Extra May Update

All of you my dear readers, are getting an extra update in May because I was too excited to wait until June to tell you. Here goes : As most of you know now, I have been training hard in the gym six days a week with my dad for between 1-2 hours at a time. I do a mixture of cardio and strength training trying to improve my balance and general health.

I have been reading an excellent book given to me by my uncle Richard (my mom's younger brother) it is entitled The Brain's Way of Healing by Dr. Norman Doidge. It is all about brain plasticity and the ability for your brain to repair itself, slowly but surely and with effort from you.

The brain can restore neural connections after a stroke, tbi (traumatic brain injury) or other illness. I was told by my doctors in Spain that I had brain damage and it would never get any better. For six years I just accepted that fact. I just agreed with what I was told and because I didn't notice any big progress, I believed them. However, I now know that they were wrong. I don't hold any ill will against them, they were only telling me what they had been taught in medical school. 

However, since coming back home to Texas in January and working out six days a week with my dad plus walking with my walker, five days a week with my mom (for an hour a day). I have proven that you can retrain and reactivate a damaged brain. 

You see, I was using the elliptical machine as a barometer for my progress. I started out going barely a half of a mile in 33 minutes (. 85km) and it took me 7:15 to do one lap. However, I was eventually able to get my lap time down to 2:06 and do 3 miles (4.7km) in total distance.

When I began reading my new book on brain plasticity, I read about a mental technique that is used for chronic pain patients. They look at brain scans of healthy, pain free people and then they mentally visualize themselves as pain free. In this way, they slowly retrain their brains to turn down or off their pain receptors. The vast majority of them were able to decrease or completely eliminate taking their pain medications.

It sounds like hippie mumbo jumbo right? Well I decided to give it a try even though I don't have any chronic pain. While on the elliptical machine, I would have only brief windows of time where my mind and body would synchronize together perfectly without my arms or legs involuntarily locking up.

Well I decided to try mentally concentrating on "good time" where everything worked correctly between my mind and my body. Guess what? It really works! Now, I go slower and do less total distance than before. However, using my new mental technique I no longer have just flashes of "good time" but extended good time.

I don't understand how any of this is working. I only know that it is working. I have to keep working out intensely for the rest of my life. Because medical science has proven that when you work out intensely and repetitively, not only can you rewire a damaged brain, but during intense workout time your brain releases chemicals which heal damaged neural pathways. 

This topic always makes me extremely emotional. I cannot even describe how happy I am to know that I don't have to passively accept my condition but 90% it is within my control to minimize my symptoms and 10% a limit of my body. That is an incredibly empowering feeling. 

I have to keep trying hard. Even though I will likely never return to how I was prior to all of this, there is a big difference between Jenny and Eliana (and all of my family and friends) having to care for me intensely or having to only lightly assist me. I need to do all this effort not only for myself but for them. 

Well that's it for now, Tyler