Can my body keep up?

"How are you doing?" somebody who hadn't seen me since March asked yesterday "Good"  I heard myself saying "Very Good" and this time I meant it.  It wasn't an empty "fine thanks" or "okay", my normal, - you don't really want to know - answers.  Yesterday was my 16th day in a row of feeling good.

Today is a little different, I still "feel" well, I don't feel ill, but my body feels like it's struggling to keep up.  My back is aching like mad and has been since last Wednesday, but it was a bit worse this morning.  I'm not sure what's caused that.  My thigh muscles are crying out to me and my knees aching.  For some reason my thigh muscles keep completely tightening up.  My physio and Ant have been massaging them for me at regular intervals - which is painful, but makes it better.  The tight muscles have the knock on effect of making my knees ache.  It feels like my body is falling apart, but I feel well - a strange contradiction, but I can understand after almost five years of not being able to do very much, for the past two weeks I have been asking a lot more of my body and parts of it are complaining!  I'm hoping that what I'm feeling here is deconditioning, but I don't know that, it could be that by pushing through I'm going to make things worse.  With this slightly in mind I have tried to have an easier day today, lots of sitting around in the garden reading books.  I've still managed to clock up 5400 steps, but that is a step down from my current 6884 daily average.

The 5:2 Fast Diet

So, I've finally got my act together to try and raise some money for F.O.R.M.E. the Perrin charity currently trying to raise money for research around diagnosis of ME.  I've asked the school if they will do a textile collection.  I had to write a letter to the school council which decides what charities the school will support.  My little one also put in a little hand written note about how M.E. effects his mum.

I took Ben for a cycle ride on Friday, he'd been asking for a while and it was a beautiful day so off we went with snacks and water for our.....3 mile trek.  Doesn't sound far for a bike ride does it, but actually it was probably a little further than I should have gone.  I was shattered when I got back and had that horrible wobbly internal agitation feeling that I'm used to as a signal I've overdone it, but I recovered.  By Sunday I had a new sensation in my thighs, they were actually sore, not aching, but properly sore as I walked.  This is a result of deconditioning, not a symptom of the M.E., a sign of small muscle fibre damage because they are not used to such activity.

Yesterday I emailed Dr Michael Mosley one of the co-authors of "The Fast Diet" the official 5:2 diet where you eat well for 5 days and then reduce your calories for 2 days.  I am particularly interested in the passage on fasting and repair genes. When you fast your body starts a process called Autophagy, a process where the body breaks down and recycles old and tired cells.  He describes it as the equivalent of taking your body along to the cellular equivalent of a garage.  I wonder whether there is any potential health benefit here for me.  I know that things at a cellular level aren't working properly and wonder whether there might be any benefit to the methylation cycle by trying the 5:2 diet.  Hope I get a reply.

As it's ME awareness month here is a link to one of my Fitbit pals blog posts about how ME affects her.

Sally Sews Something: So how does ME affect me?