PEM question

I read in a thread that some people find 30 second burst of high energy exercise helpful.

I hadn't heard of that idea before and decided, why not give it a try to see if I am one of those people.

I'm not.

Anyway, didn't give me too bad of PEM. Most of it reared yesterday, today it's mild with some muscle tiredness.

What I found surprising was, I did 30 seconds on cardio on the stairs.... But it's my arms that had pain beyond initial recovery not my legs. Why would that be?

 

What were you doing with your arms when you were going up/down the stairs? I find my arms hurt and tire easier than my legs. If I did stairs I would hurt them by either raising them to hold the bannister (I’m very short) or doing the Arm action we unconsciously do when going up stairs - elbows bent, moving back and forth.

 

I don't know. I assume doing a normal amount of swinging one arm and I lightly hold the bannister with the other aa I have slipped o carpeted stairs several times.

 

That would hurt my arms.

 

I wouldn't advise it. 30 sec is plenty of duration to trigger PEM depending on what you do. Squatting down a couple of times used to give me PEM and that takes less than 10 sec.

I usually get nasty ache and weakness on my triceps whenever I get PEM regardless what I did to trigger it. I figure it's no different than, say, headache or brain fog: I do squats, not head-butting, but end up with brain fog.

 

Balance - when running normally without being either ill or on stairs the arms are important in creating momentum and balance of upper body and are sort of part of the proprierception (sensing if you’ll fall etc).

if you were on the stairs there’s a lot more danger so it would take an unusual person for your body to be laissez fairs that it didn’t need to be ready in case your foot slip and you needed to get hands down rather than trying to eg for a long jog relaxing into a position swing through easily by your sides. Add to that if your swing (and any fall space) was restricted by bannisters/wall as many stairs are only so wide.

I find if I don’t have a pillow holding my arms when I sit I get days of aches feeling like my arms are dragging out of the shoulders. So having to hold them temporarily’on guard’ in your shoulders might well be enough. My arm fatiguability issues all started after I went to the gym and for six months + (I kept going but how often I could got less and less then I got worse enough and unfitted from it and had to stop) and with my arms I was doing just ten curls with light weights. This seemed like it worked at the time looks-wise (I was no more strong but clearly it was ‘ripping’ just at that level). Yet longer and probably medium term if people weren’t so distracted by my looks it made my arms so disabled I can’t hold them myself and the shake with fatuguability wheb I point at my phone or lift to a certain height etc

it’s why I’m wary when people think well you can’t get aerobic fitter but can strengthen muscles. I did too. And sorry to say found the same effect just more time lag. It mightnt be the same for everyone but that’s one of my most horrid symptoms because my arms are never comfy. And it’s a hard ‘pain’ to describe.

I used to do things like hill training as part of running training, alas well as hills on x country runs and you have to tilt your body to run into it to get any power up something as well as be even more on your toes so there is a certain amount different in posture and thrust and how you might hold your body if on an incline

 

That makes sense. I often have a sore portion of my arm. Not exactly my shoulders but the maybe 4-5 inches coming down from it. It's definitely muscle as, at the end of the day, pressing there also has a lightly bruised feeling on top of aching.

 

Is PEM only a ME/CFS symptom? I mostly read that it is but occasionally read it isn't.

I haven't had my cfs assessment yet (waiting list), but it's the main reason I believe I have cfs. I feel 100% confident I have PEM. I also have other symptoms but some are harder to separate or overlap with other issues I have.

I have had fatigue in the past, and have fatigue constantly now, but PEM seems a whole other thing I didn't have prior to July 2023. Before that I haf bouts of perimenopause fatigue which was definitely not the same.

 

As far as we know, yes. It follows a specific pattern that doesn’t seem to be commonly present in any other illness.

Though, of course, there are illnesses with similarities in “exertion intolerance”, though none of them have the characteristic long term worsening (ie. lasting a day or more) and inducing disability of ME/CFS.

 

My uncle has bery severe MS, he understands PEM very well. Idk if he has the exact type of PEM as someone with ME/CFS or LC, but it’s something similar.

 

Maybe see thread:

PEM-like descriptions and accounts in non-ME illnesses

 

Agree or I think I would have encountered at least one person in my lifetime sans ME/CFS who would have described what I experience, but I haven't. I've worked in clinics with many pts with different chronic illnesses. The only case that came close was with my neighbour who had polio as a child and relapsed 40 years later. She was walking down the street and her legs gave out on her.