Posted 1/26/22
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. –Isaiah 55:8-9
How do you feel about running on a treadmill? (sounds of disgust, boredom…even more than normal…, and annoyance abound)
I call them “dreadmills” because it seems fitting for someone who would far rather run outside. I am, as I have mentioned here before, temperature-wise, a “just right” /Goldilocksian runner (which does highlight just how much I hate dementia since I am running 37 miles a day for 2 days in a row in the longest 2 days of the year in June). Even without the climate being nicer inside on a dreadmill, I prefer to take my chances outside when possible. However, it has been too cold lately and I need to run EARLY in the morning, so off to Planet Fitness I go.
I was prepping to run yesterday at about 5:45am at the Planet. Sidenote: for me, prepping consists more of psyching myself up to run than doing anything constructive like stretching. Once sufficiently cognitively dissonant to my running skill, I hopped on said dreadmill, hit my Garmin watch’s little tracker, and got to work. I am involved in what is called the 5k/30 January Challenge on Facebook, in which group members equally silly as me commit to run at least a 5k four days a week and do strength/cardio the other three…all month long. I am 26 days in and haven’t missed a day yet. I ran at least a 5k EVERY day in December as part of that group’s December challenge. I may need professional “help”. I am NOT an athlete. Regardless, off I went expecting it to take around 30-35 minutes to complete my 3.1+ miles as is typical for a 5-toed sloth like me. I looked up at the clock about halfway in and my watch said I had been running for 15 minutes…and that I had run .02 miles! Apparently, I hit the run button and not the Dreadmill icon and my watch was measuring how far I had physically traveled….which was, in actuality, a matter of feet over and over. It was generous when it called it .02 miles. A rounding error perhaps? That, not surprisingly, got me thinking about dementia, and, like a hamster on a wheel (measured not by GPS mind you), I got to work writing this for your consideration:
Some Things Dreadmills (and my Stupidity) Can Teach Us about Dementia
- My post from FB once I discovered my stupidity says it all: Things too are not what they seem. My running was going just peach, friends, but little did I know, my fitness watch was more thinking I was concerned more about Fitness donut in my face than real fitness as I was Runnin’ Til I’m Purple! The disease, too, is often progressing much faster than meets the eye….or much slower. Mom has had this stupid disease since the late 2000s…around 2009 was her diagnosis. Experts say that we may have the pathologies of the disease for 10-15 years or more before the symptoms even start! Mom may have already started having changes in her brain when we all panicked on 12/31/99 expecting that everything that plugs in would probably explode because of Y2K. Given this, when is the time to work on our current best hope (prevention)? NOW! What is good for the heart is good for the brain. Exercise, lose extra weight, manage blood sugar and pressure, manage stress, get some stinking sleep, protect your noggin. Learn about the things that help…and do them.
- Looking at the situation from multiple angles (my watch, the treadmill screen’s readout, and looking at my Airplane pilot Ted Striker’s sweating scene perspiration level….) helps you get a better perception. If you haven’t seen the movie Airplane, this reference may be lost on you. ) I spent a good year only talking to my mom on the phone albeit often. It is easier to hide memory problems on the phone than in person or in social situations…hence the tendency to seclude themselves. I wish I would have noticed it sooner. Terrible disease… I was only “looking” at the situation by phone for the most part and she masterfully hid the disease getting worse and worse. Think about it. If I ask you a question, perhaps a simple one, on the phone and it takes a bit to answer, for all I know you were distracted. But if I was there in person, I would have noticed that her distance traveled was .02.
Why does this matter to the (rising) price of toilet paper in Toledo? Because you need to catch the disease early to have the best chance of treatments “helping”. I am NOT talking about Aducanumab (which also requires early diagnosis, should anyone on God’s green Earth be able to afford it), I am talking about the traditional, Cholinesterase inhibitors treatments like Aricept and Galantamine and NMDA Receptor Antagonist drugs like Namenda. These drugs are not a cure nor do they extend life, but a wonderful talk from the Wake Forest Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center that I watched a few days ago shows one chart of what the former category can do:
The top line is those on this specific drug. They actually improved a little for the first year and declined more slowly later during the first 3 years. (However, as a spoiler, the top line catches up with the bottom soon after…). It would have bought her several more months of even clearer cognition…but we missed it. I still feel terrible, 4 years later. Terrible.
- Boredom kills– I hate being bored while doing something that doesn’t thrill me like running on a Dreadmill. At the least, I want something on TV worth watching other than the incessant news feeds at the fitness center. I forgot my headphones that day and couldn’t drown my brain in a podcast, so I was left with talking heads on the TV. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. But I NEED to run. I need to lose weight. I need to keep pushing down my BP and blood sugar. I need better health. It is a matter of life or death, with or without the fear of dementia looming like Tax day. So I have to fight off the boredom. You too have to fight off boredom, even if you don’t realize it. If you are a senior, alone and not socially-engaged, your odds of getting dementia increase. It, as I have mentioned many times before (but that never stops me), has the same harm to your body as smoking nearly a pack a day does. Stay busy with others. Find something to keep yourself locked in. It is good for your health and especially your brain health!
- What matters more is what happens, not what is seen– It wouldn’t have mattered if my watch said I was asleep, the benefit of the exercise still was received. While it did make my running group confused how I could burn 500 calories in a 35 minute run that traveled only about 100 feet, the stats didn’t matter. In caregiving, should someone offer help, let them help. Even if you know they are just doing it to show off to friends or social circles, take the win…and the break. If you do all of the day to day work, and they take your loved one somewhere special, let them and be happy.
- The right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing– My body/sweat level said one thing and my watch another. One of the saddest things about mom losing her ability to play the piano was watching it happen with her. Sitting together on the bench, you could see her looking at the one hand and wondering why it wasn’t doing its thing. Muscle memory forgotten. What would have been automatic now labored. Terrible.
- We are all in this together– There were probably 20 folks of all sizes, shapes, and colors on dreadmills that day and we were all in the same boat. We were giving ti all we had….and not getting very far. That is sometimes how I feel in doing what I do toward finding a cure. I am trying very hard. A ot of my spare time and money goes to this end. But when the pity party begins and I look at my watch and see .02, I realize that regardless, I am .02 closer to the goal. Keep fighting, friends, for a cure. Serve. Learn. Study. Grow. Help. Donate. Hug. Advocate. Participate. Pray. Don’t give up. I won’t, no matter what my watch says.
#EndALZ
#RunninTilImPurple
Update- Had a nice visit with mom yesterday. She rested most of the time and I had to leave before supper. It scares me (for her) there as EVERYONE is coughing. Everywhere you go, you hear someone wheezing away. 🙁 Mom was coughing and hacking, but at least it was productive. I am going to be posting fewer and fewer pictures of her because her countenance isn’t great and she seems sad. I would never want to dishonor her.