Exerciseing When you have both CFS and FMS?

I had a really good result when seeing patients several or so years ago who had fibro and fatigue with teaching them to deep breathe in the first session in order to get them learning how to get in touch with their inner doctor.  And to learn to focus and attend to what their body was telling them.  I then would take them to the gym the next session and let them know there were three machines we could start on (eliptical, treadmill, arm bike/ UBE), and that they could do up to two minutes on however many they wanted to work on and we'd then rest in between, deep breathe, drink water, talk to others in the gym and go over whatever stretching program and all that they were doing with PT.  (as PTs usually, on our 'team' there, would spend most of the session on massage, adjustments/ manipulations, heat packs or other modalities).  And then they'd progress from there overall, and the #1 thing I impressed upon them and hoped they embraced was that it wasn't going to be like 'normal' where you automatically do more the next day and so on... it's an up and down thing and you have to pay more attention to your feeling about things than the clock or number of repetitions.  Sometimes we'd then do some very mild upper extremity dumbell exercises, similar to I'd do with people after they had a stroke. 

I have asked Cindy Schmidt, a PT who specializes in chronic pain here at the big outpatient clinic (that was our 'competitor' when I was at the above-mentioned clinic) to write for Lumgrate and she's now back from her ski trip and I bet we'll be seeing things from her soon.  When Dr. Young and I had our live Forum for fibromyalgia education in the building our clinics were part of, there was one gal who would sometimes come after being seen by Cindy I now realize, for microcurrent and I was about to ask them to come speak at the forum when the building took away the conference rooms for the last month of the year to do computer training for the doctors and then I said 'forget THIS, I'm going to do education on the Internet, that has to be a way to reach MORE people and not have this problem of 'it's too dark out, it's too hot, it's too cold, I'm not feeling well, the chairs aren't comfortable, I'm feeling well now and don't want to come on Thursdays at 3'.  So it's fun to see this, two years later, developing and finally getting to hear myself what Cindy has to share about microcurrent!  For whatever reason my providers have never suggested it and I was REALLY curious about it, as it seemed to make sense.  OH, then they trained another doctor here in town how to use it and he and I met for breakfast one day and then shortly after that he decided to move.  So the wonders of the computer I actually met Cindy, whose clinic I drove past twice or five times a day for several years!

You'll see her section/ Forum in the Fibromyalgia Forum area here ....  She's very experienced with a modallity / DME gadget called 'microcurrent' but perhaps I'll message her and let her know this question from Cherie and my response is here for her to get her eyeballs on how this Lumigrate Forum thing works.  And for anyone who doesn't know, this is Cherie's first big day of getting into the Forums and writing.  AND she's downloaded the free videos and I cannot WAIT for her to go to the Forum (one of the top ones) to discuss what is said in the videos.  

Girl, you're giving me a run for my money today keeping up with all that you wrote this morning!  Love the enthusiams and it was truly a lovely Valentine's gift to me today to see the website being so well used before I even got out of bed today! 

~~ Mardy

I had a really good result when seeing patients several or so years ago who had fibro and fatigue with teaching them to deep breathe in the first session in order to get them learning how to get in touch with their inner doctor.  And to learn to focus and attend to what their body was telling them.  I then would take them to the gym the next session and let them know there were three machines we could start on (eliptical, treadmill, arm bike/ UBE), and that they could do up to two minutes on however many they wanted to work on and we'd then rest in between, deep breathe, drink water, talk to others in the gym and go over whatever stretching program and all that they were doing with PT.  (as PTs usually, on our 'team' there, would spend most of the session on massage, adjustments/ manipulations, heat packs or other modalities).  And then they'd progress from there overall, and the #1 thing I impressed upon them and hoped they embraced was that it wasn't going to be like 'normal' where you automatically do more the next day and so on... it's an up and down thing and you have to pay more attention to your feeling about things than the clock or number of repetitions.  Sometimes we'd then do some very mild upper extremity dumbell exercises, similar to I'd do with people after they had a stroke. 

I have asked Cindy Schmidt, a PT who specializes in chronic pain here at the big outpatient clinic (that was our 'competitor' when I was at the above-mentioned clinic) to write for Lumgrate and she's now back from her ski trip and I bet we'll be seeing things from her soon.  When Dr. Young and I had our live Forum for fibromyalgia education in the building our clinics were part of, there was one gal who would sometimes come after being seen by Cindy I now realize, for microcurrent and I was about to ask them to come speak at the forum when the building took away the conference rooms for the last month of the year to do computer training for the doctors and then I said 'forget THIS, I'm going to do education on the Internet, that has to be a way to reach MORE people and not have this problem of 'it's too dark out, it's too hot, it's too cold, I'm not feeling well, the chairs aren't comfortable, I'm feeling well now and don't want to come on Thursdays at 3'.  So it's fun to see this, two years later, developing and finally getting to hear myself what Cindy has to share about microcurrent!  For whatever reason my providers have never suggested it and I was REALLY curious about it, as it seemed to make sense.  OH, then they trained another doctor here in town how to use it and he and I met for breakfast one day and then shortly after that he decided to move.  So the wonders of the computer I actually met Cindy, whose clinic I drove past twice or five times a day for several years!

You'll see her section/ Forum in the Fibromyalgia Forum area here ....  She's very experienced with a modallity / DME gadget called 'microcurrent' but perhaps I'll message her and let her know this question from Cherie and my response is here for her to get her eyeballs on how this Lumigrate Forum thing works.  And for anyone who doesn't know, this is Cherie's first big day of getting into the Forums and writing.  AND she's downloaded the free videos and I cannot WAIT for her to go to the Forum (one of the top ones) to discuss what is said in the videos.  

Girl, you're giving me a run for my money today keeping up with all that you wrote this morning!  Love the enthusiams and it was truly a lovely Valentine's gift to me today to see the website being so well used before I even got out of bed today! 

~~ Mardy

Mardy~ whats micorcurrent?  Im betting your going to say we'll let Cindy get into the full explination! haha

so how about a juest of an idea? please?!

thanks, Cherie

This is without my looking at my notes about it, Cherie, and I have handouts that I did not yet read, so this is what I gleaned from a gal who went to Cindy in the past and had microcurrent as part of her PT, my meeting with one of the doctors that the doc Cindy worked for learned about it from, and talking with Cindy a couple of minutes about it when we met the other week....  It's a modality that has been proven to be very effective with fibromyalgia.  There are two manufacturers and one of them is preferred apparently, with FMS at least.  The units only cost $2-3k, which isn't THAT much more than a TENS if it's effective, particularly when you add in the added savings of medication reduction if a person responds to the treatment.  It's a frequency of current that the unit has adjustable settings for different conditions and you basically vibe the body up!  But I've let Cindy know that there is a question here so that she'll see how FRIENDLY we are!  And I hope she'll have time in her schedule soon to hop in and educate us more.  But if not, I'll find my information and write more about it for you.  I also would like to get the vestibular/ balance PT I know here in Junction to write about that too, by the way.  

Since I didn't have much experience with that, let me add this:

I just had a follow up call from a particularly good sales representative, Sigmund, from LifeAlert.  My getting calls goes back to before my father fell and he went through last winter. He'd gotten LifeAlert for his mother in law, who was 94, and they ended up needing it, just 10 minutes after he and his wife had been visiting her.   I told Sigmund that it's common with people with FMS to fall, and I'm about to hit their company up (as is he) about Lumigrate and their product and see if we can get some advertising/sponsorship revenues from them.  He did such a nice job on the phone with me (and the last guy who called had really bungled things from a customer service and company reflection standpoint I actually tried to find another company to endorse, but this guy made it up today).  (His name is Sigmund Balaban, and his extension is 244.  Life Alert's number is 1.800.686.5965.  They now serve as a way to call police if there are burglars, fire and carbon monoxide monitoring, and the people get a discount as if they have a security/alarm system on their insurance.  I had hoped my story of how Life Alert did NOT come to be helpful (due to my dad's refusal to have it installed due to suspicions of who would have access to his information, which was a temporary mental health issue due to the disease that we had not had diagnosed because he also refused to go to the doctor and my literally having 'had it' with things and we basically needed an intervention with him and I was going to do it when I was there for Christmas as my family was going to be together without anyone else around for the first time in a long time, and literally 3 days beforehand the whole 'worst case scenario' happened (except that he did live and then doesn't need their product anymore since he's got 24/7 supervision).  Live and learn.  Then TELL OTHERS!