above and beyond “normal.” Normal, while subjective, relates to what one has been accustomed to in the past.
And while exercise intolerance isn’t the same as having a low level of fitness, navigating exercise intolerance can make it challenging or impossible to maintain fitness. Features of exercise intolerance include exhaustion, becoming out of breath, pain, weakness while engaging with even mild physical activity, etc.
Additionally, post exertional malaise (PEM) is what many people with chronic conditions experience within a 12-48 hour window after exercise. PEM is one symptom of chronic fatigue syndrome. Symptoms include fatigue, pain, brain fog, sore throat and/or swollen lymph nodes after previously tolerated physical exercise.
For me, this feels like an autoimmune flare, and I have experienced it more times than I can count. The challenge is you don’t always know you’re overdoing it ‘til the damage is done.
Movement, few would argue, is an important component of navigating chronic health conditions.
One of the biggest reasons is that your lymphatic system, a key component of your immune system, relies on movement and muscle contraction in order to circulate and carry waste matter and harmful bacteria out of your body. Unlike your heart, your lymphatic system does not have its own pump, so it doesn’t move much unless you do.
On the other end of the spectrum, too much movement, or exercise that is too intense or vigorous can easily tip the scales into causing an autoimmune or other health flare.
Striking the balance can be difficult, and there is no single magic formula that will work for all people, or even for the same person every single day. A big part of learning how to strike the balance between too much and too little is learning how to tune into your body’s cues, and that is something that takes practice.
So, I will share what I have learned about how to keep these flares to a minimum. I say to a minimum rather than saying that I will keep them from happening at all because I want to be gracious with myself. I recognize that despite my life work, despite my personal cultivation of body connection, I don’t always feel connected to my body, and that’s really okay.
Stay tuned for part two where I will share specific tips.
: : :
Rebecca Francis has been a movement coach for over 13 years. She recently published her first book, Right Now Is Here, which contains photography, poetry, and reflections exploring what it means to be human. You can find more of her writing here and learn more about her movement coaching services here. She is also on Instagram @buildthemovement & @rightnowishere, and Facebook.