It has been quiet on The Walking Coach, but have no fear, the Coach is back; things will start stirring again. Although I am not quite my usual self, I am better than I have been in a very long time. I’ll give you the short version of the story as it may prove to be useful to you sometime down the road. It is a tale of having the side-effects of prescription medications take over my life.
Several months ago, after months of trying to work through several medical conditions, I was forced to stop and allow my body to heal. Not being a personality that gives in gracefully to illness, this proved to be an extremely challenging time in my life. I had to agree to go to the dark side of medicine – prescription drugs. Life became a black hole of side-effects in which I seemed to be drowning.
The fact is that I had to be taking medications if I was going to get better, but it was a challenge to find a drug combination that my body would tolerate. One treatment plan changed three times before it finally got to the point where the doctor said that I had to decide to what degree I could live with the side-effects versus my willingness to get better.
Most of each day – for over three months – was spent flat out in a frustrated state of mind. Wanting to do something – anything – but not being able to summon the energy to even gather my thought processes on how to accomplish a task was driving me crazy. Having a whole week go by and realizing that I had still not done one simple task – such as place a phone call to a friend or even open my email, just seemed to heighten my annoyance at what I perceived to be my body betraying the care that I have always given it.
No matter how I wanted things to be different, the reality was that the side-effects of the drugs, in conjunction with the medical conditions, had control of how my day was spent. For 20 hours each day I was either sleeping in bed or a quiet lump curled up at one end of the sofa. Vertigo, loss of appetite, insomnia, constipation, nausea, exhaustion, racing heart, anxiety, bad dreams, dehydration, shift of center of balance…and on and on. Fortunately some side-effects came and went early in the treatment. Unfortunately some stayed throughout. The only constant was my perpetual need to be lying down, not talking, not thinking, pretty much just a useless body of flesh on a sofa.
Now throughout this the trainer in me kept screaming to get moving. There is nothing worse that lying around all day. It affects your mental state, your muscle mass, your cardiovascular endurance. The more stationary you are due to illness, the more alternate issues that are created. I at least had the presence of mind to force myself into some sort of physical exertion each day. So what if after training I had to lie down…it’s not as though my body was going to let me do anything else for the rest of the day.
So train I did! Now, clearly I could not expect to be able to train the way that I normally did. The side effects were totally hampering my ability to function normally. The goal here wasn’t to climb mountains when my illnesses passed, but rather simply to try to minimize the loss of muscle tone and cardiovascular endurance, as well as give me some sense of accomplishment each day so I didn’t go totally insane.
So I created a plan; a training strategy that my body could handle and that I could live with. Not so easy when you are used to walking 20K on Sunday mornings, but heh, you have to learn to take a hit and then jump back up swinging – and this I did!
The game plan was simple. Five kilometers a day, with a pace over 1 minute slower than my norm walking pace of 7:30/Km, 5 days a week, followed by a strength training session that involved some flow yoga and weights. Because I was struggling to stay awake during the strength portion, this training generally took 1 1/2 hours out of my early morning, but some days longer. Well over 2 hours after I had left to do my walk, Husband would find me lying on the floor with weights by my side . But I hung in! That at least I can say. I persevered. Fortunately I had the luxury of being able to nap afterward and then head to the shower to clean up for a day of resting. What a life!
A few weeks ago I decided that enough was enough. Enough with the side-effects. Enough with the lolling around all day. Enough with drugs ruling my life. So after a few days of risk assessment, I stopped the most offending drug, hoping for the best. And while the first few days were a bit rough as my body readjusted, within a week I was out of the black hole that had become my existence. The change was so dramatic that for the first time in almost a year I could acknowledge just how ill I had actually been. I actually felt like me again – a weaker version sure, but heh, my life didn’t revolve around some surface that allowed me to lie down! This is progress!
So that’s the short version of the story. Now to the information learned. As a Personal Trainer I know that medications altered our physical abilities. What I did not know was the extreme degree to which some medications can affect our bodies or that some of these side-effects can actually create muscular damage which can lead to long-term chronic pain if training is continued while on the medication.
Typically when we experience muscular pain following a training session we look to the actual training for a reason behind the pain. Checking for shoe wear, questioning our pace, blaming inadequate warm-up…all potential areas that could lead to a training injury. And if we are taking a medication we rarely make the connection that the drug has changed our body to the degree that it is affecting our performance.
For me personally, one of the biggest issues was that I discovered that one particular drug had shifted my perceived center of balance. My body was leaning imperceptibly to the right. Now for most people who would just be doing daily activities, this side-effect would not be noticed, but for me who was trying to maintain a training schedule it became apparent in a painful way. During, and following training, I experienced pain in my left hip and IT Band. Then over the next two weeks, chronic neck pain began. We had X-rays done to determine that there wasn’t anything skeletal wrong with my neck and determined that the symptom was muscular-based.
Long-term, this meant that if I continued training with this side-effect, I would likely stress my muscles to the point that I would have to live with chronic pain on my left side. The solution to this side-effect was to drop my training distance and speed down. AND, I bought a special insole with arch support and heel stabilization ( check out Orthaheel) that forces my feet to stay in neutral, which relays up the leg and up the spine keeping my body where it should be. (I’ll do a review of this product in a few weeks – just love it!) All this was then followed up with a daily work-out that includes some granny push-ups to help the neck and some yoga to target my hip and IT band.
Another surprising side-effect of this particular medication – or rather the combination of medications was dehydration. My body became a desert and electrolyte drinks three times a day were my saving grace. Now if I hadn’t recognized the dehydration symptoms it would have led to kidney issues – not a pleasant thought. Fortunately I love my Vega Sport electrolyte drink and it has been my saving grace throughout this.
So I did some checking with the drug experts and have some simple tips for you to incorporate when you are training while on prescription medications.
Prescription for Training on Drugs:
- Check the list of side-effects: I love the internet for the information that it makes readily available to us. All drug manufacturers list on the net the side-effects and warnings for their products – keeping their butts covered. Be aware of what may happen and watch for the signs. Don’t get paranoid now. Just stay alert to your body and note changes that you are experiencing.
- Consider other medications you are on: Combination drugs can create interactions with something you are already taking. Your pharmacist may be able to help alert you to side-effects as a result of combining drug therapies, but my pharmacist tells me that just because there are no adverse warnings for drugs interactions, it doesn’t mean that surprise side-effects won’t pop up. My dehydration for example was not a listed side-effect of any of my medications, but the result of two medications being combined – a surprise treat that could have been expected given that both drugs are known to cause constipation.
- Assess the side-effects: Your pharmacist may be able to help you here – particularly if he, or she, is physically active, (such as a runner or cyclist). My pharmacist tells me that the chemical changes that take place during training are normal and healthy, but may cause drugs to enter our bloodstream quicker than planned by the manufacturer. So don’t just pay attention to the common side-effects; there may be less common effects that may be triggered simply because you are physically active, so you may need to schedule training around your doses. Also, consider drug combinations with similar side-effects, such as constipation, that may lead to dehydration.
- Modify your Training Plan: Now this may not be necessary, but accept that there may be side-effects that will affect your body such that a change in training is necessary. Keep your pharmacist and doctor apprised of your training routine and let them guide you on modifications that will keep you active but not deter your return to good health. The key here is to keep moving.
So how are things for me these days since I stopped the offending medication? Great! I am on the mend and happily there appears to be no long-term issues as a result of having lost my center of balance. Through it all I managed to maintain my strength despite days lolling around eating blueberries. I went out to train one day last week and felt the desire to run. So I took off expecting to be able to run maybe 1/2 km – after all I had done no running for months. But instead I was excited to find that when I opted to stop I had reached 2km – the max that I will generally run.
I am also still on one electrolyte drink a day regardless of training, with an extra one added if the day is particularly hot. It is important to not get dehydrated again and it being summer time, better safe than sorry.
I am still following my reduced training plan. Fact is I am still not fully healthy, but I am excited that I have survived the worst with no big problems. When I start my long training days again – I’ll save this for cooler weather – I know that I am strong enough to jump to a 10km day.
Watch for some changes to the site over the next month. I will finally be uploading the information base that has been on the site since it was created in 2005, and adding some new tidbits of wisdom that will help you in your training.