I have worked out for years, and lost 15 pounds of muscle in 15 days. Does anyone have any suggestions about working with weights while you have PMR? I seems to do better regarding pain when I do lower weights and high reps. I am new to PMR and would like to improve the learning curve regarding working out. Any suggestions, based on personal experience? Also would appreciate thoughts on amount of daily protein intake - right now I am consuming at least 400 gm per day.
A lot of competitive athletes in this form will share the same message: life changes when you get PMR, and whether not you can exercise depends entirely on where you are in the pain cycle. Beyond that, but I can say is that exercise is good but acute exercise is bad. Translated to weightlifting, I would say the lower weights and higher repetition would be far better than heavyweights the truly stress your body.
As someone who was very active pre PMR I would urge caution with any form of exercise. Only do what you can but don't overdo it as you will pay for it. It has taken me some 2 years to slowly build up my muscles after intianally being very immobile. Steriods really don't help. My maxim is listen to what your body is telling you and don't just carry on regardless - it dosen't work.
More to the point, prednisone masks your symptoms making you feel initially as though you can go back at it full bore. You cannot. As a passionately competitive rower, I learned this the hard way.
I would say that to start with low weights AND low reps - and then build up slowly to more. Your muscles do not respond normally to training (you won't know until it is too late you have done too much) and won't heal properly post exercise, it takes much longer, so leaving at least a day and probably preferably more between sessions should also help.
Personally I htink that is far too much protein - you are not continuing as a bodybuilder now. As Daniel has already said - this is a whole new normal that you are going to have to adjust to. It doesn't mean you won't get back to it - just not yet.
Prednisone impairs muscle rebuilding, which is necessary for recovery and training. If you try to do heavy weights, you will end up with torn and damaged muscles. However aerobic type of activity helps muscle rebuilding. What might be an option is to use body as a weight and come up with training that will exercise muscles and at the same time be as aerobic activity. Check cross-fit functional movements, just do them much slower at easy pace.
Too much protein is bad for your bones.
Yes, in the first. place we must listen to our body!
For me, yes, lighter weights, more for toning than building, and working the areas that were not effected by PMR. Such as, biceps and triceps, ok, but not my deltoids. Hips are a struggle, but when I got trocanteric hip issues I was sent to PT and surprisingly I was able to strengthen areas needed for that without affecting the PMR areas.
Gentle, gentle yoga is helpful if done correctly and perhaps a good teacher.
Not all poses are good, cause too much pain.
lower reps, and repeating a few times a day helps too. Nothing that encourages more inflammation.
And wow, that is a lot of protein. I've been learning about bone broth, don't know if it's helping, but it's good. I have protein with every meal, but since I mainly eat veggies and meat, no rice, pasta, grains, sugar, then I'm satisfied.
Yes, it's a bummer to lose muscle, but that's thanks to prednisone, I'm off Pred now and am seeing more tone.
I had trouble with getting back into a light weightlifting routine until I learned about a couple of pmr-caused limitations.
Some range of motion that has been lost can be regained by moving through the very first rep at a sloth-like, very slow speed. Taking a full minute to go through the motion on the first rep can minimize irritating tissues such as bursae, allowing for easier, faster and pain-free movement during subsequent repetitions. It is as if the first rep is perhaps slowly squeezing out excess fluid from the tissues, so the slower the better!
The other, related limitation is the need to avoid irritating inflamed/swollen bursae, which will tend to make things even worse the next day. Those sharp pains must be avoided, and one needs to learn how by being attentive to one's restricted range of motion within which one can apply any force.
Over time, one will also become aware of how their pred dosage requirement can be adjusted to reduce any tendency for the bursea and joint/tendon tissues to become irritated.
400g of protein per day is about four times my intake, and I am a competitive everyday cyclist.
As I understand it - even if you are a competitive athlete/body builder eating too much protein will achieve what you don't want: building flab as you gain weight. That amount of protein is also pretty risky for good renal function - and however much I might want nice abs, I'd far rather have healthy kidneys!
Thank you for this advice.. I'm bummed, I loved to do CrossFit n run now I can't.. not happy , I just found this forum searching for answers to my questions about staying healthy and working out , I'm beginning to gain weight... not happy !!!
I am thinking about purchasing a rower... for my daily exercise.. should I rethink this .. I need to stay in shape n keep my muscles tone .. I'm worried!!
More than a needed amount of protein also tends to elevate insulin levels, and usually that's not good either.
A lot has been written about the need to balance one's dietary proportions of fat, protein and carbohydrate. Weight lifters who actually experience a lot of muscle tissue breakdown during efforts that are continued to the point of muscular contraction failure can utilize a higher protein intake, and for the rest of us there are benefits to higher protein intake only in proportion to how much muscle repair is needed after hard work or exercise. Aerobic exercise doesn't much increrase one's protein requirement, though protein can be a useful source of fuel/calories during extended endurance activities.
I had wondered how high of a dose of pred that it takes to noticeably impair muscle development in response to training efforts.
I would test out the rower first at the store. Then see if it did or did not cause any particular aggravation to pmr symptoms.
I recommend doing plenty of whatever kind and intensity of exercise that is well tolerated at the time, twice a day is good I think. It will be important to determne and maintain an adequate pred dosage, so that symptoms like fatigue and bursitis don't cause disability toward one's daily work and chores.
Thank you, I will try out rower tomorrow, and twice a day sounds good ... hopping I can do it !!
Be careful - it's already been mentioned and it isn't just moonshine: your muscles remain intolerant of exercise despite the pred relieving the symptoms. They are being attacked by the autoimmune disorder, they are unable to signal you have done too much and should stop for now and they take far longer to recover post-exercise. Even a few minutes of high level exercise may leave you feeling as if you just ran the 10km final without training.
You CAN continue exercising but start low, very low, and build SLOWLY - and slowly in this case means just adding a minute or two each step up and resting between sessions - at first not just between morning and afternoon, missing a day between days with short sessions is better and just walking on those days.
I'd also be VERY careful with a rower to start with - it is putting a LOT of stress on the muscles most affected in PMR as well as the joints most likely to develop bursitis, the shoulders and hips.
It doesn't mean you won't get back there - just not as quickly as it sounds as if you are envisaging. You have a new normal now - try to fight it too hard and you may end up really unwell. Some experts think that overdoing it with PMR can lead to a state similar to chronic fatigue syndrome. Then you really would find out waht not being able to exercise is about - some can't even walk around the block.
"Weight lifters who actually experience a lot of muscle tissue breakdown during efforts that are continued to the point of muscular contraction failure can utilize a higher protein intake, and for the rest of us there are benefits to higher protein intake only in proportion to how much muscle repair is needed after hard work or exercise."
But you can't do that in PMR - because if you do you are at a massive risk of those muscles not repairing at all or taking months which has been known. Part of the problem in PMR is that the muscle tissue is unable to repair itself in the same way as normal. It isn't a risk I'd want to take if I was really so keen on that particular activity.
Try to do some of the CrossFit functional moves, but very slow. The point to remember is that ANY exercise that loads muscles at high level will damage them. Basically, make the CrossFit workout more like endurance exercise and less of a High-intensity interval training. While you do them, you should be able to talk ( not lose your breath). This will not develope new muscles, but should help in preventing muscle loss. It will also burn calories, and combined with proper diet should keep the weight gain under control.
never mind about protein intake, prednisone blocks muscle repair (rebuilding) in particular to fast twitch muscle (which you mobilize for maximal effort). If the "body building" is intense enough it will accelerate muscle loss. On the other side, endurance exercise mobilizes slow twitch muscle and counters the effect of prednisone blocking the muscle rebuilding. This is the only kind of exercise that we can do ( with PMR) while on prednisone.