Get Happy

The New York Times had an interesting article today about how much exercise is necessary per week to keep you happy. The study was done in Scotland, an area of the globe that has famously gloomy weather (SADs alert), yet to my mind has a disproportionate number of extremely cheerful, charming and funny people. Go figure.

Anyway, they looked at several different kinds of activities, be it housework, gardening or running, and found that “vigorous” exercise had the strongest effect on mood. But — here’s the shocker — they say as little as 20 minutes per week is enough to keep your spirits up. Hm. I must be the Grinch or something, because when I was running 5 miles a day 5 days per week, I was still a little grumpy. Perhaps it’s relative? Maybe I would’ve been in an even worse mood had I not run all those days. I shudder to think.

Why is this important for those with osteoporosis? Because feeling sad or angry or stressed directly affects bone health. The body releases extra cortisol when you’re not feeling chipper… or at least … normal… whatever that is. So it’s extremely important to find ways to alleviate the blues/mads/bads.

If you have osteoporosis, or even want to fend it off, you really should be doing some form of exercise everyday. And an earlier New York Times article sited a separate study which said that vigorous walking was the most (only) beneficial exercise for bone health (a finding I have a big problem with). But it’s nice to know if you move a little more quickly you’ll get a double whammy of good: good mood and good bones.

Hip hip hurray!

Ladies, our hips are problematic. Because we can give birth, our pelvis is wider set than the pelvis of a man. A teacher once told me to think of it as the difference between the space between two of your fingers (men) and the space between your thumb and index finger (women). This means our legs, which have to keep us upright and move us around in the world underneath this wider gap, are set more at an angle than men’s, which puts more pressure on the hip joint (the femoral neck specifically).

Here’s my crude stick figure drawing to illustrate the difference between the sexes.

Now most of the stuff we do with our legs in day-to-day life occurs in the sagittal plane: meaning the movements occur to the front or to the back, like when you walk, or run. [NOTE: The sagittal plane is called the sagittal plane because of Sagitarius -- the way he holds his bow and arrow out in front and shoots to the front, drawing his elbow to the back. Front and back.]

Since we know bone responds to the demands that muscle places on it, and if our bones are “accustomed” to us moving front and back, then we need to move in a different “plane.” This is why dancing is so good for bones – -because it (actually, the muscles when you’re moving) places unexpected stresses on them.

But if you’re not big on dancing, there are other things you can do. Like Abduction and Adduction. Abduction means you move a limb out to the side away from your body (think “absent” and it helps). Adduction means you move a limb towards your body from the side (think “addition.”)

When you do leg abduction, you are strengthening the muscles that surround and protect your hip joint. Those muscles are: gluteus medius and minimus, the piriformis (in the buttocks), the ilipsoas (in the groin), the tensor fasciae latae (upper lateral thigh), and the sartorius (runs from outside of lateral thigh into the medial side just below the kneecap).

They have those adduction/abduction machines at the gym. But if you’re a stubby little sprout like me, the gadgets you’re supposed to put your legs in don’t land in the right place. You have to skootch forward in the chair, and then if you sit back, your back ends up being arched and when you move the weights, chances are you’re going to injure your back.

So I use either an exercise band or a Pilates ring instead. I take the exercise band and tie it around my ankles. Then, keeping my knees slightly flexed and my toes pointing in towards each other, I take a step to the right side, then resisting the pull of the band, slowly bring my left foot to rest beside my right foot. I make my way across the room doing this, then I switch and come back the opposite direction.

You can also just do this standing still, lifting and lower the leg to one side like in the picture below.

EXCEPT — her toes are pointing out/her leg is turned out.  Do not follow her example. Lead with the heel, not the toes. Why? If your leg is turned outwards, then your quadriceps (large muscle group located on the front of your thigh) are doing all the work and you won’t be hitting the muscles you’re trying to hit at all.

If you have bad knees, you might want to tie the band around your thighs just above the kneecaps to keep from straining the knee. The higher the band is on your leg, the less resistance you’ll be getting, however.

If balance is an issue, you could lay on the floor on one side with the band or Pilates ring around your ankles (or thighs for those with bad knees) and lift one leg towards the ceiling (keeping toes pointing in), and then lower it. You could also use ankle weights for this one instead of a band. Imagine he has a band tied around his ankles. And notice — his toes are turned in.  Very good!  [I don't know why I can't find any pictures of this exercise on the web...]

To work the inside of the thighs, stay on the floor on one side, and place the Pilates ring between your ankles and try to squeeze your legs together. Not easy to do. Keep your abdominal muscles firm, your spine long. You can move the ring up between your knees if you feel strain in your lower back doing this move.

It was Professor Mustard in the Conservatory with a Candlestick

I sort of feel as if I’m playing the game Clue, trying to figure out what muscle I injured. And it was definitely a muscle because I am all better now. The interior obliques didn’t quite fit the bill IMO because the pain was located more in the side back than side front.

Which leads me to the serratus posterior inferior. The serratus muscles are called serratus because they resemble the edge of a serrated knife. See how they kind of make the jagged teeth at their insertion point on the ribs?

Besides the posterior inferior, there’s also a serratus anterior, and a serratus posterior superior (not shown here). But I’m concerned with the posterior inferior (called posterior inferior because it’s on your back and it’s lower than the other serratus posterior muscle). Serratus posterior inferior assists in forced expiration, spinal rotation and spinal extension.

Ah ha! That’s the culprit!

And I know exactly how I did it. It was in a little yoga posture known as bridge a/k/a Setu Bandha Sarvangasana.

I fell into the trap of “compare and despair.” I wanted to be able to do the pose the way the big kids do — or I should say the way the really flexible kids do. They grab onto their ankles (see picture below).

And so I tried to do that. And while trying to do that, I realized why I couldn’t do that, and that’s because my back isn’t that flexible. Unfortunately, I did not have this moment of clarity until after trying to force myself into that position. So I’m in the position, trying to force myself further into the position, and I sort of lurched to one side losing my balance. By the way, you know you’re straining if you manage to “lose your balance” while lying down. Anyway, I lost my balance and had to very quickly “right” myself. And it was during that whole kerfuffle that the pulled muscle happened.

So once again — learn from my mistakes, grasshoppers. Do not attempt to go beyond where you should go. I am very lucky that all I got for my trouble was a slightly pulled muscle. However, beyond the obvious discomfort, I felt like my whole routine suffered a giant setback this week. I caught the head cold from Hades on the plane from Spain, and I’ve been shuffling and snuffling around ever since, not wanting to do much of anything, not even my juicing.

I feel as if I’m back (or almost back) in the pink now — I even went for a run today with my husband. But I believe all the ailments — even the head cold — could have been avoided if I’d only listened to my own body.

Perfectionism Isn’t Doing Me Any Favors

I’m a perfectionist. Not about all things, but about the things that I think “matter,” I border on obsessive. No. I don’t border. I am obsessive. And this is not a problem as long as I am able to meet my utterly unrealistic goals. But the minute I “fail” myself, well then everything goes down the tubes.

This yoga study. I set out to do the yoga Every. Single. Day. And at first, I did. For two and a half months, I didn’t miss a single session. Not only did I do the study poses every single day, but I added extra poses. And I decided to hold each pose for thirty seconds longer than the suggested holding time. Because I’ve got to be the best, don’t you know?

But then I missed a day. And then another. And then another. And then my mind goes, “well, you’ve messed it up now, why even try anymore?” And then every day becomes a giant power struggle with myself as to whether I’m going to do the yoga or goof off.

Not good. Exercise is supposed to be the magic bullet that’s going to save my weak-ass bones, remember?

So tonight I did something that in the past would have been impossible for me. I compromised. I did my yoga — all the study poses — but I gave myself permission to leave out the poses that I added, and permission to hold the twelve poses for less time than I normally would… like thirty seconds less (i.e., I went down to the amount of time they suggest you hold poses in the first place). And it was very painless and very quick.

It was a good lesson — to realize that the requisite, unadorned poses take no time at all. And that I should (to quote Nike) just do it… even if I don’t feel like it. While it’s true, I didn’t tax myself as much as I normally would, it’s also true that some exercise trumps no exercise.

When I was a personal trainer, I used to tell my clients that exercise should be like brushing your teeth — you should do it every day. And if you do some exercise every day, eventually it becomes a habit so that, like teeth brushing, it’s just something you do. You wouldn’t dream of not doing it.

I used to very much be of that mind. And then I got sucked into the job from hell and the exercise routine fell by the wayside.

I want it to become habit again. I think it’s on its way to becoming habit again. But in the meantime, hurrah for all of us who soldier on and do our workouts even when we don’t feel like it!

My D Got an A+

Just got my latest vitamin D blood serum levels. I’m at 67. They said whatever I’m doing, to keep doing it.

What I’m doing is taking 4000-6000 IU of D3 per day. My prescription for the 50,000 IU of D2 ended around mid-October. Rather than just doing the U.S. RDA of 400, I decided to follow the Vitamin D Council’s recommendation of 4000 to 5000 IU per day during winter if you live in a northeastern state. If there’s a day (are days) when I’m under a lot of stress (or fighting a dang cold — which I’ve been doing the past four days), then I up my dosage to 6000.

I only wish the testing weren’t so expensive and that I didn’t have to have a doctor’s prescription to do it, because I’m getting up towards the maximum level of 80. Maybe I’ll level out at 4000 and see how I do.

In any case, this is very good news indeed because it means I should finally be able to remodel some bones. I had a feeling my numbers would be good. I forget whether I mentioned it on this blog before or not, but when I was at my sister-in-law’s the first week of December, I weighed myself, and I was at 104 pounds. That’s 9 pounds up from June, so right about where I want to be. When my D levels were really low, I wasn’t able to gain weight come hell or high water. So this is good. Really good.

Why must you be so oblique?

When we say someone is oblique, we mean they’re not being straightforward. The same applies to the muscle.

The internal and external obliques are members of your abdominal muscles and they run at an angle on the front of your body. The internal obliques sit on top of the transversus abdominis (see picture below), a muscle which doesn’t do a thing in terms of flexion of the spine, but is involved in forceful exhalations, spinal stabilization, and compression of internal organs — but I digress.

Where was I? Oh yeah. The internal obliques (see picture below) are on top of the transversus abdominis; the external obliques are on top of the internal obliques. So in terms of their names, they are not “oblique” at all. It is very clear which muscle is where on the body: internal obliques are underneath the external obliques.

The internal obliques begin in the lower back, the iliac crest (upper part of hip bone) and inguinal ligament and run upwards and inwards towards midline of the body, inserting on the lower edges of the last three ribs and on the linea alba (that little “seam” you see on a six-pack of abs). They look like an upside down “V” [NOTE: not in this picture because it's a side view, but if it were a frontal view and you could see left and right obliques, it would look like an upside down "V".]

The external obliques (see picture below) look like a right-side-up “V”. [Ditto earlier note about side view/front view.]

They run diagonally downward and inward, starting on the lower ribs and inserting to the pelvis. You can locate them by putting your hands in your coat pocket. The external obliques originate at the fifth to twelfth ribs and insert into the iliac crest (hip bone), the inguinal ligament (groin area — see picture below — it’s the blue line), and the linea alba.

The internal obliques have two functions: They assist in exhalation and they work with the external obliques in rotating the torso and in bending to the side (i.e., lateral flexion).

The internal obliques are called “same side rotators” because whatever side you’re turning towards (or flexing towards) — that’s the set of internal obliques that are contracting.

The external obliques are “opposite side rotators” — whatever side you’re turning towards, it’s the opposite side of external obliques that are contracting.

mumbo-jumbo mumbo-jumbo mumbo-jumbo.

It’s like this: if you’re rotating to the right, the right internal the left external obliques contract. If you’re rotating to the left, the left internal and right external obliques contract.

The reason I’m posting this is, I think instead of injuring a rib, I pulled something in my internal obliques on my left side — or one of my abdominal muscles. Because it hurts when I do things that require the use of my abdominal muscles/stabilization of the spine, not the use of my lungs/ribs. If sit up or back in a chair, if I turn to my left side, if I elongate my torso — things like that.

Can’t figure out how I did it. Pulling my suitcase out of the cab, maybe?

Anyway, just because I’m posting stuff about abs here, don’t mistake and think I’m saying go do crunches or something. Crunches are a no-no. Big time.

If anyone has any ideas about what in tarnation I pulled, let me know.

The Girl Who Cried Wolf?

Maybe it wasn’t a fracture. I have seriously cracked some ribs in the past, and this feels nothing like that.

Back in…2001, I was wearing some ridiculously ridiculous shoes — these zip up platform boots. Think Harvey Keitel in Taxi Driver and you’re getting close. Anyway, I’m in Port Authority Bus Terminal, and I’m carrying a really heavy suitcase, and an even heavier shoulder bag, and I’m in a hurry. Can’t remember why I was in a hurry, but I was in a hurry. And there’s some gal yacking on her cellphone as she walks down the stairs and she’s moving really slowly. So I scoot or attempt to scoot past her, the heel of my ridiculously ridiculous boot catches on the metal trim on the edge of the stair. I pitch forward. I try to get my other ridiculously ridiculous clad foot placed on the next stair, but it catches in the hem of my pants leg.

Uh-oh.

I’m looking down at that long stairway stretching beneath me, nothing I can grab onto because I’m in the center of the stairs, so I hurl myself sideways (in an attempt to grab the railing), but because I’ve got the dang suitcase in my hand and I don’t think fast enough to drop it, I can’t grab the rail, and instead hook the railing under my arm and it catches me on the ribs — full force — all my body weight and then some behind it.

And the next six weeks or so were an experience in agony. I didn’t bother to go see a doctor. I knew I’d messed up some ribs. I have horrible allergies, and every time I sneezed, I think I would’ve preferred to take a bullet instead. I was also taking a swing dancing class at the time (where I met my husband), and every time we practiced a swing out or any of those under the arm spins, I’d think I was going to pass out. But I didn’t want to look like a whiner (we’d just met), so I never said a word. I just spun and suffered in silence.

As for this time around, maybe it’s just because it’s lower on my body, but it doesn’t hurt nearly as badly as that stair fall injury felt. The stair fall rib thing hurt all the time. This one only hurts when I move a certain way, and then once I’m still, it stops hurting. Like laying on my side — it only hurts when I’m actually rolling over, once I get there and am still, the pain stops. So (color me naive) I’m thinking it’s muscular, and not skeletal in nature.

Whatever it is, it’s almost stopped hurting completely. Could it be there’s no wolf after all?

Grr — Here we go again?

According to an article in the New York Times, they’re now saying that some bisphosphonates (Fosomax in particular) help prevent breast cancer. After dedicating several paragraphs to this new “discovery,” the Times then says that there have been no independent, randomized test studies as of yet.

In other words, the people making these claims about how fantastic Fosomax is for breast health are the same people who said HRT prevented dementia — the pharmaceutical companies.

Color me skeptical.

It angers me when news like this goes mainstream because doctors pick it up and start spouting this information as if it’s gospel, and millions of women then jump on the pill-popping bandwagon. Fast-forward ten years (after potential damage has been done), and they could discover the drugs do no such thing and possibly even make something else worse.

I find it … what’s the word? Ironic? Ridiculous? Maddening? That in the December 10th edition of the Times, one can read a lengthy article on the Prempro lawsuits — a drug that was going to “cure” menopause and osteoporosis, but actually caused breast cancer — on the very same page as an article about the breast protective powers of Fosomax.

Is history repeating itself?

Another Handy Helper?

Reading the Inspire website, I stumbled across a post about a product called Prelief. It’s made by the same people who make Beano (supposedly keeps you from being gassy. I have had occasion to need Beano and can honestly say it works).

Prelief was manufactured with people who (I’m quoting from their website here):

“…have Interstitial cystitis (IC), also known as painful bladder syndrome (PBS), is a condition that results in recurring discomfort or pain in the bladder and the surrounding pelvic region. The symptoms can vary greatly among individuals and even for the same person at different times; they include an urgent need to urinate, a frequent need to urinate and, for some, pelvic pressure and/or pain. In many cases, these symptoms are severe and are made worse by eating certain foods.”

It comes in either a tablet form that you take prior to eating, or granules that you sprinkle directly on food. I guess it’s the acid in the food that exacerbates the IC/PBS symptoms, and Prelief helps neutralize the acid. Which means that Prelief might be something you’d want to add to your diet if you’re unable to be a good little do-bee and keep to an alkalizing diet all the time (me).

I haven’t tried it yet, but as soon as I’m back in the USA I will. If anyone else out there has already tried it, please let me know if you think it’s effective.

There’s no place like home

My entire life, like practically since I could crawl, I’ve tried to get away from home. I love traveling. Because I was so shy, my mother was convinced that I would have a horrible time the first trip to summer camp, but it was quite the opposite. But now, suddenly, I find I just want to go home. Madrid is beautiful. Truly a gorgeous, unique city with incredible architecture (some of the biggest doors you will ever see in your life!) and a population that universally seems to think you are the greatest person they’ve ever met as soon as they meet you. My husband says it’s like having a city full of Marianne’s (his mother) — they’re all so upbeat and enthusiastic.

But my routine has been interrupted. Our hotel room is small and it smells like poop (why?) There’s no place where I can stretch out and do my yoga, so I’m having to improvise. The long days of working at the studio, followed by heavy dinners and always wine leave me exhausted. And I still haven’t gotten over my jet lag. Seriously, I’ll go to bed at midnight, and then wake a 2:00 a.m., and I won’t be able to go back to sleep no matter how hard I try. And there was another fracas with my crazy neighbor before we left town, one that ended very badly, and I keep playing the events over and over in my head.

We had a day off yesterday and went to Toledo (stunning!), but it was very windy and cold, and somehow I did something to one of my ribs. I hate to say it, but this time it doesn’t feel like a pulled muscle, it feels like a fracture.

And that makes me very sad, very mad, and also makes it even harder to do my yoga because everything I do hurts. And it scares me that something else is going to go next.

When I first started feeling the pain, I thought I’d just over-stretched, but then today it was so obvious that it was something more serious. If I sneeze, or roll over onto that side, or sit up or back too suddenly, it’s like a knife of pain that makes me catch my breath. It’s enough to make me want to go tell my doctor to just put me on the medication. Any medication. If only I thought the medication worked. I do feel lucky that it wasn’t a vertebra or a hip.

But I wonder…Are my days of living life as if in glass slippers upon me?