Self-Care, or radical Self-Care, is the theme for the 5-year anniversary of the Glass Half Full podcast. This short episode features my brand of self-care — daily routines that are my sustenance, not just an end-of-the-week treat. Whether it’s nutrition, movement, or attitude my waking hours are spent minimizing symptoms associated with a progressive neuromuscular disease and maximizing a limited supply of energy.
As part of the anniversary celebration, join me in a streaming Facebook Live event on Sunday, March 21st at 11:30 a.m. Pacific. I’ll be joined in a lively discussion on Self-Care with previous podcast guests.
This is part 2 of a conversation with Dalia Kinsey, RD, LD, SNS. We talk about becoming our authentic selves, how trauma impacts our physical and emotional health, and the need for inclusivity and intersectionality in public health messages.
This is the most stressful year of our lives. We’ve got the pandemic going. We already knew about police brutality, but never have we been to a point where every time you turn on the television, every time you open Facebook, every time you look anywhere, you’re seeing another black or brown body being abused. The trauma is massive and I don’t see anyone really addressing it. And I feel like racism is what I know, that racism and all kinds of systemic abuse, these are public health crises.
~ Dalia Kinsey
The first part of our conversation can be found here. To learn more about Black Joy, check out this article or video series.
Featured are four people — with their own unique health conditions — that are coping and making the best of the quarantine and pandemic.
Luda Gogolushko, who has SMA Type 3 and lives in Southern California, continues to write and publish from the safety of her home.
Lindsey Kizer, in North Carolina, gets to telecommute for her job and tries to maintain self-care routines to avoid narcoleptic flare ups.
Jay Carr, with myotonic dystrophy in Virginia, spends more time with his teenage son during the lockdown. He also cheers others with his humorous Facebook posts and musical interludes.
Peter Slobodnik, outside of Sacramento, keeps himself busy by making masks for friends and family while also planning an advocacy bike ride to draw attention to his rare disease, Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia.
Each of these podcast guests has found their own way to cope with the pandemic.
A family physician talks about ways to avoid the flu, and enhance your immunity, during this peak season for influenza. Plus, you might learn some flu factoids for your next flu trivia contest.
Stay on top of flu statistics by following the weekly FluView on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website.
If you provide care for someone with a chronic health condition or an elderly family member, you might want to glean additional flu information from this online article.
For the Attitude of Gratitude Give-Aways through December 19th, check the Facebook group for details.
If memory serves me correctly, the phrase garbage in, garbage out refers to the quality of computer programming. But it can also be applied to how we eat. Think about it. You’ve heard we are what we eat, but…our poop definitely reflects what we eat. Indeed!
Okay, I crossed that line. I talked about poop. Since we now have poop emoji maybe the discussion is not as profane as it was when I was growing up.
I can’t remember ever being asked by a doctor about my poop/defecation/elimination routine. If you had diarrhea, you talked about it but it was not an in-depth conversation regarding the size, shape, and color of it.
In the mid-90s, when I first went to an acupuncture clinic, there was deep talk about some deep shit (ha!). Until that point I’d not really shared anything about my daily multiple bowel movements. I assumed I had IBS which every other woman I knew seemed to have. But the acupuncture practitioner spent time listening to what my diet consisted of – both food and beverages. She seized on my large glass of fresh organic orange juice each morning.
Even though I started eating a vegetarian diet in college, I still had some GI issues. Once I gave up the daily juice (huge blast of sugar in my system) and the inexpensive veggie restaurant meals, my GI system got some welcome relief. I became the TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) poster child for the perfect one poop a day.
Another eye opener for me happened just a few years ago at a Stanford University Neuromuscular Patient Conference. A young charismatic gastroenterologist introduced the Bristol Stool Chart to us. She reviewed how to use it and gave it her MD blessing. Finally, there was a language to use to talk about poop and not feel juvenile.
Health Storylines Stool Diary Tool
The Health Storylinesapp has a Stool Diary feature that uses the Bristol Stool Chart to help you maintain a record of your elimination (or poop!). Now, why would you want to do this?
Lots of reasons. The first that comes to mind is to use it along with the Food Diary so you have a better understanding of what you eat and how your system responds. Garbage in, garbage out.
The second reason is cautionary. Just today I was reading an article, “How to Lower Your Risk of Cancer” in the April 2019 issue of Nutrition Action Healthletter. Warning signs for colon and rectum cancer include diarrhea or constipation and bright red or very dark blood in your stool. Warning signs for esophagus cancer include black stools.
If you listened to an early podcast episode about a friend who battled colon cancer, you’ll recall she ignored some early signs of blood in her stool. Your body often sends you messages that you should be mindful of. Keeping track of what you eat and how your system responds is a good way to keep that conversation going.
So, what is fatigue? It’s not a fancy word. Most of us probably think it’s synonymous with being tired. But, is it?
Wikipedia’s entry for fatigue includes:
Fatigue is a subjective feeling of tiredness that has a gradual onset. Unlike weakness, fatigue can be alleviated by periods of rest. Fatigue can have physical or mental causes. Physical fatigue is the transient inability of a muscle to maintain optimal physical performance, and is made more severe by intense physical exercise. Mental fatigue is a transient decrease in maximal cognitive performance resulting from prolonged periods of cognitive activity. It can manifest as somnolence, lethargy, or directedattention fatigue.
There were frequent times when I felt like I had a good night’s sleep but I would experience sudden fatigue during the day. It didn’t make sense until I started paying attention to when the fatigue would appear. It took awhile before I fully understood a pattern and started to have more control over the bouts of fatigue.
Aside from doing my best nightly sleep hygiene, I changed my diet to smaller, more frequent meals. My body can’t handle larger meals nor certain types of food. Once I made these dietary changes, my bouts of fatigue became less frequent.
If you’re using the Health Storylines app, you might want to explore the Fatigue Manager tool to help you track and identify the cause of your fatigue.
Hopefully you have already downloaded the Health Storylinesapp and are using it to record and monitor your self-care goals. If you’re new to our monthly Self-Care Challenge, check out this earlier post.
My recent podcast episode, Yoga & Walking: Ease Pain, Reduce Stress, focuses on Katrina, a yoga instructor’s health journey. Katrina discovered the healing benefits of yoga after experiencing prolonged back pain after an injury.
In the last few years Katrina became involved with Girl Trek, a national movement with the sole mission to get African-American women and girls walking. Walking together with friends or walking with a large group of women and making new friends.
Group of GirlTrekkers on a coastal hike
What do we know about the power of Walking?
According to the Mayo Clinic, the practice of walking has both physical and emotional health benefits such as:
Preventing or managing various conditions, including heart disease, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes
Strengthening bones and muscles
Improving mood
Improving balance and coordination
Maintaining a healthy weight
When I began this monthly Self-Care Challenge, back in July of 2018, I bought a FitBit watch. This has been a very satisfying health investment. Unlike other electronics or gym accessory purchases, I still use the FitBit every day. How many stationery bikes or stair masters have you seen sitting on a neighbor’s front lawn at a garage sale or inside serving as a temporary wardrobe rack?
My FitBit has made me more aware of my daily movement — everything from intentional walks to doing house chores. They all add up as steps. Each hour my FitBit reminds me to get up off my butt and move. I glance at my steps throughout the day and half the time, an hour or so before bedtime, if I’ve hit 10,000 daily steps I am rewarded with a little noise and digital fireworks on the FitBit display.
My groovy FitBit watch
And Yes, that does motivate me.
You know what else motivates me? Seeing my progress in Health Storylines. It’s as easy as 1-2-3 to synch the FitBit.
Health Storylines Menu
First you want to select Sync a Device. Follow the steps to synch your FitBit or other supported devices (Nokia, iHealth, MapMyFitness, Runkeeper, Strava, Movable, Misfit, FatSecret, or VitaDock).
At any time you can visit My Storylines to see your daily progress with walking and other Self-Care activities you’ve chosen to monitor.
Only two days of hitting 10,000+ steps. I better get moving!
One yoga teacher’s health journey. Katrina LaShea was able to ease her back injury and subsequent ankle injury pain through a yoga practice. What once worked as a treatment, later became her passion. Today Katrina teaches yoga to African-American women and girls at GirlTrek retreats as well as at her Oakland yoga studio.
Beginning this February, the GirlTrek founders will be visiting 50 cities across the country bringing the message of radical self-care and healing at teach-ins and wellness festivals. The Road to Selma culminates this summer in Selma, Alabama.
Need help with sleep? David — resident DIY expert — explains how to decarb, squish, and infuse cannabis. Unfamiliar with these terms? No worries. These terms, and more, are explained for the novice. Podcast episode, and complementary YouTube video, demonstrate the processes involved with creating cannabis tinctures and infusions for making edibles.
An earlier podcast episode features six people sharing how cannabis helps with their physical and/or emotional challenges including cancer, depression, muscular dystrophy, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, bone fracture, and bipolar disorder.
Once you’re familiar with the process known as decarbing, you may want to check out this podcast episode featuring a fine dining chef who prepares meals infused with cannabis.
Happy New Year! I think it’s safe to greet someone with this salutation for the duration of January. Somewhere, sometime, someone said…”you’ve got the entire month of January to focus on the new year…”
…and make those ubiquitous new year resolutions.
How’s that process going for you? Have you made any new year resolutions? Have you resolved not to make resolutions? If you’d like to know my advice — and I hope you do — focus on small, baby steps for new year resolutions. I explain this in a blog post for Brain & Life magazine.
A great starting point is assessing your current Self-Care routines. Have they been working for you? Have you maintained your exercise goals? Have you been eating the healthy, well-balanced diet you envisioned? Are you still feeling harried like a bundle of nerves?
If you’re not currently using the Health Storylines Tool to assist your Self-Care, then this month is a great time to start. Just download the free app. I use it on both my desktop computer and smart phone. And I have my FitBit uploading daily data as well.
Once you have the app installed, check out the Tools Library.
Browse through all of the Tools; consider how best to use them to assist with your Self-Care plans.
You’ll notice there are many Tools available for specific conditions such as asthma, cancer, diabetes, epilepsy, COPD, rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis, and hepatitis C.
Whether or not your condition is listed, I suggest adding the Health Routine Builder Tool. Here you create your baby steps leading a path of success toward reaching your larger Self-Care goals.
Join us on the monthly Self-Care Challenge. To review past blog posts, check out this page. For additional coaching with achieving your Self-Care baby steps and goals, become a part of the Glass Half FullFacebook group.
