Sam I agree. It's super hard to tell when it's a '5/10' especially with a symptom as vague as 'foggyness'

Basically the way I've been treating it is I go out and do things, go have one drink and watch a few innings of baseball at a bar, go to a restaurant, go to church, etc and then I go relax and get back to my baseline.

Basically they were less concerned with the actually severity of the symptom and more concerned with building a cycle of repeated exposure and rest.

miller,

If you can tolerate all that activity and drinking alcohol included, you are doing well.

When I mentioned learning how to recognize hitting your limit, in my experience, there are a variety of signs. A change in sound sensitivity. A feeling like you need to shake the cobwebs out. A need to look a little harder. A change in emotional senses.

So, slow down and pay attention to the various senses. When you sense a change, maybe you have hit your limit.

For others who do not sense these changes, you have to use your experiences and memory. If doing 30 minutes of an activity takes a long recovery, try 15 minutes and so how strong your symptoms are.

I spent years just knowing I had limits and expecting to need time to recover if I pushed those limits. I did not get angry or stressed when I went past my limits. I expected that I was at risk of pushing past my limit.

So, give yourselves room to overdo it and need time to recover. Do it over and over and slowly, over weeks or months, things will get better.

That's interesting advice, and good to hear. This post is actually quite timely as I've been feeling very demoralised lately about my activity levels.

This past Saturday, I was feeling "ok" in the AM and thought it might be a good day to hit the treadmill. Over the past year I've tried it off and on with all negative results. For this session, I walked 3 min at a slow pace and 2 min (total 5 min) at a normal gait. Within the first 30 sec my headaches increased; by 3 min I felt different, and by 5 min I knew I had done way too much.

From this relatively benign activity, I have been recovering for the past 3 days in which I've had progressively worse symptoms, including intense headaches, frustration/anger, rumination, and the need for isolation. Based on my experience, my symptoms will platueau for a day or two and then taper off over the following 3-4 days. This recovery from a 5 min walk seems ridiculously disproportionate to the activity level, but it's what I experience regardless of activity/stimulation.

I like what Mark says about learning to recognise your queues, but for me the index between ok and over-stimulated is insanely narrow.

In the end, I am so utterly frustrated and demoralised with my intolerance to activity. Miller, if you can post your progress through this I would greatly appreciate it. I recently said to my wife that if I knew it would make me better I'd get back to running again, issues be damned.

So, I love this approach already and it seems to fit my situation, as I've been trying to be a counselor at camp all week.


My only concern is, when you repetivley over do it day by day isint going to actually set back recovery?

Normally when I over do it a good nights sleep fixes it. Recently, that has not been cutting it.

Can anyone answer my question above?

Sam

MicroMan,

Be patient and keep probing. I walked 1.5 mi per day back in February and March and had to quit. Could no longer take the nose dives that happened within a half
Hour of being done. I started swimming in June and have increased it to 25 minutes now and can walk 2 mi in 100 degrees and swim for 10 after the walk, I walk every third day and swim the others.My injury site can get sore some days but I can live with it.

Frustratingly so I can't run yet....grrrr, but I am not a couch potato any longer.

It took a good bit of time for me to probe around and find out if symptoms were actual or anxiety induced. Once I came to the conclusion it was a great deal of anxiety involved I had to start believing I would be ok and keep it under check.

Never had to do this before. Life was pretty easy.

Bud

In response to Mark's mention of signs....my first clue is volume, everything starts getting LOUD.

Bud