Pain is a tough door to walk through.

AARP writer Patrick Kiger reported in July Chronic Pain Afflicts Most older Adults in a Harris poll survey Of 2,011 adults. 20% of those age 55-64 and 25% of those 65 and older have given up on were compelled to give up some activity they loved to do because of pain. 57% of those 55-64 deal with chronic pain and 64% of those 65 and older deal with chronic pain. 85% and 88% of each group find some way to deal with pain.
Giving up activities I think come as we age. Some activities would be more friendly as we age. Rugby, boxing, American football would have an earlier retirement from the sport. Workouts once did may stay with us a little longer. I think activities can be replaced or modified. Pain though is a reality. Moving forward changes have to part of the strategy.
We try medicine, physical therapy, chiropractics, yoga. The 20-25% of older people who give up probably have tried these things and pain remains. That can be discouraging. For others these strategies help us continue.
Today I did what my heart doctor wants me to do more often. Watch TV and just bike. There is a

Au. 26 week

benefit of getting distracted, before you know it you have moved past your daily goal.
This week I took a few days off. My bruising got a little worse. I am still bleeding in my joint. Inflammation improved, back on the bike. Each time it took time before pain eased as I warmed up and fluid moving into the joints. Easier levels but choosing to engage in an increased pace.
Strength training minutes were added during the week. Toward the end of the week I did more short walks.
Pain is real and it does affect us. I think of my grandson with a disability walking through doors and increasing his experience and success. This lovely fellow gives me motivation to move through my doors. I have never have been as sweet as him, but I remember many of the doors I had to walk through or at times fight. Have you ever fought a fight you knew you would lose? The fight has to happen and if you can make it painful enough for the winner, would be less likely to do it again. My application was facing bullies who liked to attack crippled kids. I always surprised these bums. There is a fear to it though.

When I came to faith in Jesus as my Savior, I liked the thought
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear not evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me." Ps. 23:4 Death carries a bigger shadow then the bullies I faced as a kid. Pain is part of this shadow. The rod and staff are part of the same truth of God's protection.
For years I was taught how God uses these tools "rod and staff" in discipline. But over time I rethought the verse. Evil desires to destroy us, those tools fights off thugs, robbers and murderers seeking to harm or kill. We certainly need still waters and pastors for restoration and healing. How ever we have pain we can use, medicine, therapy, good food, exercise that makes sense for us. We can walk through the doors we are afraid of. In the big picture we need the Lord to be with us. Keep walking.

Adding to the fat man exercises to help build up muscles for safe walking. Our kids need exercise.

There has always been a notable difference between my stronger left leg in a weaker right one. While it seems my upper legs can gain strength comparable to anybody, my lower legs do not. My observations have been when you have physical disabilities that impair movement or strength, progress is slow. There are two reasons why I don't give up:

1. If I quit my exercises, even though I do not have a lot of gains; I will quickly lose what I have.
2. If I quit I will automatically start to increase pain. My experience and many that I talk to report that our muscles are already constantly contracting with CP. If we quit flexibility, strength movements our muscles will increase tightening up and greater pain will result. Next time you see a person with cerebral palsy, realize that person lives with pain every day. The more severe of the disability is the more severe the pain. They will probably never tell you about it. Let's build our compassion!😘

It is a simple formula movement + flexibility = less pain. Since I am a sissy and hate pain, movement + flexibility = less pain and less need of pain pills. Physical therapy like a book are my best friends. Physically handicapped children should earn school credit for their rehab. It should be factored into their P E programs. 
(Schools should offer one hour a day, 20 minutes instructing and doing different fitness ideas and 35 minutes of exercise involving play games such as soccer and basketball and, pursuits such as rock climbing, back packing. We are not for the moment going to be be getting rid of our bus programs and we are less likely to have adults outside forcing perverts back into hiding like trolls so that more kids would be safe, so we better increase recess and PE or pay a big price in health later. The growth in our brains from exercise is undeniable. This growth and health of the brain will improve learning with increased oxygen and circulation. For the most part in over 30 years of observation the last hour of school should be replaced with workouts, games, music, art and social interaction completely free from electronic devices. Mentally the kids and most teachers are spent any ways. If our kids do not move one hour day, we will pay the price. 
We cannot go back to the old days when I used to shovel 5 miles to get to school 😲. OK I'm exaggerating, it was only one mile of shoveling and it may not have been snow.)
What are the things I try to do when I am confronted new problems  is to pick up some rehab tips. Two moves I picked up to improve walking without falling.
 To strengthen my ability to pick up my legs and prevent falls I learned two exercises I can do on the bed. 

 Each of these exercises and be done with  The  Opposite leg the knee bent.

 

With opposite knee bent lift leg a few inches and move sideways. Keep walking

pain I hate it but we have to go through it anyway

I posted on Facebook and twitter an article that I read on Wayne Stiles blog.

http://www.waynestiles.com/the-question-we-ought-to-ask-when-hurting/

The question we aren't to ask went hurting spark thoughts about pain that I've come to understand over the years. If you like to question where is God in the mist of our pain? Read his blog. I also would encourage you to read Phillip Yancy’s book, Where is God When it Hurts? 

Wayne Styles contrast how the Psalms looks at the question of pain with the book of Job. In the Psalms the writers repeatedly asked where is God in the midst I'll our pain? Job never answers the question of where is God in my pain? Nor Why does God allows such struggle in our lives? Asking these questions you are right with the writers of Scriptures.

We all know when our body tells us we are hurting. That pain is communicating to us a problem. Answering the question why does this hurt? That's a very good question. Finding the answer not only helps the pain but it helps us with the causes of pain. Some pain it is wonderful to just get relief from it. And most of the time our body heals while we get relief. 

Sometimes the pain indicates that we have to get help to fix the problem. Other times pain is a warning and we must do something to put a stop to it. 

Pain becomes a problem when its chronic or overwhelming. The cry of “why” you can feel the pain. Pain often can be helpful but at the same time it can be unuseful if the “state” is prolong or terminal.

Along the way in life teaches us there is no escaping problems and pain. One way or another we have to go through it. We live in a fallen world and God has his purposes with the things that are and that isn't going to change anytime soon. Bad people in Paris are going to kill innocent people, crazy broken evil people are going to kill children in school. Demented agendas become more important then people.

In the context of difficult and painful experiences caused by evil or even things going drastically wrong with our bodies, why doesn't always cut it. Job shares with us that we need to discover the who that can go with us through the pain is what we need. The truth is we are all going to experience the ultimate loss of life and the most important thing that we need is to trust the one that can take us through that. 

We may find people who can help us through our darkest day. We may need courage courage to stand up to evil. It took our soldiers to go through the darkest days of World War II to end the suffering of Holocaust. The people of London had to suffer much before Hitler was stopped. We may be an accident with broken bone and body and have to go through the pain of care by medical people. We may have to endure a long recovery and possibly some loss and chronic pain. Learning to trust God through these things in seeing how God uses these things to make us more like Jesus is a big part of the purpose of pain that Styles talks about. Nobody wants it, that is the pain. But that doesn't change the reality that we will go through these things one way or another.

That's why I encourage you to read the article or the book in think through these things. Sometimes we have to pray through these things when we don't want to. We can be angry about it, bitter about it, we can do the blame thing; but it will not change the pain that we go through. Trusting God in our darkest time maybe the hardest thing we have to do. Keep walking

No gimmicks, what stops us?

This is the second part response to what I wrote about last time. I was thinking about other things that challenges and prevent us from engaging in a more healthy lifestyle. I read an article in the New York Times Weight Gain in Older Women by Paula Spahn and she shares how women put on weight and the difficulty they have been taking off. It seems if women are healthy they have nearly a 20 pack percent greater chance of living to age 85 and having the ability to walk. As people encounter diseases their chance of walking independently decreases. Having heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and being obese are all factors in decreasing the possibility that you can be walking around when you're 85.
Read another article from Health Day where people who are overweight only sweat one hour a year for woman and three hours if your man. It raises the question what prevents people from working up a sweat getting 30 minutes of walking. If you are heavy like me you will sweat with just walking. Barb has a harder time working up a sweat. What prevents people from exercise and movement where they get more active.
It seems as if when we have health challenges it's a lot harder to put into our life the practices that we need to improve our health. I know it is a little more challenging than what people will admit to. If people who are overweight are people who are inclined to move from one location to the next where there setting. How can we change some of that. How can we put different kind of activities in our life where were moving around. It seems like there's a lot of people who have difficulty in trying to do this.
I have given this some thought now that I'm retired, and I am looking at ways where I can bring movement into my life. Helping out with some of the shores around the house that's it that's an idea that for me is a challenge. I can hear my kids laughing now. Getting up and doing different exercises when I'm working in the day on the computer is a good idea. I can do strength movements with my body throughout the day and at the end of the day I can have a full body workout by just taking small exercise breaks while working. I can go for a 10 minute walks throughout the day or even 20 minute walks. I can do some woodworking in my shop downstairs. I can use my stairs all around my house.
Shopping visiting people, getting out and moving around and when spring comes I'm planning to do some more bike riding. Using my bike to visit people in the nursing home and hospital. We need to find time to get in an hour or two of walking and moving.  When working on the computer, reading or watching TV at night are there things we can do to move a little for our health? 
My wife and I have noticed that if we plan to be walking when we are older it really does have to start every day now. 
There are a lot of things that I hinder us. We might have an injury, right now I have injury from a fall that hurts a lot. With my CP I have to give it time to heal. So it's a pain in the neck . So you know sometimes we get sick and it might take a week or two to recover from an illness. There's a lot of things that seem to interfere with our pursuit of activity. So I think we have to have the mindset to be able to reenter ourselves back into a routine of walking and doing things for fitness, stretching, and aerobics after we have these other times where we're having put down for a while. getting back into it isn't always easy. 
Next time I will go into some of things we are facing and the changes we have to make happen to move forward. Keep walking

Thinking about pain - ouch!

I read an article today from Health Day news that reported the role of pain in sleep problems as we age. "Up to 80 percent of people 65 and older experience some form of pain on a daily basis, according to the news release."  Phillip Yancy wrote in his insightful book, Where is God When it Hurts; Pleasure and pain use the same senses and often go together. Pain is part of life and we tend to do everything we can to not experience it. We may dull our senses with drugs or alcohol. We may turn up the volume on our music, retreat into a video game or TV. Pain warns us, heightens our senses, taste of bitter and sweet, sex involves areas sensitive to touch and pain, Ice and heat applied initially we react but feel better as our blood moves to heal and re leave inflammation.  But the pain that keeps us up is chronic pain and insomnia hurts our health. It is part of our life now  and we must learn to come to terms with it. 

Think about this a moment - “Modern culture saddens me because, while it seeks to turn down the volume on pain, it constantly turns up the volume from all other sources. We have ears: they are bombarded with decibels until the subtle tones are lost forever. Listen to music from any other century, twelfth, sixteenth, even nineteenth, and compare it to what most people listen to today. We have eyes: the world assaults them with neon lights and phosphorescent colors until a sunset or butterfly pales in comparison.” Yancey, Philip (2010-02-23). Where Is God When It Hurts? (pp. 48-49). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

I have found in my own dealing with pain that it takes several strategies to get a grip on pain. Dealing with chronic pain needs to be evaluated by your doctor. If you have been dealing with pain for awhile it is time to check in with your doctor. Several strategies can be acted upon. For me, finding what is right for me in pain support. The use of physical therapy to relieve pain and some strategies to take my focus off the pain. Moving relieves pain, resistant training builds tendons and muscle to give better support for joint pain. Drinking plenty of water lubricates old joints. Exercise for me has reduced my need for over medicating my self with meds. 
The pain of depression can be healed, pain in relationship can bring joy. It is normal to have pain and to learn from it and to seek to over come it. The older I get I realize I may never be free of it, but I can use pain to remind me I am alive. And when joy, happiness, pleasure, feelings of worth come from helping others soak it in to drown the pain out. 
Learn for people who give and serve. Their hardships are endured with joy. They may with others be glad inn their struggles.  Learn form people who do everything to escape pain and take a closer look at how they are not really living. The latest gimmick, tech, treatment, isolates them and their pain continues. Keep walking