Discovery – why progressive exercise therapy doesn’t work

Many of you with M.E./C.F.S. will have been encouraged to do “a little more everyday” only to discover that you can’t.

As a physiotherapist, I was taught that this was the way to increase strength, that the muscles would respond by getting stronger. If you could walk 20 yards one day, you should try and walk 20 + yards the next and it always confused me when I was ill to find that one day I could walk, say, for 30 minutes and the next day I may not even be able to get out of bed.

Then there is “the line” over which you dare not cross! Even one step over it would put me in bed for 24 – 48 hours. What was going on?

Discovery – people with M.E. can’t read much

Tried to read more than a couple of sentences? What about watching television or any moving spectacle? Always used to make me feel very ill quite quickly, rather akin to seasickness.

What was going on?

Recovery

The issue here is to do with your eyes and/or vestibular apparatus. Scanning across the page when reading is the same as a moving horizon on a boat or any means of travel. Travel generally in any shape or form causes the horizon to move triggering travel sickness in the susceptible and the more sensitive you are, the more quickly it will happen.

Your vestibular apparatus or system is, in most mammals, the sensory system that provides the leading contribution to the sense of balance and spatial orientation for the purpose of coordinating movement with balance. (from Wikipedia) So if it’s off, you feel off.

I discovered this one day when I was moving my eyes up and down a chart and realized that I was going to have a panic attack if I didn’t stop.

It was also why I couldn’t play tennis without having a panic attack, or even run upstairs any more. Why I couldn’t read, watch Wimbledon or any moving image without feeling anxious or nauseous. It was also why, when I did feel those things that looking at solid vertical lines would lead to the anxiety and nausea reducing. I had stabilised my horizon.

You need to make your brain happy again by resetting your vestibular apparatus.

Is there an emotional issue residing in this system?

One day, I was trying, yet again, to ignore my illness by playing tennis. After a few games I had to stop, I was feeling extremely anxious and my heart was racing. I left them to it and went to try and settle down.

I was pacing up and down trying not to feel my beating heart. Just feeling it was fuelling my anxiety. Suddenly I had this insight “this is not killing me.” The tachycardia vanished along with panic. It was so completely dramatic that I was astonished, I couldn’t believe it.

What the “this” was I have no idea and I don’t need to know.

I have experienced only one more panic attack since then at the end of a 13 hour flight. I was starting to feel uncomfortable and my husband turned to me and suggested I was feeling trapped (I’m not a happy flyer). I thought about this and yes, the panic went, I had been feeling that.

During my recovery I went to several Personal Trainers to help me with my goal of getting fitter. I would tell them my story and they would nod and tell me they understood. Then I would have to go through their assessment and "just try one more" I was asked. Without fail, I would be ill 4 - 6 hours later (and why this delay?). That is until I came across Graham at Simplicity Fitness. I told him my story and he said, "Yes, I understand and when your body tells you to stop - STOP."

And it worked. Not only have I got a lot more strength and fitness back but I am also more flexible. Because Graham has worked on retraining my vestibular apparatus as well as my overall strength and fitness, my body has been able to get out of hyper vigilance and arousal into a relaxed state so my muscles have let go so I can move more. I have done yoga etc for years but have got more movement through my muscles being able to relax, because I'm no longer in flight or fight, than any other method I've tried. And when I want to stop, I say so, and I stop. This also means I can trust him to care for me, and as he has said, "a happy mind for a happy body."

I do not know the full picture of what happens, why we can feel so ill after exercise but this is what I think may be happening.

Our bodies are stressed and we get ill. We rest a lot and feel a little better but then we go and do something a little more. If we're very weak, it may simply be getting up, reading a book, watching TV, talking. Anything, when you're very weak, is enough to use energy, energy that had been used for suppressing the emotions so that they can now break out. As they're negative emotions, "attached" to the original trauma, we feel anxious, ill, and because we have forgotten the connection to the original trauma, they seem to come from nowhere.

It doesn't matter whether we use energy for doing or thinking, it's energy and we have been using enormous amounts of energy to suppress and block the emotions. Run out of energy and up they come.

I am told that there is a big connection in the brain between our amygdala, which is "Responsible for the response and memory of emotions, especially fear. When you think of the amygdala, you should think of one word. Fear." (Brain Made Simple) and the vestibular apparatus hence balancing and recalibrating the vestibular apparatus is enormously beneficial. Rebalancing calms the mind.

Furthermore, if we do not need to use energy for maintaining our balance because we're functioning better, the energy can be freed up for living.

You need to make your brain happy again by resetting your vestibular apparatus.

There are several tests that can show whether the vestibular apparatus needs help.

In the early days, I used the phenomenon of "overdoing it" in order to unearth hidden traumas as outlined in previous blogs. This in itself was a balancing act between doing just enough to trigger a little reaction that I could work with and overdoing it and feeling totally overwhelmed with a full blown melt down. By isolating symptoms, I was able to deal with the sensations, the traumas, the energies involved, akin to nibbling away at the problem!

Resources

Exercises to recalibrate the vestibular apparatus.

These involve things such as focusing on one spot and moving the head around whilst keeping the eyes still and the opposite of moving the eyes and maintaining the head position.

See also;

EMDR,

Brainspotting

Dr. Eric Cobb

Next - you may find yourself being guided