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Muscle Tone In The Legs


Guest dionna

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okay i know that they say that if you work on your legs and build up the muscle tone it will help you out.

when i started passing out i was working out every morning 5 days a week. i had gained 16 lbs of muscles to a previous 90 lbs build so i weighed 106 lbs... and i was fainting all the time, esp when i was working out... my boyfriend is a body builder with 28 inch thighs and he is also a marine- in fact he is a grunt so even for his job he does a lot more physical training and a lot more leg toning. he can lift A TON with his legs... he still goes to the gym everyday and he still faints atleast a few times a month. trust me he eats extremely healthy and he drinks more water than i have ever seen anyone do. he is all about staying in tip top shape. so i guess that brings up another question about upping the water so much... how much? i mean really... i drank 10 bottles of gatorade... along with 10 botttles of water... and 2 things of cranberry juice everyday... oh and by the way they still said i was dehydrated ;) . i have that stuff documented and signed because the military made me drink so much and had a scribe make sure i did. plus everything i ate.

so my question is... if all this is suppose to help you out... then why did we start fainting?... why do we faint so much? i know that it is just a part of the things to try out but i guess i also want to know if anyone has seen any personal improvement by trying to do things yourself? becaue the drugs they tried me on didn't help either.

thank you for any replies

dionna :)

p.s. i am probably just frustrated so much because i have tried everything i have heard about to help myself but i just keep getting worse. it makes me want to give up hope. and to top that off... everyone around me keeps telling me that it is something that i am doing wrong that keeps me feeling so bad. they keep putting their two cents in and i would rather just give them a quarter!!! to turn around and shut their traps!

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I too am interested to know about "muscle tone in the legs"... i hate working out the muscles, but i guess i should try it

but hey, I was kind of in a "awe state" :huh: when I read that you drink 10 bottles of gatorate a day!!!!!!

first of all, isn?t it tooooooo expansive?

are you sure you are supposed to drink so much gatorate, as it?s definitely not something natural????? don?t you have any "side effects"?

talk to ya later dionna

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i don't think that we are actually dehydrated though. before i had the diagnose of pots they said that i was dehydrated because of the tachy, my urine was clear, my skin popped right back, i was sweating just fine, no other symptom of dehydration that i knew of anyway... they based it off of the tachy. when they gave me IVs i would be on the toilet immediately... finally i had a smart doctor that told them to stop doing me like that because i wasn't really dehydrated.

at the time the gatorade company was donating the gatorade to the marine so no it wasn't expensive to me. now it would be! that would be $70 a week--- give or take for sales. side-effects... not really i don't think. i actually love gatorade i have been drinking it for years since i also played sports through out school. my complaint is that i did have toned legs. i don't now because i faint so frequently and feel so tired for days after excercise. but my boyfriend has excellent, huge, toned legs... there is no way anyone can say he doesn't have enough in his legs.

thank you for the replies

dionna :huh:

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One thought on the fluids -- after every doctor I saw told me to drink more, I was blithely drinking a gallon of water a day and thirsty all the time. Finally, one doctor told me that that much water can act as a diuretic and actually cause dehydration. I now limit myself to 2 or 3 quarts of water a day, and a couple of glasses of Gatorade.

On the toning -- I'm curious about that, too. Two years ago, my baseline bloodpressure dropped and my fatigue got significantly worse, at a time when I was in the best shape I've ever been in.

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Ernie, I'm right behind you. Dionna, I don't know your history -- when did your POTS & fainting begin? Did you and your boyfriend start fainting at around the same time? Could it be an environmental factor at work, such as a pollutant or irritant in the air, something you're both exposed to, etc.?

Amy

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calypsio, now im the one right behind ya!! :)

this is such a coincidence!! the odds must be like 1 to 10.000!!!!! i myself don?t know anybody who faints!!(and I must know at least 100 people )

but maybe they met each other at a "dysautonomia support group" or something like that... or they just felt attracted to each other because they had a lot in common( i can totally understand it, a POTSie girl would probally have a special appeal on me, for sure)

dear dionna, would you tell us a little about how you met? was it "randomly"(haha, i don?t mean that you chose anyone, but you know what I mean...)?

take care you all

noam

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Hi,

I find it strange that both you and your boyfriends are both fainters. Are there other marines who faint also? If not, What do you and your boyfriend have in common besides exercising a lot?

there are a lot of us. army too. uh... i have always thought that maybe it was something they gave us or exposure to chemicals... i worked with ammo and explosives everyday because that was my job... storing ammunition and destroying the damaged. or perhaps the heat... we are always outside in every climate. full utilities, packs, gear, etc. we carry a lot of weight and we are always moving... it is a lot of walking, running, humping (hiking), etc. or maybe something else. a lot of iraq's guys are coming back passing out or having the other symptoms.... could be something... could be nothing. i keep hearing all the time, oh yeah a guy in my platoon does that too, or yeah i heard about someone else like that, and stuff like that.

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Hi,

My memory is bad but I remember reading on the internet that there was a protocol for fainters who went to Iraq or who were in the Army or something like that. I did not pay too much attention because it was not my case but it might be yours. The researchders only wanted patients who were soldiers, etc. because they wanted to see if there was a link between their fainting and what they injected them to go to Iraq (I think!).

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calypsio, now im the one right behind ya!! :)

this is such a coincidence!! the odds must be like 1 to 10.000!!!!! i myself don?t know anybody who faints!!(and I must know at least 100 people )

but maybe they met each other at a "dysautonomia support group" or something like that... or they just felt attracted to each other because they had a lot in common( i can totally understand it, a POTSie girl would probally have a special appeal on me, for sure)

dear dionna, would you tell us a little about how you met? was it "randomly"(haha, i don?t mean that you chose anyone, but you know what I mean...)?

take care you all

noam

you are awesome! i get to tell my story again... i love talking about it....

i was sent to nnmc in aug 05. i was supposed to be discharged and retired by nov. 05. well the doctors kept on messing up my paper work and there were a bunch of delays becuase of people taking leave for the holidays. so i didn't get out. i went home on thanksgiving 96 and i was going to fly back to the hospital. i passed out at the airport and on the plane before it took off so they wouldn't let me fly. so the next day i tried to fly again... we took my 5 year old nephew with us to the airport so he could see the planes... there was a wishing well there so he immediately said that he was going to wish for me a boyfriend and he needed a penny from my papa who had driven me there. we all laughed--- i hadn't dated anyone in 2 years so he was always picking on me and trying to help me out--- still laughing i told him that he better grab a quarter because i wanted a really good one that would understand me and one who could pick me up and carry me if i passed out. well i fainted again so they wouldn't let me fly that day either. my papa and dad decided to just drive me from SC where i was, to the hospital in DC. i got back dec 6. well guess what... that was the day that my man was med evaced to the hospital! my little nephew's wish had come true in just one day! coincidence? hmmm...

i had a crush on him before i even knew that he passed out too. i was so afraid to even go near him at first cause i thought he was so good looking and he is really built. so finally one day there was only one seat open in the lounge to watch tv and it was beside him... his arm was wrapped up because he had gotten blown up in iraq and you could see where the shrapnel had gone in his eyebrow and behind his eye. asking why each other were at the hospital was an easy ice breaker for everyone there so that is what i asked him about. i told him i was there because i pass out all the time and then i found out he did too.

my friend noticed that we both liked each other but knew both of us were too afraid of each other. so it was her, her boyfriend, my man, an me at red lobster one night when she pulled me to the side and asked me about it and her boyfriend pulled him to the side and asked him about it... then after eating we went to a billiards/bar place and i got sick. yeap... i threw up on him that night, all over his new shoes and new jeans. wonderful right? soon after that he avoided me all the time--- which made me like him more oddly enough--- he was a mystery. he said he was just too intimidated by me to even be in the same room. every time i tried to talk to him he would get up and leave in the middle of what i was saying. i asked him a few times about getting something to eat, and he would go but he was still quiet--- he later said that he just thought that i was being nice and that there was no way that i could possibly actually like him. it actually got to were anytime i walked into the same room as him, he would immediately leave. just about everytime we went out i passed out or got nauseated/vomited. he passed out a few times too.

so finally my friend convinced him to take me out and tell me that he liked me... so we went out to eat and to the movies... flowers... still all nervous... but it was really really sweet.

maybe i shouldn't say this part but i love it so i will. i think it is the cutest thing. okay we had been together a little over a month before he got up the nerve to even kiss me and when he did, yeap... he tried to run away and fell flat on his face... he had passed out. it was so sweet though and neither of us will ever forget that first kiss... he thought he had ruined everything... i make sure i pick on him all the time.

i did get out of the marine corps shortly after that but as you see... we are still making it! i am so happy with him! it is really great that we both share the same illness because we understand each other and each other's symptoms. we know how to help each other and provide support. he thinks that i wouldn't have even given him a second look if we didn't have that in common but i know i still would have.

oh and not only that but we grew up the same way too just different states! have so much in common, it is ridiculous. little things even.

i started fainting aug of 04, he wasn't even in the marine corps yet. i know he went to iraq aug/sept time frame of 05 and he started passing out just before he left for iraq. yeah... think about that one... he is a marine sniper, fainting in a combat zone... real smart... he was stationed on the west coast... i was east coast. which means technically the med evac should have sent him to the west coast to the hospitlal out ther, but htey didn't... and orginally they put walter reed as his destination but at the last minute they changed it to nnmc... where i was! plus a lot of other coincidences that brought us together. the only link is we are both marines exposed to what all marines are exposed to. we both had high scores on everything to do with the marine corps. we were both meritoriously promoted, top of our classes, etc. so... what did we do wrong? oh we both starting passing out just before we got orders to iraq too... that is something else we had in common.

so we met at the hospital... so sweet... i think we have that "in sickness and in health part covered already". match made in heaven? i know so!

dionna :angry:

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Wonderful story!

So, did being around him make you throw up? I've been wondering about this. With the first guy I really fell head-over-heels for in high school, things didn't work out, because I kept throwing up when we kissed. Is that a POTS thing? It would be so cool to think I wasn't just being completely neurotic.

Spike

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Sounds to me like you need a bit less H2O and more salt tablets. Dr. Low said to take tablets or sea salt with the fluids. Also in gatorade lots of carbs unless it is "diet". What about cardiac meds?

I would cut back a bit onn fluids and exercise add more salt, get potassium checked. And see id it helps.

Good luck Miriam :rolleyes:

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