Have you had your exercise today?

I know it’s pretty much winter by now (at least, it will be officially in a week), and it’s probably cold and/or wet and/or dreary outside, but that’s no excuse. You need your exercise. Not just because your doctor said so. Not just because I said so. It’s because if there’s anything that can — and will — help you and your mood (especially on cold, dreary, wet days), it’s exercise.

According to the Mayo Clinic website, there are 7 main benefits of exercise:

Exercise: 7 benefits of regular physical activity

You know exercise is good for you — but do you know how good? From boosting your mood to improving your sex life, find out how exercise can improve your life.

By Mayo Clinic staff

Want to feel better, have more energy and perhaps even live longer? Look no further than old-fashioned exercise.

The merits of regular physical activity — from preventing chronic health conditions to promoting weight loss and better sleep — are hard to ignore. And the benefits are yours for the taking, regardless of age, sex or physical ability. Need more convincing? Check out seven specific ways exercise can improve your life.

1. Exercise improves your mood.

Need to blow off some steam after a stressful day? A workout at the gym or a brisk 30-minute walk can help you calm down.

Physical activity stimulates various brain chemicals that may leave you feeling happier and more relaxed than you were before you worked out. You’ll also look better and feel better when you exercise regularly, which can boost your confidence and improve your self-esteem. Regular physical activity can even help prevent depression.

2. Exercise combats chronic diseases.

Worried about heart disease? Hoping to prevent osteoporosis? Physical activity might be the ticket.

Regular physical activity can help you prevent — or manage — high blood pressure. Your cholesterol will benefit, too. Regular physical activity boosts high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or “good,” cholesterol while decreasing triglycerides. This one-two punch keeps your blood flowing smoothly by lowering the buildup of plaques in your arteries.

And there’s more. Regular physical activity can help you prevent type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis and certain types of cancer.

3. Exercise helps you manage your weight.

Want to drop those excess pounds? Trade some couch time for walking or other physical activities.

This one’s a no-brainer. When you engage in physical activity, you burn calories. The more intense the activity, the more calories you burn — and the easier it is to keep your weight under control. You don’t even need to set aside major chunks of time for working out. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Walk during your lunch break. Do jumping jacks during commercials. Better yet, turn off the TV and take a brisk walk. Dedicated workouts are great, but physical activity you accumulate throughout the day helps you burn calories, too.

4. Exercise boosts your energy level.

Winded by grocery shopping or household chores? Don’t throw in the towel. Regular physical activity can leave you breathing easier.

Physical activity delivers oxygen and nutrients to your tissues. In fact, regular physical activity helps your entire cardiovascular system — the circulation of blood through your heart and blood vessels — work more efficiently. Big deal? You bet! When your heart and lungs work more efficiently, you’ll have more energy to do the things you enjoy.

5. Exercise promotes better sleep.

Struggling to fall asleep? Or stay asleep? It might help to boost your physical activity during the day.

A good night’s sleep can improve your concentration, productivity and mood. And you guessed it — physical activity is sometimes the key to better sleep. Regular physical activity can help you fall asleep faster and deepen your sleep. There’s a caveat, however. If you exercise too close to bedtime, you may be too energized to fall asleep. If you’re having trouble sleeping, you might want to exercise earlier in the day.

6. Exercise can put the spark back into your sex life.

Are you too tired to have sex? Or feeling too out of shape to enjoy physical intimacy? Physical activity to the rescue.

Regular physical activity can leave you feeling energized and looking better, which may have a positive effect on your sex life. But there’s more to it than that. Regular physical activity can lead to enhanced arousal for women, and men who exercise regularly are less likely to have problems with erectile dysfunction than are men who don’t exercise — especially as they get older.

7. Exercise can be — gasp — fun!

Wondering what to do on a Saturday afternoon? Looking for an activity that suits the entire family? Get physical!

Physical activity doesn’t have to be drudgery. Take a ballroom dancing class. Check out a local climbing wall or hiking trail. Push your kids on the swings or climb with them on the jungle gym. Plan a neighborhood kickball or touch football game. Find a physical activity you enjoy, and go for it. If you get bored, try something new. If you’re moving, it counts!

What’s more, it can help reduce inflammation and add structure to your life. Things really started to turn around for me, job-wise and life-wise, when I began a regular daily exercise routine. Not a weekly routine, where I did something for 30 minutes a day, but a daily routine that is a minimum of 30 minutes and often lasts up to an hour.

How do I make time for it, you ask? Good question. I balked at the idea of exercising for years (despite the fact that I was once an award-winning athlete). I thought I just didn’t have time for it. Then I realized that if I exercised at the same time I did things other that I did daily — mainly, planning my day and thinking through my schedule ahead of time — I could easily fit in a full workout every single day.

As with most things in my life, it’s not enough for me to do them occasionally, or even frequently with some breaks between. I have to commit to things totally and give them my all, or I — and others — get no benefit whatsoever.

If you haven’t had any exercise today, get up right now and do something. Walk up and down stairs a few times. Or better yet, walk outside. Or do some stretches and light calisthenics. Anything — within reason — is better than nothing. And if you’re like me, you cannot afford the luxury of that nothing.

So, get on with it. Now. Stop thinking about it, and just do it. You’ll thank yourself later that you did.

As for me, I’ve had my daily dose, and I’ve had a pretty full day, by now.

I’ve more than earned a nap, so off I go…

Ouch!

My hands are killing me, after working like crazy outside, for the past few days. I had a bunch of chores to do, and winter is upon us, so my paws and digits got a real workout.

It’s tough, typing like this. And I have a bunch of typing I need to do tomorrow. Today I thought I’d be able to get a lot of work done, but I slept in (!) if you can believe it, so I got very little done.

Which is fine.

I’m going to be smart, now, and go take a hot shower and smear some arnica on my aching hands.

It’s good to be alive. Especially this alive.

Learning to sleep

Something quite nice is happening to me, these days: I’m learning to sleep, and I’m learning to enjoy it.

It probably sounds strange, but for as long as I can remember, sleep has been a challenge — at least, restful sleep. I’ve had problems with fatigue since I was a young kid, and I’ve often felt a certain pressure around going to sleep — like, it was something I knew I needed to do, and part of me wanted to do it, but it was such a chore.

There were so many other things I wanted to do, other than sleep.

I’ve always been quite active, mentally speaking. I love to think, I love to dream, I love to come up with new ideas. A good idea is like lifeblood to me. And I love to actively work with my ideas to see what I can make of them.

“Losing control” of my thinking process during sleep has always made me a little nervous. There’s always been part of me that was curious about what would happen, what I would dream, etc. But given the choice between going to sleep and surrendering to the unknown, and continuing to noodle over a question or a challenge… I would always choose the latter.

Until recently. Over the past year or so, I have been learning to relax. And I’ve been learning to sleep. I’ve been learning to enjoy relaxing, and getting the hang of relaxing into sleep.

It’s quite nice, actually. Surprisingly so. It’s almost like a little vacation I can take each night.

Speaking of which… it’s time for me to go to bed.

Good night, everyone 🙂

New NFL concussion guidelines

The NFL has recently released new stricter concussion guidelines.

The new policy states, in part: “Once removed for the duration of a practice or game, the player should not be considered for return-to-football activities until he is fully asymptotic, both at rest and after exertion, has a normal neurological examination, normal neuropsychological testing, and has been cleared to return by both his team physician(s) and the independent neurological consultant.”

This could be a really good thing.

I hope.

Losing Tiger

Here’s my blatantly opportunistic exploitation of a public figure for the sake of blog hits. But seriously folks, the whole situation does give me pause for a lot of thought.

Depending which radio station you listen to or which news source you read, Tiger Woods’ domestic dispute either involved him getting clocked with a 9-iron by a furious wife… and/or being scratched up when she lit into him… and/or driving around semi-conscious… and/or him sustaining injuries from ramming a fire hydrant with his Escalade… and/or his numb and non-communicative wife bashing out his car windows to save him… and/or him lying on the pavement snoring, when the medics arrived.

I don’t think anyone but the folks directly involved will ever know exactly what happened, but I’m not sure that matters. Enough damage has been done, to permanently erase the once saintly persona we once knew as Tiger Woods. And if his wife really did hit him in the face with a 9-iron, and he was in and out of consciousness, I have to wonder if the head trauma won’t screw with his fine motor control… and possibly bring his golfing career to a sickeningly tragic end.

I’m being harsh, you say? I think not. For years, this guy has made millions, at least in part by projecting a squeaky-clean image, having kids intone “I am Tiger Woods” mantras on moving commercials, and by hawking his wholesome image throughout the media. He has made tons of dough and enjoyed vast amounts of prestige, thanks to his image.

And what does he do, but not only tramp it up with impunity, apparently on Ambien, no less… but also be dense enough to leave tons of incriminating evidence, not to mention get intimately involved with the kinds of women who brag about bedding him. What was he thinking?!

I know the man was in pain, not least of all from losing his father. I know he’s been under vast amounts of pressure, due to his position and reputation. I know he’s been working as hard as any aging athlete to keep his edge in a field full of fresh young players just aching to take his place in the lead. I know the man was human, and I know he behaved like so many other men do in his position. I know that, being human, his mojo quota had to be in some kind of decline, which must have made him absolutely crazy at times… it’s not easy to peak relatively early in life (men do so earlier than women — some of the world’s greatest mathematicians achieved their masterpieces when they were but young pups) and then see yourself decline — however invisibly to the rest of the world. I know the temptations of all those women must have been too much to take at times. Clearly, at least some of them were.

But here’s the thing — if you know all eyes are on you… if you know your fortune depends on your ability to maintain a clean-cut image… if you have a wife and two kids at home and endorsement contracts to honor, you don’t fuck around. And you certainly don’t sext your hottie du jour hundreds upon hundreds of times and leave voicemails on her phone with your name. Geezuz, Tiger — what were you thinking, man?!

In a way, I can understand how it would come to this. I think the guy was set up by a system that makes artificially optimistic, insanely unrealistic, and eventually overwhelming demands on gifted but relatively frail human beings. Frankly, I think the powers that wrote up his contracts probably never genuinely expected him to uphold every last piece in the morality clause(s).  They probably figured they would ride the Tiger Train for as long as it would pull them along, and that eventually something would go amiss, and they’d get at least some of their money back from him, having made millions from his endorsements in the meantime. But they probably never genuinely expected him to violate his own artificial image in such a public and plainly stupid way.

When all is said and done, what I feel most about all this, is a profound sense of loss. The magical golden child of golf has fallen — sure as the golden calf was struck from its pedestal by Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai. And now he’s being ground up and served to all the masses in tiny little bits, strewn through our food and drink. The invention that we had and believed in — that innocent, honest, hard-working, Horatio Alger of a golfer — has failed to hold up under the stress tests of real life, and now we all have to eat crow and cringe whenever we think of those “I am Tiger Woods” commercials.

Those of us who demand perfection from others are as much to blame for this debacle as the parties involved. We are all complicit in this crime against human optimism. We put him up on a pedestal, and then when he stumbles, we go on a feeding frenzy, attacking our object for not validating our fondest fantasies. We need to get real. And stop needing the Tigers of the world to be our role models and paragons. We each need to aspire to and achieve heights in our own ways, not put all of our vainglory into a persona we prop up through consumer devotion and starry-eyed water-cooler talk.

Of course, in the midst of it all, some might cry “racism” and say he was set up and handled too harshly in the media — but weren’t we all set up and then disabused by our own dashed illusions? Weren’t we all just a little too trusting of the image, a little too inundated by all the media blitz, a little too incredulous that someone who flew so high could fall so far? It’s lonely at the top, and it gets hot up there, as Icarus found out.  He plunged from the great heights, too, and did not survive the fall. But he got a whole sea named after him.

As for Tiger… well, there probably won’t be any large bodies of water named after him, but you might get a good deal on a set of his golf clubs on Craigslist right about now…

Please join me in a moment of silence for our dearly departed hero.

I’ll miss him.

What I do, versus who I am – TBI and Behavior Issues

I have been giving a lot of thought to behavior issues that arise as a result of TBI. Discussing my “eventful” childhood with my parents, in light of the concussions I experienced, brought up a lot of old memories about the bad behavior I exhibited, time and time again.

At the same time, I’ve been meeting with my neuropsychologist, who has been trying to explain to me that relatively speaking, the neurological after-effects of my TBIs are not so terribly severe. For the most part, I have a lot going for me, and I score well in key areas. I do have a few significant areas of difficulty, but I’m really not in terrible shape, neurologically speaking.

I’m still trying to get my head around it. Maybe I’m being dense, but it’s hard for me to see how little is wrong with me.

Because I struggle. Oh, how I struggle. The fact that I’ve been up since 1:30 — wide awake from worry and pain — is evidence thereof. Now, part of it may be the fact that I’m a highly sensitive individual with a lot of life and curiosity and adventurousness in me… which tends to put me on a collision course with the less desirable parts of human experience. A lot of it may be due to that, in fact. But it certainly doesn’t help that my memory leaves a lot to be desired, my processing speed isn’t as fast as I’d like, and I tend to get overwhelmed and melt down.

I don’t want to make more of my situation than need be, and I certainly don’t want to hold myself back in life  by focusing on my limits, rather than my strengths. I just need to understand why it is that I have such a hard time with things that others seem to be fine with. What, in fact, is holding me back?

All things considered, I think most of my day-to-day issues are behavior-related, versus purely neurological. I have had a bunch of head injuries, it’s true, but my MRI and EEG both came back looking peachy, and that doesn’t seem to correlate with the difficulties I have. Indeed, the problems I’ve got with insomnia, anger management, becoming quickly fatigued, trouble getting started, trouble reading, getting turned around and overwhelmed, saying the wrong things and doing things differently than I’d like, seem more behavioral than cognitive.

Well, it’s 4:30 a.m. and I’ve been up for three hours. I’m bushed and I need to sleep. So, for now I’ll just share a number of links I’ve found interesting and useful in understanding tbi and behavior:

• Traumatic Brain Injury: TBI Inform – Managing Behavioral Problems
• Tutorial: Behavior And Behavior Problems After TBI
• Long-Term Behavior Problems Following Pediatric Traumatic Brain …
• Behavior Problems After TBI in Children and Adolescents (PDF)
• Behavior Problems Resulting from Brain Injury
• FCA: Traumatic Brain Injury

Though I can’t say all the changes have been bad…

Thinking about my little enneagram test, I am actually glad that I’ve had to change in some ways. I am MUCH more organized than I was before I realized that if I’m not, I get into big trouble. I am a whole lot more present, in my daily life, and I’m a lot more cautious about things that I used to be very cavalier about.

In some ways, my personality changes have been in response to the TBIs and coping with them — versus them being due to the fall down the stairs… the car accidents… the sports concussions… and the attack. And that’s helped me, more than it’s hurt me.

I really shouldn’t boo-hoo over it. Change can be very good, and everybody encounters stuff they need to overcome. We change in response to the shifting demands of the world around us. And the world changes in response to us, as well.

It’s just interesting to see and consider the kinds of differences that emerge in my life over time. And to remember that deep down inside of me, there is a part that loves to pity itself and cry “poor me!” when better reason would tell me to buck up and just get on with it.

Heck, considering that I’ve been dealing with cognitive-behavioral issues practically my whole life, and I’ve done pretty well for myself, then if I start to decline cognitively in my advancing age, I already have coping skills in place that can serve me in good stead.

I know — I’ll consider myself ahead of the game, and call it a win.

The person I used to be…

I did an enneagram self-test last night, to see where I fall on that spectrum. I picked one out of the Google results and went to http://similarminds.com/test.html.

The enneagram has a bunch of different personality types:

1 THE REFORMER
2 THE HELPER
3 THE ACHIEVER
4 THE INDIVIDUALIST
5 THE INVESTIGATOR
6 THE LOYALIST
7 THE ENTHUSIAST
8 THE CHALLENGER
9 THE PEACEMAKER

And supposedly everyone fits somewhere. The results I got had all nine types represented in different percentages. By far, I am a 5 – The Investigator.

Now, I’ve taken this test before, and I’ve figured out that I’m a 5, before. But when I took the test (with my spouse looking over my shoulder), I was surprised at some of the answers I thought were true, but they disagreed with. And I got a close look at how TBI has actually changed my life in fundamental ways.

Once upon a time, I was cool and level-headed and I could hold my own in the midst of chaos. Once upon a time, I was far less organized than I am now.  Once upon a time, I used to be very spontaneous and could roll with changes. And I wasn’t overly cautious about things.

Those things about me have changed, and while they didn’t skew my results too terribly, the experience of making certain choices on the test, and having my spouse say, “That’s not true!” and give me lots of examples, was sobering. I am definitely not the same person I was, even 5 years ago. And I wonder if I was ever the person I thought I was, to begin with…

Personality changes in TBI are by far some of the most disorienting aspects of the injury… makes basic problem solving a bit more complicated than one would expect.

Well, I’ll have to ponder that some more. I hear there’s bad weather on the way, so I’d better do some outdoor chores while I can.

It appears that winter is finally here.

Feeling normal. Normal is good.

Back from Thanksgiving for real, now… Back in the swing of things at work, where everything is going crazy for year-end. They had another round of layoffs at work, but I was magically spared.

I’m pluggin’ away at my new job, rallying back after what was a less than stellar review of my first cut at the project I’m working on. Must be smart about this. Will be smart about this. Will use fewer pronouns, so I think faster 😉

But I’m tired. Tired and ready to just relax. After my 10 p.m. call tonight, when people overseas complete a job I asked them to do, and I check their work.

Still digesting Thanksgiving time. And trying to find space in my schedule to just take a break. One of my coworkers stopped by earlier today, saying they didn’t have enough work, and they were just occupying themselves with other things. I wasn’t sure what to say. I’d give anything to have less work — but this way I’m safe(r) from layoffs, I guess, which is good.

The main challenge I’m facing today, is accepting the fact that I had a normal Thanksgiving and I’m having a normal life. A normal life with average expectations. It’s to be expected that this new line of work will tire me out. And it’s to be expected that I can share time with my family and not melt down or lose it or freak out on them. It’s to be expected — today, anyway. In past years, not so much.

So, I’m tired, yes, but I’m still grateful. I’m grateful that I am having a normal life, with all its ups and downs. I’m grateful that I had a good time with my family. Most of all, I’m grateful that I am actually feeling normal. What a change this is, after 40-some years of NOT feeling normal.

I think I’ll celebrate Thanksgiving through the end of the year.