Hello

I was diagnosed with both fibromyalgia and CFS a little over a year ago. I have always been an athletic person and love sports of all kinds. My doctors have strongly advised me to pace myself to avoid worsening my condition.

This is very frustrating for me. I was wondering what others have done when diagnosed with these conditions. I am still able to take part in most sports but do feel a lot worse the next day so feel the doctors may be right. Are there any sports or forms of exercise which might be beneficial or at least not aggrevate things?

Thanks for any information!

Penny

Hi Penny,

Hope you're doing reasonably well today. I know exactly how you feel about the frustration of not being able to take part in sports. I was diagnosed with ME/CFS at age 12 when I was a sports mad kid and involved in all the school sports teams. It killed me to think I wouldn't be able to take part any more so I pushed myself and just kept going.....unfortunately not a good idea as I ended up missing a lot of days of school recovering in bed and ultimately made my condition worse.

Basically governments and medical organisations recommend what is known as 'graded exercise' for ME/CFS (and sometimes fibromyalgia). Basically this is an exercise program which aims to start of with simple and short exercise periods and gradually builds up the length and intensity of the exercise. The idea is that the patient slowly increases the amount of exercise they can manage. Unfortunately graded exercise isn't really backed up solid clinical studies and many patients actually find it worsens their condition. Many independent doctors specializing in these conditions believe they stem from dysfunction of the mitochondria, the parts of the cell which generate energy from oxygen. If the mitochondria don't work properly exercising is likely to make things worse as the mitochondria struggle to produce sufficient energy and the body resorts to backup methods of energy production such as anaerobic metabolism (which leads to a build up of lactic acid).

In my personal experience as long as you only do the amount of exercise your body can cope with then you should be fine. Once you 'hit the wall' and start to feel exhausted that is the time to call it a day. Don't push yourself to carry on through the pain barrier as you will only regret it later!

Improving your ability to exercise won't come through graded exercise instead you need to treat the energy production problems. If you give your mitochondria what they need to heal and produce energy efficiently once again then your ability to exercise will return.

Check out these articles:

www.ei-resource.org/articles/chronic-fat...tions-for-treatment/

www.ei-resource.org/articles/chronic-fat...ic-fatigue-syndrome/

Research that has been done into exercise and fibromyalgia pain has found that water based exercise is the best.

See this news story: www.ei-resource.org/news/fibromyalgia-ne...e-fibromyalgia-pain/

Hope some of this helps!