Exercise Intolerance?

[allblues]

Hi!

I'm having a real hard time recovering from even very moderate exertion.
Five days ago i played squash with a friend, at a pretty moderate pace, to the point of having
to do some mouthbreathing to catch my breath.

Felt sluggish afterwards, which is OK i suppose after exercising, but now five days later i still can't shake it off. Limbs feel weak, slight dizziness, irritability. Paradoxically, (or maybe not) sleeping is difficult.

What might this be? Cortisol? Hypoglycemia? Both?
I took about 1g thiamine total yesterday and the day before that, might've set me back further if it lowered blood sugar even more.

I'm trying to eat more, more carbs but it feels like trying to set fire to damp wood, nothing really happens
mood or energywise.

Any ideas?

 

[DesertRat]

No responses yet? I'm interested in the same thing as after very mild exercise I develop what feels like a cold with rhinitis and congestion. I've been told to eat more sugar and protein after exercise. So far it hasn't helped much. How much did you eat after exercising? Did you try coffee and niacinamide and sugar right afterwards? Since it's been over a month, did you finally get back to your normal energy?

 

[ATP]

I experience the same thing as the allblues. Although it is only a recent thing as of the last few years. I used to be able to exercise all the time and feel great afterwards and recover quickly. I have no idea what is causing this but it is reflection of over all health.

 

[allblues]

Thanks for reviving this,
Yeah, normal energy is back, but it took a few days, even had to call in sick to work.
I haven't done any demanding exercise since, just taking long walks.

Ate well afterwards, especially hitting the OJ, honey, cheese etc, despite low appetite.
Nothing really seemed to help, i feel it's like homeostasis gets out of whack from exertion and then it's a
process to get back to normal which takes time.

No coffee during recovery, i have trouble with it even when things are "normal." No niacinamide either.

I can second the rhinitis @DesertRat, there's definitely some nose clogging to go along with the other stuff.

Now what could be causing it?

Exercise intolerance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In my case concurrent SSRI use and long distance running probably has taken its toll. Been having some weird low blood
pressure symptoms, and recently after using antiserotonin agents for some time i had this thing where my heart started "bubbling",
for a few seconds and then it stopped. Since that happened i don't hear my heartbeat pounding the mattress when going to sleep.
It feels better now than before, so idk.

Do you guys get any othere symptoms/cravings that might point to something? Any supplements that help?

 

[caroline]

I experience the same thing as the allblues. Although it is only a recent thing as of the last few years. I used to be able to exercise all the time and feel great afterwards and recover quickly. I have no idea what is causing this but it is reflection of over all health.

I notice this as well. I was an avid overexerciser all my life. Now each time I "try" to follow what I believe is socially encouraged idea that exercise is "good," I end up tired after a few days. I stopped worrying about why this is, and just do what I feel like now. I think there is something to your reflecting on the level of overall health. I also believe that my driven nature to force this ideal on myself and resistance to even looking at this possibility led me to long-term abuse that smacks of addiction tendency, albeit a socially approved one in our society. Every once in a while I am vulnerable to this and with my good intentions set out to again be a person who exercises. Each time, I am left with immune symptoms that smack of overdoing it. I mainly do lots of rolling with a foam roller now and some yoga. Maybe this will change, maybe not, but in the meantime, I am reminding myself to do what I feel, not what I think I should feel.

 

[haidut]

Hi!

I'm having a real hard time recovering from even very moderate exertion.
Five days ago i played squash with a friend, at a pretty moderate pace, to the point of having
to do some mouthbreathing to catch my breath.

Felt sluggish afterwards, which is OK i suppose after exercising, but now five days later i still can't shake it off. Limbs feel weak, slight dizziness, irritability. Paradoxically, (or maybe not) sleeping is difficult.

What might this be? Cortisol? Hypoglycemia? Both?
I took about 1g thiamine total yesterday and the day before that, might've set me back further if it lowered blood sugar even more.

I'm trying to eat more, more carbs but it feels like trying to set fire to damp wood, nothing really happens
mood or energywise.

Any ideas?

The limb weakness, dizziness, irritability and insomnia all point to cortisol. Have you had yours checked, both AM and PM levels? If you overexert yourself and push into hypothyroid territory, the cortisol may stay high until thyroid function recovers. You can try some cascara (500mg - 1g) and/or a hefty dose glycine. If either one of these improves the symptoms then it is probably a cortisol issue.

 

[allblues]

@haidut Yeah, that actually makes sense. Only done one cortisol reading as part of a general blood check, i understand
the AM & PM numbers both would be needed to get an idea of what's going on.

Definitely gonna try things to lower cortisol next time.
Other than cascara & glycine, i guess i could go for some niacinamide, pregnenolone, aspirin.
Also getting good sleep on something like cypro or maybe mirtazapine seems like it would be a good idea.

I'll schedule another game of squash and report back

 

[allblues]

Checking back in, still at a loss figuring this thing out. Spent an hour at the gym this monday, exerted myself moderately.
Felt pretty good both during and afterwards. Ate like normal.

Come nighttime however sleeping was difficult, woke up a few times etc, this doesn't usually happen.
Slept pretty poorly. Very tired the next day, "brain fog"-ish, sluggish thinking. Sometimes catch myself doing mistakes at work.
Things are better than they used to be after working out but still not very satisfactory.

Gonads shrink, and stay shrunken. Don't know if there's a clue there as to what might be going on. Libido falls to 0.
Hands and feet sometimes very cold. Brain is too slow to be able to socialize much.
Aspirin helps sometimes, took 500 mg and became warm and got a libido boost on the tuesday. Today it hasn't done too much.

Eating doesn't seem to help, neither do steroids, mirtazapine, niacinamide, biotin.
They probably do help in the long run but acutely nothing seems to do very much to help this state.

So this sucks, i'd like to be able to exercise at least once a week. Not there yet it seems.

Heart checkup came back OK, is there any other tests that could be a good idea to get? Maybe blood sugar?
Something has to be causing this, the question is what. Elevated FFAs up the wazoo?

 

[SQu]

I had this until recently and it correlates for me with chronic fatigue and having burned out. I personally don't think there's any quick fix possible, just a long time rebuilding and healing. Rest, food, lowering stress hormones, working on liver health, lactic acid etc. Thyroid, b1, aspirin, gelatin amongst others have been helpful. I'm still very careful and conservative with exercise eg twice a week some gym for 20 minutes. Aiming to build some muscle for improved health and fat burning. No cardio. At the moment not even that as life stress is too high right now.
I also think general standards for exercise are harming many of us. I'm not saying that there isn't also a too-little exercise trap on the other end of the spectrum. But in my 50s I'm seeing the health conscious fit exercisers in lots of trouble now with everything from arthritis, bone and muscle loss, to heart disease and Parkinson's.

 

[Waynish]

How many meals/bowl movements are you having per day? Feel dehydrated? Tried a epsom salt bath?

 

[allblues]

I usually have three meals, although most calories come at breakfast and dinner. Usually one bowel movement/day.
I don't feel dehydrated. I think i drink enough, not much water, mostly OJ, some milk. The most common advice i get from non-peaty people around me is to drink more, but i haven't done that.

Never tried epsom salts, been considering picking some up. I use magnesium chloride topically, about 150 mg/day.

You could be right @SQu that it might just be a general health thing that'll get better with time.
Things seem to be moving in the right direction, my prolactin has been more than cut in half in little over a year, from 21 µg/l to 8, and t3 has moved up into the slightly above-normal range.

It's good to hear things got better for you, can you exercise lightly without too much backlash now?

 

[SQu]

Yes I can, so given that you are already making progress i think it will take less time in your case. For a long time the backlash made it impossible for me to sustain. At my worst I wasn't finding info like this forum and apparently nobody in the world had this problem! So, many failed attempts followed by weeks recovering. On the peatist losers thread it has been discussed a bit and there's even a name for it I discovered! @whodathunkit posted about that.
When I found myself spontaneously wanting to go to gym is when I could go without repercussions and this simple cue continues to work for me. To be precise, I don't always spontaneously really madly want to go, but more importantly I also don't ever drag myself there. Like now I can feel it would be too much stress but I ask myself about it every so often and when I don't hate the idea, I'll go. It's literally the opposite of the "mind over matter" self discipline "no pain, no gain" approach.

 

[Westside PUFAs]

It depends on your amount of body fat and how you train. Your tolerance builds over time. If you're burning out then you're going too hard for what you're currently adapted to. There's three types of training; strength (lifting/pushing things), endurance (cardio/movement/walking uphill) and flexibility (stretching). Only do versions that you enjoy. I have a recumbent stationary indoor bike and I go light on that for 1-2 hours in the "fat burning zone" which is very light. Going harder burns sugar and not fat. You can end up losing too much fat if you never take a break. I like the recumbent because I can watch YT videos and stuff while I work out. It goes by fast when you watch something that you're interested in. Going slower/lighter burns mostly fatty acids instead of glucose. If you eat low pufa then it's fine to burn your body fat this way. It's an average heart rate of 113-140 depending on your size etc. It's temping to go harder/faster but the key is staying slow/light which is good because not only do you burn fat but you make exercise non stressful. If you can talk, then you're doing it right. It you can't talk because you're out of breath then you're going too hard.

"Resting muscle burns mostly fatty acids, and the amount of glucose used increases with the intensity."-RP

It should be noted that the negative Peat quotes on exercise all have the words "excessive, exhaustive, intense, breathless etc. in them. Good thing I don't do anything excessive, exhaustive, intense, and breathless, except the occasional time I do, for the purpose of increasing my fitness level past it's current threshold.

Positive Peat Quotes On Exercise

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[CoolTweetPete]

I think something that I have really began addressing and can often be missed is neuromuscular issues related to excessive lengthening and shortening of muscle tissue after years of neglect.

Years after obtaining a personal training certification I recently got another specialization in corrective exercise and the program really outlined how poor arthrokinematics can result in,

Chronic inflammation of the muscle --> spasms --> altered neural control of the tissue

So even if you feel like you're using good form, the perception is coming from a place of altered control of the muscles involved in performing the action.

Over time this can manifest as pain, so sleep quality and therefore recovery are negatively affected.

I believe I was experiencing this until really beginning to apply some of these ideas to my workouts and beginning to correct some altered arthrokinematics.

I did some squatting tests and recorded myself for form and observed that I probably had underactive muscles in the center of my back, which was causing excessive prontion (forward tilt) of my scapula.

I suspect extreme tightness in my psoas (common from prolonged sitting at my desk job ) caused weak abdominals causing my torso to lean forward excessively. This causes lumbar spine dysfunction and the eventual scapular issue results from resulting weakness in the deep stabilizing muscles of the core.

I suspect this may also cause some metabolic inhibition being that the BMR is a calculation of "active" muscle tissue. If neural control is decreased, the tissue may not metabolize as effectively as other tissues.

My mom always used to tell people I have no neck and I think the issue was simply poor biomechanics. I have begun to correct the issue in the last few weeks with some techniques aimed at inhibiting the overactive muscles and strengthening the under active ones. I suppose if someone wishes to do this they should see a trainer in person unless you know what to look for. I'm sure it's out there if you look.

Be warned, if you go to a trainer ensure you are seeing someone with an accreditation (unless you're going to a really fancy gym). You can pay top dollar at some gyms for a "trainer" that holds no level of certification. I was one.

I feel like I've regained control of muscles in my torso that had been dormant. I also feel like I've been sleeping better. I'm certainly more comfortable lying on my back in bed, which hasn't felt normal in years. I suspect sleeping on your side contributes to these problems.

I'm hoping things continue to improve. I really should have taken measurements lol. I'll report back!

 

[whodathunkit]

Sorry, I've missed this thread until @SQu tagged me. Hi, SQu! :)

Anyway, just a couple comments born of experience.

I'm having a real hard time recovering from even very moderate exertion.
Five days ago i played squash with a friend, at a pretty moderate pace, to the point of having
to do some mouthbreathing to catch my breath.

Felt sluggish afterwards, which is OK i suppose after exercising, but now five days later i still can't shake it off. Limbs feel weak, slight dizziness, irritability. Paradoxically, (or maybe not) sleeping is difficult.

This is what they call Post Exertional Malaise, or PEM for short (I say "pem" like it's all one word but it may be more correct to use the letters of the acronym P-E-M...dunno). PEM is a hallmark symptom of CFS, although just because you have PEM doesn't necessarily mean you've got CFS. What PEM does mean is that you're having metabolic problems that could likely lead to more serious energy and immune issues down the road if left unaddressed. I had mild PEM and extremely disproportionate muscle soreness after exercise for some years before I really went in the tank metabolically.

I beat PEM (I had CFS) by eating only whole foods, correcting nutrient deficiencies, straightening out my neurotransmitters, cleaning out my liver a bit, and fixing my gut. It took about a year of intense supplementation with stuff I felt I needed before things really began to happen and true recovery began. I crashed a lot (got immune reactions like sick with the flu) during that first year. I would feel like I could exercise and wanted to exercise and then I would get PEM and get really sick after I did. But each time I recovered I felt a little better than before I got sick. That's how I knew I was on a good track.

A lot of my recovery was just dumb luck and came about because I simply refused to stop reading and trying things. I figured out what worked for me and what didn't. What worked for me doesn't necessarily work for other people, and what works for some doesn't work for me. We've all got infinitely different deficiencies and genetics precipitating what is essentially a finite number of symptoms that our bodies can manifest.

Correcting nutrient deficiencies included a bunch of targeted minerals and vitamins. Stuff like magnesium, molybdenum, folate (NOT folic acid, but methylfolate), couple different kinds of B12, etc. Also CoQ10, P5P (active B6), pantethine (active B5), other B's, stuff like that.

Fixing my gut included choline supplementation, starchy carbs including resistant starch, bile and digestive supplements, and probiotics.

Fixing my neurotransmitters included choline supplementation along with other supplements, and a good diet.

Cleaning out my liver started with the choline supplementation. Liver loves choline, although too much is NOT GOOD. After the choline it's been an ongoing journey.

When I started choline, resistant starch, and probiotics is when I noticed a huge, dramatic difference in exercise tolerance and soreness after exercise. However, without the foundation of the other things, especially the loading of the B's and remineralizing myself, I don't believe the choline, RS, and probiotics would have helped. It was a whole process, not just a matter of ingesting a few targeted supps here and there.

When I became able to exercise like a normal person I considered myself to have recovered from CFS. "Exercise like a normal person" to me means some exercise pretty much every day, whether it be an hour of Pilates or an hour at the gym with weights or a session of HIT doing sprints, or just an hour of walking fairly fast. Not all in the same day, of course, but something once per day, at least five days per week. Without undue soreness, as well. And all that in addition to being able to carry on other activities like go to work, walk the dogs, etc. These days I don't consider myself to have CFS any more, although I still have to be careful and not overdo (e.g., do too much in one day or not get enough rest) and not slide too much with diet or supplements.

Come nighttime however sleeping was difficult, woke up a few times etc, this doesn't usually happen.
Slept pretty poorly. Very tired the next day, "brain fog"-ish, sluggish thinking. Sometimes catch myself doing mistakes at work.

This indicates adrenal problems, and as @haidut says, problems with cortisol. I can still get the cortisol night rush if I overdo at the gym. I've found pantethine helps with cortisol and adrenal problems. Also, on the days I lift weights, I go early in the morning to the gym. If I can't get there by noon I skip it. In general I try to do things that require more exertion in the morning, since that's when our cortisol is naturally highest. Works with the body's rhythms.

Good luck, hope you can get it sorted!

 

[Rad]

@whodathunkit I just posted about my PEM to. Do I recognise your avatar from Healthrising?

I remember when I first started getting ill after exercise that I typed in the problem and found some forums where there were HUGE numbers of people complaining about the same issue and variations thereof and yet not one mention of ME or CFS in hundreds of pages. No one had a clue and neither did there doctors. Amazing.

 

[whodathunkit]

@whodathunkit I just posted about my PEM to. Do I recognise your avatar from Healthrising?

Phoenix Rising. I don't participate much on forums any more since I don't have time, but Freddd over at PR is and always will be one of my personal heroes. Without his experiences and research to guide me I would never have recovered. I know Rich VanK was on it before Freddd, but Freddd added so much depth to Rich's protocol...if I'd stuck with Rich's "low and slow" approach I probably would have given up. Methylation supps weren't the end for me, they were just the beginning, but they are the foundation of my recovery, for sure. Nothing worked before them and everything worked after them. I still use them, although not anywhere near the amounts I did in the beginning. And not daily.

I didn't even know PEM was a thing until I hit PR. I was there for months reading about other stuff until I finally started paying attention to the acronym and realized hey! I've had this FOR YEARS!! Before PR I thought I was just old and fat. Then I discovered old and fat had an acronym. :p

 

[allblues]

Thanks alot @whodathunkit, (and all the rest of you, forum notifications have been eluding me) i've been looking around for others experiencing these symptoms, post-exertional malaise seems to just about cover it. I haven't looked into CFS hardly at all so i'll have to check it out, i would agree that this whole range of symptoms don't feel "normal" and probably mean something isn't right. These last few months i've been starting to feel less stressed and more at ease compared to earlier years of high anxiety, but i'm also very tired and inactive, like some sort of recovery from a long time of stress is going on.

Good to hear things got better for you, i'll read up on this stuff.
The choline is interesting, i think my liver hasn't been too happy these past few years, do you think simply eating eggs could accomplish
what the choline supplementation was doing?

 

[beachbum]

Phoenix Rising. I don't participate much on forums any more since I don't have time, but Freddd over at PR is and always will be one of my personal heroes. Without his experiences and research to guide me I would never have recovered. I know Rich VanK was on it before Freddd, but Freddd added so much depth to Rich's protocol...if I'd stuck with Rich's "low and slow" approach I probably would have given up. Methylation supps weren't the end for me, they were just the beginning, but they are the foundation of my recovery, for sure. Nothing worked before them and everything worked after them. I still use them, although not anywhere near the amounts I did in the beginning. And not daily.

I didn't even know PEM was a thing until I hit PR. I was there for months reading about other stuff until I finally started paying attention to the acronym and realized hey! I've had this FOR YEARS!! Before PR I thought I was just old and fat. Then I discovered old and fat had an acronym. :p

@whodathunkit can you please post what you ate and supplements or PM me..pretty please.happy: Also I looked up methylation and not sure if this is a supplement or increasing the amino acids that increase it.

Thank you very much

 

[whodathunkit]

The choline is interesting, i think my liver hasn't been too happy these past few years, do you think simply eating eggs could accomplish
what the choline supplementation was doing?

It didn't for me. But I think I was severely deficient due to decades of poor diet and poor digestion. Might for you. I would think, though, that you might have to eat them every day, at least for a while, and they're high in PUFA and fat, which is not good for a fatty liver. Eggs might compound the problem if there's liver dysfunction involved. I don't mean liver disease, but like a dysfunctional pre-disease state that's not detectable by standard labs (like I was in for years). But I dunno. Everyone's different. You could try.

If you've changed your diet and feel less stressed that could mean things are changing for the better. There's a whole constellation of symptoms and criteria that go into a diagnosis of CFS, and in fact I was never formally diagnosed. I got onto a CFS discussion board because I was interested in a supplement protocol, and then as I began to tangentially learn more about CFS I realized that's what was wrong with me, and I had a lot of symptoms. I knew I often got dizzy upon standing, for example, and my heart rate would fluctuate fairly severely depending upon whether or not I was standing or lying down, but it never occurred to me that that was something diagnosable. I was that stupid. I just thought it was my weird physiology since it had happened off and on for as long as I could remember. But turns out it's Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), which is one of the criteria for CFS (as is PEM).

Worth noting is that there are degrees of severity, too. My POTS was never acutely chronic, and most of my life it was pretty scattershot. Didn't get bad or frequent until I was feeling my worst, and even then was not nearly as bad as some poor souls have it. Some people can't even stand up. These days mine is pretty much gone. I get it once in a great while, but even less than when I was younger.

Might try googling "CFS criteria" or something similar to see exactly what goes into a diagnosis.

@whodathunkit can you please post what you ate and supplements or PM me..pretty please.happy: Also I looked up methylation and not sure if this is a supplement or increasing the amino acids that increase it.

Yeah, that's a BIG topic and it's not that simple. It's quite complex. I'm sorry, but I just can't get into giving a lot of advice about it because the complexity, and also the side effects can be disagreeable and I can't be responsible for trying to guide someone through it. I'm not a doctor or any kind of healthcare professional. Plus there are numerous co-factors that could be involved in getting everything to "go" properly, and not the same co-factors work for everyone. Some people get a lot of good out of SAM-e, for example, but it only worked for about a week for me before turning bad on me.

How I got started is I educated myself and then tried some things, and kept educating and kept going. I actually mentioned a lot of supps in my post above that can get someone started on researching it. If you're really interested, my advice is to go to Phoenix Rising

Phoenix Rising ME / CFS Forums

and read up on posts by user Freddd to decide if it's something you want to try. His posts are what got me onto it. Get a grasp of what you might be doing and what you might be in for from doing some reading. Then try something. That's what worked for me. I can try to give help after you've gotten started but I just don't have time to get someone up to speed on the topic. That's legwork you have to do. Sorry to be so blunt but that's what it is. Once you start reading Freddd's posts I think you'll see why I say that. But Freddd's protocol can be a very worthwhile undertaking. Good luck, let me know how it goes!