A healing athlete

Have you ever asked yourself this question, “Who would I be without my sport”?

So almost a year later I find myself sitting waiting for yet another blood test.

A year ago I had a fear of needles. The “going into mild shock, cold sweats, fainting” type of fear. Ever heard of the fight or flight response of your body? When faced with a situation do you fight it, or do you run (flight)? In my situation my body would run, my heart would quicken, droplets of sweat would gather in my palms, my mouth would go dry and then BAM! Lights out.

I don’t give blood, I can’t see or smell my own blood. However, here I sit, calm and at peace with the fact that the nurse has to stick another needle into my vein in order to get the results I need. Truth is we have to live with needles, we need them to protect our health and discover what might be negatively affecting our body.

Lesson learnt from the needles? I overcame this fear. It was all my head, it was mental. My brain had conjured up this horrible image of needles, this dark cloud.  From then on every time I had a test, I would decide to fight the fear. I would use my brain (powerful weapon), to fight that dark cloud. The fear of needles taught me to fight using my brain…

Rewind to Tuesday the 6^th of February 2016. The day my brain was probably faced with its worst fear. NO EXERCISE. In this case there were no sweaty palms. There was a flood. Of emotion, of tears, of disappointment. I was told I had to stop exercising due to Coxsackie B induced myocarditis i.e. sudden heart attack waiting to happen. My last blog post describes my experience (Overtrained). Here I am a year later…I never thought it would take a whole year. I initially thought MAX 3 months, however, my body had other plans.

Truth is, that “3 month thinking brain” was not the brain that I have acquired now. Everything was always rushed. My training, my work, my routine, my eating, my thought processes, my healing. But that’s life nowadays isn’t it? People are always rushing, expecting, waiting…

It took about 3 relapses of this virus to understand this.

Although I was not on my death-bed and could still lead a normal life, I had lost the thing that meant the most to me, without even realizing it. My health. My insides felt like they didn’t belong to me… I did not feel like myself at all.

I bet very few of you have ever considered what it would be like to lose your health. What I didn’t realize is that I wouldn’t only be losing my health but everything that came with it. Lifestyle, fitness, the people, the friends, the weekends, the chit-chat, the banter, the sun rises, the wind through your hair, the endorphin rush…my psychology. Losing my health had turned into a fear, just like the needles.

I’m surrounded by fit, healthy people on a daily basis. I treat them and I see them all over social media. Having the time of their lives! “Awesome way to start the day”- picture of person on bike with sunrise glowing behind them. I was once that person. How do you even deal? Depression tried to knock at my door. I let it in. But from May after my bad relapse, I fought that bastard hard using my newly acquired brain.

This healing process has been quite a thing. I have learnt a lot about myself, the human body, natural healing, alternative medicine and the – oh so powerful – human brain.

Paulo Coelho: “Life can change from one second to the next. The right moment is always there waiting; one’s will power is constantly being put to the test”.

 

I have seen this experience as a life lesson, hence my desire to write about it. People constantly ask me how I have coped, did I go crazy etc. My brain in my last blog was a lot different to what it is now. My narrow-minded, tunnel vision head has opened up into a 5 lane highway.

So “how have I healed?” is the big question. Doctors were unable to medicate me – there is currently no pharmaceutical cure for Coxsackie B. Many of you may be suffering with the same virus, many with constant health problems, illness, life-threatening conditions. People will give their 2 cents, people will have their “expert” advice derived from either friends/family experiences or from our dear friend Google. I have tried and tested a lot. Not all worked for me. I only noticed improvements from December 2016, after 10 months and after trying many different healing protocols. Listen to the right people and the proper experts. Don’t try too much and don’t complicate things.

So here is my “healing” journey in point form. Take it or leave it. Believe what you may. Don’t be too critical, it was my journey, my experience. It’s all honesty. What may work for me, may not work for you. I’m not God. Natural medicine and positive thinking is what did it (in a nutshell). Ja, so cliché – as I had once thought. But as I said, it sometimes takes a life experience like this to learn, discover and find out a lot about yourself and your brain. Maybe this did happen to me for a reason.

• Health providers

Choose your health providers wisely and always get a second/third opinion. I’m terrible. I practically had a team, without them even knowing about it. I used 3 homeopaths, 2 cardiologists, a kinesiologist and a G.P. I was lucky as my G.P. and cardiologist were fully open to homeopathy. Wonderful people. As I said before, Coxsackie B cannot be treated with pharmaceuticals – do not even waste your time. The cardiologist refused to put me on cardiac medication as I was deemed to be too young. I respected him for that. I had blood tests and an ECG every 3 months to check my progress and my treatment protocol was changed accordingly. In general, regardless of what you are suffering from, you need the tests to confirm whether your treatment is working, otherwise you are only prolonging your journey. Yes, tests are expensive, but there should be no questions when it comes to your health.

 

• Nutrition and supplementation

I started with juicing. I started every morning with a green juice(spinach, cucumber, ginger, lemon, apple etc.). I don’t really believe in juicing, to be honest. I prefer eating whole foods and their pulp, so I would add some of the pulp into my juices. I didn’t notice drastic improvements but I did feel better during my mornings. Did it help the virus count? No. The change came after I had a beriglobin (immune)injection, a nice R1300 a jab. Only noticed the improvements 3 weeks post injection. Then in October (can’t believe it took me that long), I invested some money into buying supplements: vitamin C, probiotics, omega 3 (for the heart), colloidal silver, magnesium and traumeel (from the homeopath). Had a huge improvement after that. When I was retested in January, my viral loads had more than halved. I also followed a more vegetarian diet than usual. I cut my meat meals down drastically and ate a lot of greens. Meat takes long to digest and uses a lot of the energy needed to heal. Protein can also be found in plants – do your research before attacking people about this.

Alcohol is a definite NO when healing. Be very careful, I learnt the hard way and took a few knocks. Didn’t help that I had to attend 8 weddings last year. Be the sober one, be the “designated Dave”. It drove me nuts when people questioned me about my sobriety, alcohol is poison, the end.

I also did a year (and still carrying on) without antibiotics. They destroy your natural immune system. Your body is equipped to handle colds and flu. You are only weakening it by taking antibiotics. It’s like bracing a joint. If you keep that joint in a brace, the muscles, tendons and ligaments will stop doing their jobs (stabilizing, protecting). They weaken and become useless. Your body then relies on the brace. Picture the joint as your immune system, scary isn’t it?

I also went off the pill. Crazy, yes. But my body was so out of synch. It actually started to reject the pill during this period to a point that my hormones were driving me insane. I needed a clean, naturally working body to fight. I have never looked back.

 

• Know your body

It’s a scary thing that so many people can go through their lives not knowing their body. Listen to your body, learn to read it. You live in it every day, you should know when things aren’t working too well.

And what do I mean by this? What is your good pain and what is your bad pain? What is tiredness and what is extreme fatigue? What is a normal headache and what is a headache that could be related to a stroke or meningitis?

I presented with chest pain. I had never experienced a pain like this. It wasn’t bad, it was just very different. That was the only sign, a sign that my heart was injured.

Second time round I had headaches, I don’t suffer with headaches. Third time round my heart rate was shooting to 175bpm at work and dropping to 35bpm during sleep.

Know what foods work for you and what foods don’t agree with you. Know what your body loves and hates. KNOW YOUR BODY!

• Work and Hobbies

Exercise and fitness was my life. When I couldn’t rely on it for my happiness and psychological “release”, I had to find other things to fill that emptiness. I literally threw myself into my work. Initially It wasn’t the best thing to do as I was battling with fatigue, but it taught me a lesson. I loved my job. But I was putting it second to sport. I never had time to enjoy it and I actually hadn’t realized how fortunate I was to be doing something I was so passionate about. I was putting patients off in order to train, to sleep. I was always giving 100% into training but how much of myself was I putting into work? My sport had gone but my job was there to pick me up. The people I work with and my patients helped me more than they know. All so positive, all so motivating and all so kind. My work environment was ideal for my healing.

I also started reading again. Gee, I was always too tired for this. Reading fed my soul (yes, I’m part hippy). Reading relaxed me. I also got my imagination back.

I have always wanted to try some form of martial arts, but never had the “time” for it. Not being able to train, enabled me to explore it. Did you know martial arts can be used for healing, I certainly didn’t. Walk in Paul Simms. “When the student is ready, the master appears”- Buddhist proverb. I could not believe it. The master of all masters appeared in my waiting rooms one morning wanting me to fix his neck.

I had a good feeling about Paul from the moment I shook his hand. “Shaolin Kung Fu Health Centre was founded by Sifu Paul Sims who has been passionate about Martial Arts all his life. Having passed through nearly 50 different disciplines along his quest for knowledge, he finally opened the school in Durban in 1991. Martial Arts School is Durban’s oldest traditional and most successful Chinese Kung-fu School, having received over 200 national and international medals”- off their website.

Paul said he could help fix my heart. My head (having a scientific, factual brain), didn’t believe it. But my heart was all in (ha ha). Tai Chi has since played an integral part in my healing journey. On Monday and Wednesday evenings, I learnt to silence my mind and all the stressors of life. I learnt to breathe again, from the stomach (SO important), I learnt calmness, I learnt peace, I learnt chi. Yes, people did laugh at me but I came to learn that they laughed because they didn’t understand. Most people that surround me get their peace from running or cycling, some even from drinking. I couldn’t do that.

Tai Chi allowed me to breathe out all the negativity and stress of what we call life and I left that centre every time feeling recharged. The people I did it with were so different from the people I am used to being around and it was brilliant. I was out of my comfort bubble and felt free. Tai Chi was my weekly escape from the “real” world. Tai chi helped cure me.

• Sleep

My goodness, was I deprived of this! Looking back now I cannot believe how I survived on 5-6 hours of sleep a night. If you find yourself doing the same, you are a disaster waiting to happen. Some days I would train for 3 hours and work for 8 hours. How on earth could my body recover on 6 hours sleep? Sleep is vital for healing. Sleep more, sleep in. Sleep is nature’s medicine. Do it often.

• People

Surround yourself with only the best. Stay away from toxic/draining people or situations. This can drain the much needed energy for healing and recovery. I allowed myself to become so involved in situations that were extremely draining, situations that constantly clouded my mind. You don’t need that in your life. It can affect your health negatively. Not many people understood my situation because they had never been as active as I was, or they had not experienced being “out” or “sick” for a whole year. Those people who didn’t understand weren’t very sympathetic. I spent little time around them. #onlypositivevibes

Also learn to say NO. So important. I cannot stress this enough. My life before this was super crazy! I never made time for myself. I never had time to heal or recover. Don’t let people pressure you or make you feel bad. Keep your precious time for the good people.

Funny thing, many people that I thought were my friends whilst training – they don’t really talk to me anymore. I kind of felt and still feel like damaged goods. I’m so lucky I got to experience this. It made me realize how much time I was wasting on those people. My friends and my family and some very special training buddies needed more attention and that is what I gave to them during my year of no exercise. Blood is thicker than water, always. Don’t spread yourself thin trying to impress everybody, again…energy waster.

• Exercising and Illness

You all know what you should or shouldn’t do with regards to this. Then why do you go back to training early after illness, or do the Comrades with a sore throat or exercise with a chest infection because you have FOMO (fear of missing out)? I mean, COME ON!

 

 

At a sports medicine conference 2 years ago, I learnt that every bit of exercise you do with an illness can leave small scars in your heart muscle. We are talking about micro here. Exercising after binge drinking and exercise whilst smoking do exactly the same. Your heart has to work harder when you are sick, take steroids, drugs, when you have alcohol poisoning (are hung over). Add that all up over the years of training. 15 years down the line John Doe collapses, heart attack. “But he was so fit and healthy”, they all said. What they all didn’t realize is that his cardiac tissue had been previously damaged. Ok, not all cases are like this, but what was proven is that you should be VERY careful before you take on a big training session. Doing it after a big alcoholic binge or illness, is not a good idea.

I met a lady recently who lost her 2 sons to heart conditions. She sought advice internationally from all sorts of specialists. Amazing how this lady had to present in my rooms and tell me this story – life has its weird ways of speaking to you. Anyway, she told me that most of these specialists had told her that one should not elevate one’s heart rate excessively for 2 weeks after illness. WHAT? I would do a max of 5 days. So scary. Makes sense though. Your body has been damaged, it’s still healing and recovering. It takes time. I think we as humans are impatient. Your training and big race means more than your heart, your body, right? Well maybe you should think that through again.

I also (still) believe that endurance athletes should all be wearing heart rate monitors and should have an ECG and full blood count at least once a year. It’s relatively inexpensive and can be done by most G.P’s. My endurance training had caused my heart to enlarge, naturally. But some of you may have underlying congenital (from birth) or acquired disorders that you are unaware of. If you decide to take on endurance training or any exercise for that matter, with an underlying problem, you are at risk.

 

So today I just received the good news. I can train again! Shew, what do I do first, what race do I enter? Flip, I just want to exercise for the sake of being able to move again. I took my health and hence my ability to train and be fit for granted. Appreciate every small thing in your life, appreciate your body, and treat it with the utmost attention and care. Be kind to it. Feed it, well! If you get injured or have to take some time out from sport or your normal way of living, it’s not really the end of the world (as I initially thought). There are SO many things to be grateful for. There is just so much more to this beautiful world and there’s so much more to do. Open that tunnel vision into a 5 lane highway. Use that powerful weapon sitting inside your skull – it sure helped me J

P.S..stay away from dark water (polluted) if you want to avoid these super bugs…according to my cardiologist ha ha ha.