Tag Archives: wheel chair

Arthritis, Health and Fitness, Keep Moving: Managing Arthritis

Is it Woo-Woo?

February 14, 2013 betsyjbell

Gentle Reader,

Climbing up a long snowy track on cross country skis yesterday, my companions and I talked about little miracles, ‘woo-woo’ magic, the unexplained healing that sometimes occurs. The husband of one friend has suffered from arthritis in both ankles for about 5 years, so bad that he could barely walk. He is in his late 50’s. The friend herself worked a stressful tech job that required her to bend over patients. She suffered from excruciating pain from her head down her neck, along her shoulders and down her arms. In time the pain reached down her back.

The man, slim, fit, an avid cyclist who couldn’t walk without extreme pain, got one of his ankles fused, a newish operation for arthritis. They chose the more painful of the two to work on. The operated ankle no longer hurts. The ‘woo-woo’ miracle is that the other ankle no longer hurts. He can walk 5 miles. The x-rays indicated that both ankles were equally damaged by the disease. Hum. . . . . .

The friend with the pain from bending over at work? Her doctor’s diagnosed fibromyalgia and offered drug therapy. After much consideration, she retired from her job. All the pain has vanished.

Were the x-rays wrong? Were the doctors missing something?

In my own case, I hurt my back badly at age 52. By the age of 55, I was diagnosed with a severe condition that my doctor said would put me in a wheel chair. At age 75, I am pretty much pain free. I haven’t had any of the operations they suggested. A check up with more pictures at age 65, the doc said, “If I didn’t know you, I’d say you should be in a wheel chair.”

What’s going on here? These three stories, my friend with diagnosed fibromyalgia, her husband with arthritic ankles and me with a back condition so bad I should be in a wheel chair all have to do with pain and the skeletal structure, nerves and pain messaging. Compelling research has been done with thought, intention and cancer. Here is a short video about this healing work. Do Thoughts Have the Power to Heal? Could similar healing happen with skeletal and nerve problems? Even if you don’t direct intention to the condition such as with my friend’s husband? He’s not interesting in discussing the ‘miracle’ healing of the second ankle.

You can read my story and what I’ve done to be pain free today in past blog posts. Perhaps the most important thing is hope, belief and action, in that order. I seldom miss my morning routine to limber everything up. I listen to a CD meditation that declares night after night that my cells have all the right nutrients to recreate themselves new and healthy, even the ones in my back that are supposed to be all messed up.

Miracles of healing? As the doctor says, “whatever you’re doing, keep it up.” And so I do. How about you?

Fondly,

Be Well, Do Well, Keep Moving

Betsy

Injured at 52. Diagnosed and sentenced to a wheel chair at 55 and 65. Hiking, skiing, dancing and walking at 75. Read my story.

206 933 1889 www.GrandmaBetsyBell.com Betsy@HiHoHealth.com

Arthritis, Be Well health tips, Health and Fitness, Keep Moving: Managing Arthritis

Knee Pain: an early warning sign of Osteoarthritis

August 24, 2012 betsyjbell 10 Comments

Gentle Reader,

This is just in from the Johns Hopkins:

Knee Pain: An Early
Warning Sign of Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis, affecting an estimated 27 million people in the United States. By age 40, approximately 90 percent of us have at least some signs of osteoarthritis that can be seen on X-rays of the weight-bearing joints (the hips and knees, for example), but symptoms of pain and stiffness usually don’t start until later in life.

Now, researchers from Canada report that knee pain may be an early warning sign of osteoarthritis (OA). Their study was published in the journal Arthritis Care & Research(Volume 62, page 1691).

The researchers obtained X-ray and MRI scans of 255 people with knee pain who were 40 to 79 years old. Pre-radiographic osteoarthritis (signs of cartilage damage seen on MRI but not yet evident on X-ray) was identified in 49 percent, and radiographic osteoarthritis (signs of cartilage damage on X-ray) was identified in 38 percent. Only 13 percent had a normal X-ray and MRI.

Factors linked to a higher chance of having radiographic osteoarthritis or pre-radiographic osteoarthritis included abnormal gait (nearly 11 times higher risk), older age (nearly three times higher risk for each 10-year increase), playing sports regularly after age 20 (35 percent higher risk for each 10 years), knee swelling and difficulty fully stretching the knee joint.

The bottom line: If you have knee pain, don’t ignore it. Early identification of osteoarthritis can lead to early treatment and relief.

Duh! This is a no brainer, isn’t it? My question to you and to them, what are we supposed to do about it? We have the early warning signs. Now what?

In these blog posts, I have explored various modalities of care and presented strategies for alleviating pain and slowing down the onset of severe osteoarthritis. If you are a new reader, I suggest you explore back posts for suggestions.

The bottom line is two fold:

1. Get to your ideal weight and stay there. Even 15 pounds off your current weight (if you are over weight) will make a difference in your joints.

2. Keep moving. Find something to do that is pleasurable and that you will look forward to each day and DO IT. Do NOT, under any and all circumstances, stop moving.

I have a great friend who was in a wheel chair with her osteoarthritis and on multiple medications to manage the pain. A friend persuaded her to seek the counsel of a chiropractor who specializes in blood work and supplementation (primarily by Shaklee). He analyzes the blood and makes recommendations about diet and supplements. The most important advice to Luanne was find something to do that she loved. She didn’t like walking, hiking, dancing, skiing, roller blading, mountain climbing. Nothing pleased her. Nothing made her want it more than the pain she had to endure to try out the activity.

One day she was walking near a dock where people were stepping in to sculls, single and double. She was invited to take a turn and fell in love with sitting in the slim, fast boat down low in the water. As she became more proficient, she got off her medications and ate the better diet along with the prescribed supplements. She became pain free. Luanne went on to win national championships in single scull racing. Today she is slim, beautiful and healthy.

Find the movement of your choice. Maybe it’s turning on the TV or radio to your favorite jazz or Latin music station. There’s someplace in your house where you can dance to your favorite music. Maybe you’d enjoy a little trampoline. It takes up a tiny space and is reputed to help increase bone density. Whatever it is, Go for it.

The doctor’s name is Dr. Richard Brouse. I send him my blood for diagnosis and suggestions for diet and supplements. Having his analysis and prescription for supplements makes my vitamin purchases tax deductible. (I am not giving tax advice. I am not qualified to do so. This is just what I do and have done for 25 years.) It is expensive but worth it. After all, you are going to pay for your health one way or another. Why not pay now and avoid the steep costs looming ahead of you, not to mention the loss of work and play time.

Dr. Brouse will suggest food supplements by Shaklee. In another post, I recommend the ones that are most effective at restoring your body to good health and alleviating arthritis pain. (You can browse the Product Guide here.)

When you take your knee pain to the doctor, they will most likely tell you to expect arthritis in the near future and predict knee replacement therapy down the road. I had these predictions in 1989. I have no knee pain and have never had knee replacement. I take a lot of supplements. People who watch me swallow a handful of them, think I’m nuts. All I can say is that I love being able to hike to Mt. Rainier pain free, to be able to dance the salsa, and run fast across the street, to scramble down the bank at Shark’s Reef on Lopez Island, to last physically in the art museum longer than my brain can take all that stimulation.

I wish the same for you.

Now, tell me in the comment section, what your thoughts are about your early warning signs, if you have any. And by all means let us all know what supplements you have found that help. Did you sign up to get the notification of the next posting?

Fondly, Betsy

Be Well, Do Well and Keep Moving

BetsyBell’s Health4u

www.GrandmaBetsyBell.com

206 933 1889 1 888 283 2077

betsy@hihohealth.com

Arthritis, Health and Fitness

Water Aerobics for Osteoarthritis

January 31, 2012 betsyjbell

Dear Gentle Reader,

Around the time when our youngest child was born, my parents put a swimming pool in their back yard. We used to joke that it was the only way they could get their children to bring their grandchildren to Muskogee, OK in the summer. Like bees to honey, it certainly attracted us, and our four daughters spent time alone with my parents learning to swim, dive. My father loved the chance to teach a new batch of children how to race and win. The design of the pool made it a tax deduction. He was an orthopedist and many of his patients needed rehabilitation that could best be done with pool walking. This pool was 25 ft in length and down one side was an elevated floor the ideal depth for an adult to walk, only the upper torso above water. That was back in 1967, well before water aerobics for rehab and helping arthritis sufferers exercise became an important treatment option.

Water walking is recognized today as easy on the joints and beneficial for those who suffer from osteoarthritis. “The water’s buoyancy supports the body’s weight, which reduces stress on the joints and minimizes pain,” says Jones [Vennie Jones, aquatic coordinator for the Baylor Tom Landry Fitness Center in Dallas]. “And it’s still a great workout. Water provides 12 times the resistance of air, so as you walk, you’re really strengthening and building muscle.” You do not bear weight while swimming and walking, therefore you need to find some exercise that is weight bearing so you don’t lose bone density.

Our YMCA here in West Seattle has at least 2 levels of water aerobics: one mid day for the older, arthritic set and several other opportunities for moderate and vigorous exercise in the water. My husband Chuck found the noon day class gave him a destination for his 1 ½ mile walk three times a week. He loved being one of the only men in a large class of women. They flirted with them and he returned the favor. The pool conversation sometimes rose to such a pitch one could no longer hear the instructor give the calls for the next move. On a few really bad weather days, I joined him, especially when it was too hard for him to walk. So congenial and supportive is this group of about 30 and their patient instructor, that when I took this class two years after Chuck died, they recognized me and asked about his well-being. Now, that is a beneficial reason to join a water aerobics class right there!

Personally, as long as I can get outside to exercise, I will do that over any indoor sport. However, water aerobics for anyone who has joint pain is one of the best ways to get exercise. Get over the inconvenience of changing clothes, getting wet and chilly. Think about the whirl pool hot tub you can soak in (or perhaps your facility has a sauna) and go for it.

If you do not have a Y or club with an aerobics class for people with arthritis, here is a link to a web site that gives detailed descriptions of water walking. Here is an excellent You tube video of other water aerobics moves specifically for arthritics. My personal favorite is playing the piano: the surface of the water is the key board and you lift and lower your fingers while moving your hands from left to right and back pretending to play. The door knob twist is another good one for arthritic hands.

Check with your doctor if you are experiencing a lot of pain. Then take your aching body to the pool. You’ll be amazed at how much better you will feel after moving in that weightless environment for 45 minutes. It will lift your spirits. Our Y has a lift so that even if you are wheel chair bound, you can be helped into the pool.

My readers would enjoy hearing your water aerobics stories. So please share.

Be Well, Do Well and Keep Moving.

Betsy Bell

206 933 1889

www.tirednomore dot com

Arthritis, Health and Fitness

Pilates for back pain?

November 8, 2011 betsyjbell 1 Comment

Pilates for back pain?

Becci announced that after 6 months of attentive Feldenkrais sessions, I was now ready to see Mary Sue Corrado. Like Becci, Mary Sue is a former dancer and turned to Pilates as a path to help increase body awareness, find pain free exercise movements and improve posture. After several private lessons in her Bodies in Balance studio, I joined others in her semi-private classes. The hour and a half sessions were serious business. For 8 ½ years I showed up, mostly on time, took off my shoes, gathered my tools—ethafoam, blocks, triangular cushion, theraband, little foam roles for my neck, wrists, knees—and began my routine under her watchful eye. (In Seattle, we have http://friendlyfoam.com/ store that sells all sorts of therapeutic foam).

There was no side talk amongst the other students. “Make a coffee date to talk about that,” she would instruct if we fell to gossiping. Mary Sue was free to talk about what was on her mind, however. We just turned to Pacific Standard Time and I can hear her voice complaining about moving toward the dark of the year and fussing with the clock to hasten it. Mary Sue would describe walkers she had observed as she did Green Lake and exclaim that she wanted to go up to people and indicate ways to improve their stride, back position, swing of the arms. It is no wonder that her nickname is the “Posture Police.”

I loved and hated those sessions. They saved my life. With Feldenkrais, Becci had moved me. Our effort on her table was to gentle my tendency to push my body; to learn to listen to it and use all supportive muscles to lift, twist, bend for natural flow. My graduation to Mary Sue’s brand of Pilates meant bringing effort to the work. She showed me how to place a gentle finger on my abs as I lifted a bent knee leg inches off the floor so that I could be sure they—the abs were doing the work and not some other muscle. I was to isolate the working part and its tendons and muscles and teach the particular mechanism to do the job without engaging non-essential parts.

One particularly difficult lesson for me was lying on the mat face down, arms out-stretched over my head, and lifting one arm and the opposite leg barely off the ground. I was instructed by her gentle hand on the muscle below the shoulder wings to lift from way down, the erector spinae, not the trapezius. Of course, my shoulder muscles wanted to scrunch up around my ears to help. She would lightly touch the big triangular muscle below. I gradually learned to engage it and leave my traps lying quietly along side the upper spine.

Do you know where your multifidi muscles are? Lying under the erector spinae. This ropy length of muscles on either side of the spinal column are primarily responsible for holding you up. Mary Sue was helping me re-discover these essential muscles. I needed them to function if I was going to carry a heavy pack for 12 days on the Wonderland Trail.

I call this blog NoWheelChair for a reason. When Dr. Herring, the UW Sports Medicine Neurologist

looked at my Magnetic Resonance Imaging—MRI, he declared my bones to be poor candidates for surgery. They already looked worn out at age 53.

“You are going to have to build strong supportive muscles. Your bones are no good. If I didn’t know you and with only your pictures to go by, I’d think you should be in a wheel chair.”

Pilates was my ticket to strong muscles.

Let me add here that not all Pilates is the same. Mary Sue had more than one client refugee from improper Pilates technique. In a large class with no personal, hands-on supervision, one can easily over-strain the back, especially in the 100’s, a Pilates exercise where you form an inverted triangle with your bottom at the base, your torso and legs extended to form the sides. With your arms held tight and straight, you pulse forward engaging the abs as you breathlessly count to 100. Mary Sue did not approve this posture although her students did plenty of ab strengthening V shaped exercises as we progressed to that level. I confess that I have never attended any other Pilates classes. You see, I am such an energetic learner that I will attempt anything the instructor calls out and end up over doing and hurting myself. Remember in my first post when I described following Jack LaLanne as he performed doggy leg lifts, even though it hurt like the blazes. I figured pushing through the pain would cure the pain.

“Nothing should ever hurt,” was Mary Sue’s mantra. Since my daily activities often produced aches and pains, I showed up in her studio once too often hurting in the tiniest beginning exercises and she made me start all over at baby steps. It was the always having to begin again that made me search for something else after eight and a half years. Happily I still begin most days with her voice in my ear, my index finger lightly touching my abs as I do my tiny leg lifts, pelvic tilts, and controlled crunches. I bought a strong iron footstool on Ebay to use for the standing exercise where one foot is placed in a length of sports tubing, the other end of which is held tight over the top of a closed door. Standing on one foot, the other swings back and forth across the erect, perfectly postured body. This exercise particularly helps with balance and strengthens each leg’s abductors and adductors.

I have not found a Pilates instruction You Tube for you. Everything I looked at is geared to athletic strengthening, does not use any of the foam pillows and blocks designed to help an injured body isolate the muscles that need to be recovered while the others rest. We learn so many compensatory strategies to help us avoid pain and keep us moving. Quite often, these strategies exacerbate the painful condition rather than help it. Therapeutic Pilates may be necessary before Pilates itself, in the normal studio for normal people, will be beneficial for someone like me. I found one website that advertises a therapeutic approach to Pilates. If you have plenty of money and time, you can check it out. I was lucky enough to have a couple former dancers bring my back to life again right here in Seattle.

Next week I will tell you about the hike. We nearly made it all the way around Mt. Rainier. It was one of the greatest adventures of my lifetime.

Be well. Do well. Keep Moving.

Betsy

BetsyBell’s Health4U

www.HiHoHealth.com

Betsy@HiHoHealth.com

Arthritis, Be Well health tips, Health and Fitness, Keep Moving: Managing Arthritis

Traumatic Injury: my story

October 21, 2011 betsyjbell 3 Comments

Traumatic injury: my story

Posted on October 18, 2011

Hello, Gentle Reader,

In 1989, I lifted, or should I more accurately say, yanked a large drink box full of wine bottles out of the back seat of a two door Datsun. I heard something go in my lower back. I was angry about carrying these bottles up a long flight of stairs to the social hall of a large church. My husband in his characteristic generosity offered to cook an elegant meal for a visiting prelate from the Russian Orthodox church inMoscow. While I approved a grand reception for this honored guest and his entourage, I criticized my husband for trying to do this alone. Plenty of people would love to cook with Don Bell. My only task was delivering the drink.

I could feel the place in my back where the terrible sensation had come from. I carried the box and several more like it upstairs anyway.

The next morning, I awoke early, still smoldering over the piles of potato skins on the kitchen counter and the olive oil slick floor, remnants of the single-handed cooking effort the night before. Jack LaLanne was just beginning his exercise routine on TV. I took my position on the large expanse of our hook-latched rug covering the living room floor. I would work out my anger through exercise. On all fours, he called out doggie leg lifts. Snap.

Whatever happened lifting the box, leg lifts finished me off. I rolled on the floor sobbing in pain. All my previous judgments against people who complained of bad backs taunted me. Pay back for lack of understanding and sympathy. Those legions who suffered, did they suffer as I was now suffering? Were they not the malingering lazy bums I judged them to be? What was I going to do?

I could not stand or sit but remained on all fours. I slowly in extreme pain pulled myself to the staircase and up to our bedroom where Don still lay sleeping. Once I struggled into bed and lay on my back, I began to breathe more deeply. I went into head honcho mode commanding my groggy husband to get my day planner and find the phone number of my massage therapist. It was 7 a.m.

This amazing person came over two hours later. Don had already gotten me a 24-inch bolster cushion so my legs were in a chair position while lying flat on my back. This was the only pain free position I could find. Mary worked on me for over an hour, calming the sympathetic spasms in my shoulders, neck, upper back and arms. She persuaded me against my wishes to take a muscle relaxant. She came back twelve hours later and repeated the treatment.

The next morning I was able to inch my way painfully down the stairs and into the car. Ouch. That move brought tears to my eyes. Don drove me to my chiropractor who gently calmed the spinal column and relocated the offending L5 into its proper place.

I was 52 years old. A skier, hiker, biker, dancer, runner, I valued physical fitness next to Godliness. More than Godliness. I was determined to overcome this glitch. Little did I know what was in store for me as I set about healing from an L5 .

Tell me your story. How did your back begin to hurt? What makes you worry about ending up in a wheel chair? How did arthritis begin and where has it taken you?