Happy Thanksgiving! Here are a few health-related insights I’ve noticed lately:
Weakened Knees. The last few weeks, it felt like my knees have been getting stronger. The lunges and wall sits recommended by my physical therapist seem to be doing their job. The knees felt strong enough that I even reduced my recovery days for outdoor runs from two to one.
However, I was unpleasantly jostled on Sunday when my knees started hurting during a speed walk down Johnson Avenue. It’s hard to pinpoint why, but my current theory is that step length is to blame. My gut feeling is that long strides put more stress on my knees. Anyhow, I’m going to continue to allow myself to do speed walks, but I will make sure to keep my steps short.
Contacts + Seizures. Wearing contact lenses seems to cause me to have more daytime CPS seizures (i.e. the one I had after volunteering at the Tzu Chi food bank on 11/13). The added dryness is not the issue because Refresh takes care of that. Maybe it’s the fact that it makes it harder to close your eyes or blink. When I take off my contacts after wearing them for hours, I feel a huge wave of relief.
Pillows for Back. I can finally explain why my living room couch setup works so comfortably well. It’s because of the pillow supporting my back. That pillow allows me to lean back while forcing my neck to look down in a position that makes it aligned with my back. When my neck is aligned, it allows me to more easily concentrate, which in turn makes watching TV / movies / reading a much nicer experience.
Having pillows support the back is something my physical therapist has told me to do for a while. I followed through with her suggestion, but not enough. After propping up my other chairs with bigger pillows, I felt similar comfort and alignment.
One last thing to note is that the lean back / look down position puts a lot of pressure on the back of my neck and my throat. It’s definitely harder to swallow or mouth breathe when I’m in that position. So far that does not seem to be an issue, but I’m going to be wary.
PS: my new weight goal is 137lbs (+/- 7lbs)
