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Why Am I Losing Strength?


dani nero

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dani nero Community Regular

Yesterday was the first day of 2012 which I cycled as the snow has melted away :-) It went great, the whether was nice and I really enjoyed it because paddling was not a challenge. I know however that if I keep on cycling.. let's say one-hour rides once every two days, I will be getting weaker and weaker until I'm not able to push on the paddles anymore (by the middle of week 2), and cycling even on straight roads will become a struggle, as if the bicycle is refusing to move forward. I would then stop cycling all together for more than a week or two. After that I notice that my bicycle can be pushed forward with ease again.

From what I know, the more one exercises the stronger they get. So obviously I'm either lacking supplements or not stretching enough. Anyone else have this problem, and how did you solve it?

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rosetapper23 Explorer

Have you had this checked out by a doctor? Yes, your muscles SHOULD get stronger. Muscles that become weak from exercise can indicate a number of illnesses that are NOT related to celiac. Many people with celiac develop other auto-immune diseases....so if you haven't had this particular problem evaluated, I would highly recommend that you do so. This could be a serious matter.

Alternatively, you may have either pernicious anemia or iron anemia, which would exhaust your muscles because they're not getting enough oxygen. Have you been tested for low Vitamin B-12 and iron? If not, this would be a good place to start.

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Skylark Collaborator

Being hypothyroid does that to me. I don't recover from exercise properly.

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dani nero Community Regular

Thanks both of you for the input. I haven't been checked yet, still waiting for appointment, but I did have thyroid checked two years ago I think, and it was fine. I would say it might be b12 / iron since I'm getting these sores at the corners of mouth.

I got myself some all-round supplements a few days ago. It was all the pharmacist could provide until I see the doc.

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rosetapper23 Explorer

It's quite possible that you're unable to absorb supplements right now, so you may find that the supplement the pharmacist gave you won't help at all. For some of us, we need to get our iron intravenously and either B-12 injections or sublingual tablets. The sublingual tablets are really inexpensive, so you might just try picking some up. If it's a B-12 problem, you'll see almost immediate improvement.

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dani nero Community Regular

It's quite possible that you're unable to absorb supplements right now, so you may find that the supplement the pharmacist gave you won't help at all. For some of us, we need to get our iron intravenously and either B-12 injections or sublingual tablets. The sublingual tablets are really inexpensive, so you might just try picking some up. If it's a B-12 problem, you'll see almost immediate improvement.

Thanks for your advice Rosetapper xoxo :-)

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rosetapper23 Explorer

You're welcome! But, please, see a doctor if you can--the muscle weakness you describe is very worrisome.

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Skylark Collaborator

Hey, you're not on a cholesterol-lowering drug are you?

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dani nero Community Regular

I will see a doctor. It can take a while as the health-care here is as fast as a turtle unless someone is dying.

Nope, I don't take any drugs. The only thing I used to take was birth-control for the amenorrhea which I stopped two months ago.

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rosetapper23 Explorer

I'm sorry to hear that it takes so long to see a doctor. When you attempt to get an appointment, please stress that you're experiencing muscle weakness upon exertion that worsens the more you exercise. Hopefully, they'll wake up and schedule an appointment soon.

Good luck! And please let us know what happens, okay?

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dani nero Community Regular

I'm sorry to hear that it takes so long to see a doctor. When you attempt to get an appointment, please stress that you're experiencing muscle weakness upon exertion that worsens the more you exercise. Hopefully, they'll wake up and schedule an appointment soon.

Good luck! And please let us know what happens, okay?

Thanks for the support, and will let you know :-) Xoxoxoxo

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dani nero Community Regular

A new question popped i my head, for anyone with experience in this.. whether it's my thyroid or lack of iron/b12.. should I be taking easy when I'm experiencing muscle fatigue or can I go on doing as I please on my bicycle :-D

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rosetapper23 Explorer

Listen to your body--stop!

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Skylark Collaborator

A new question popped i my head, for anyone with experience in this.. whether it's my thyroid or lack of iron/b12.. should I be taking easy when I'm experiencing muscle fatigue or can I go on doing as I please on my bicycle :-D

I don't know. I think that's a question for your doctor. :unsure: One thing to keep in mind is that sports injuries are much more common when people are extremely fatigued.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Mateto Enthusiast

I can understand the healthcare being slow. It's a pain in the rear.

However, if you do eventually get tested for coeliacs, don't forget to start eating gluten again before you do, so that it will show up in your tests that indeed your body cannot handle the gluten. I hope though that the reason you're losing strength isn't bad and can be easily fixed :)

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  • 3 weeks later...
babysteps Contributor

I would say it might be b12 / iron since I'm getting these sores at the corners of mouth.

Sores at the corners of my mouth went away when I stopped using toothpaste and mouthwash. I checked with my dental hygienist and she said it was really the brushing, not the polish, that cleans teeth. 2 years, 2 more hygienists and 2 dentists (we moved) have all confirmed that my teeth are fine (I floss 1x/day and brush 2x/day).

Not that it couldn't also be b12/iron issues, just that this helped me a lot! Full disclosure: I am consistently, barely below normal levels for my iron (have been since childhood).

Good luck!

On exercise, check out the greenling post with lots of responses on this sports/fitness forum about starting workouts again - consensus is that we recovering celiacs may need more rest days than we used to for our muscles/bodies to recover. So think about bicycling but perhaps not as many days a week as you would have 'once upon a time' - see how that goes.

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dani nero Community Regular

Sores at the corners of my mouth went away when I stopped using toothpaste and mouthwash. I checked with my dental hygienist and she said it was really the brushing, not the polish, that cleans teeth. 2 years, 2 more hygienists and 2 dentists (we moved) have all confirmed that my teeth are fine (I floss 1x/day and brush 2x/day).

Not that it couldn't also be b12/iron issues, just that this helped me a lot! Full disclosure: I am consistently, barely below normal levels for my iron (have been since childhood).

Good luck!

On exercise, check out the greenling post with lots of responses on this sports/fitness forum about starting workouts again - consensus is that we recovering celiacs may need more rest days than we used to for our muscles/bodies to recover. So think about bicycling but perhaps not as many days a week as you would have 'once upon a time' - see how that goes.

Hi Babysteps :-) Thanks for the recommendations!

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dilettantesteph Collaborator

Have you been glutened recently? My husband found that after diagnosis and a gluten free diet he became much stronger despite thinking that he had no symptoms before diagnosis. I also became much stronger, but I had so many symptoms that it could easily have just been from being sick. He was on a business trip recently and suspects that he got a fair amount of accidental gluten consumption. Then he noticed that he was weaker. This has lasted a few weeks for him.

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JoeBlow Newbie

I can understand the healthcare being slow. It's a pain in the rear.

However, if you do eventually get tested for coeliacs, don't forget to start eating gluten again before you do, so that it will show up in your tests that indeed your body cannot handle the gluten. I hope though that the reason you're losing strength isn't bad and can be easily fixed :)

Sorry about the misfire, folks. I'm a little ADD and my computer and connection are too slow.

I must disagree with both of these statements.

I caution anyone with possible celiac disease who has been gluten free for 2 months, especially those who have been gluten-free for 6 months, against gluten challenges. Your immune system will likely be hair trigger, greatly more able to respond more powerfully, and very angry. You can easily get a new autoimmune disease very quickly, and you may not be able to recover from it. This means you could permanently lose the functioning of an organ, or take many years to recover only partially. This means that the most likely organs to be the next target of your immune system are your brain or your endocrine system. I'm speaking from my own experience, as well as from listening to a gluten intolerant doctor who has written for celiac.com, who has more than 20 years of clinical experience specializing in gluten intolerance, and my own primary care MD, who has the same length of experience specializing in gluten intolerance, and who has it herself, as well as 4 years of thousands of email correspondences with thousands of other celiacs on another forum.

I also disagree that losing strength can be easily fixed. I have always loved bicycling, and fantasized about bicycle racing in the olympics as a 5 year old. I never competed, but became an aggressive amateur. I was diagnosed with celiac 4.5 years ago. As I stated on the second thread on this forum, if I push it or cycle more than 1 hour and 15 minutes, I can be wiped out and unable to do much for 1 to 3 days. I had a Great Plains Labs organic acids urine test, and one of their recommendations was alpha ketoglutarate. I take L-Arginine Alpha KetoGlutarate an hour before bicycling, then a large shake before riding, and I can get away with pushing it a little for an hour and 10 minutes, but still cannot handle bicycling for 2 days in a row. Apparently I have an impaired krebbs cycle (getting energy into cells). In 2010, I was up to riding 5 days a week again. However, last year I did not do so well, and ended by only cycling 1 or 2 days a week. Live blood cell analysis this year revealed a huge red blood cell oxidation problem, in addition to the hemolytic anemia which I have been aware of for 14 years, which is continuing to abate. My doctor spent 4 hours writing an email to me regarding mitochondrial energy problem help, in which she recommended 11 new supplements, some of which I have not gotten yet, due to verifying gluten-free status. I don't consider this easy.

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JoeBlow Newbie

Dani,

I should mention also that I have exhausted adrenals and need to take thyroid, despite normal thyroid labs, or I can easily "crash".

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Ninja Contributor

Hi Dani –

I am a gymnast and can totally relate to the constant "should I keep going, or stop" type questions. I recently started talking methyl b12 lozenges (after my serum b12 came back low) and have noticed a HUGE difference in my muscle strength. I mean, like night and day difference! I don't have much advice as far as recovery goes because I still haven't figured it out myself, but I do suggest that you follow your body and stop... especially since you're still recovering from celiac/gluten intolerance! Or....

It seems like it would make sense to shorten the amount of time you cycle each day... or even if you do decide to go for an hour one day, you could try going for 10 min the next... just to get out, you know? That works for me sometimes. :)

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    • cristiana
      Thank you for your post, @Nedast, and welcome to the forum. There have been many posts on this subject on the forum, it is interesting to read of your experiences. Although I've not had TMJ, except from time to time have had a bit of mild tension in my jaw, I have had issues with my trigeminal nerve.  I read that sometimes a damaged nerve in coeliacs can heal after adopting a gluten free diet.  I try to keep out of cold winds or wear a scarf over my face when it is cold and windy, those conditions tend to be my 'trigger' but I do think that staying clear of gluten has helped.   Thank you again for your input.
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I also had extreme TMJ pain that began within months of getting my wisdom teeth out at - you guessed it - 17 years old. I was in and out of doctors for my various symptoms for about 5 years before I gave up, but during that time I had also kept getting reffered to different kinds of doctors that had their own, different solutions to my TMJ issue, an issue which I only recently discovered was related to my other symptoms. I began with physical therapy, and the physical therapist eventually broke down at me after many months, raising her voice at me and saying that there was nothing she could do for me. After that saga, I saw a plastic surgeon at the request of my GP, who he knew personally. This palstic surgeon began using botox injections to stop my spasming jaw muscles, and he managed to get it covered by my insurace in 2011, which was harder to do back then. 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I didn't inform him because I thought it would be inappropriate due to not having a formal diagnosis. I was disappointed, because I had believed I had caught it BEFORE it had done permanent damage to my body. I had never suspected that my TMJ issues may be related to my other symptoms, and that the damage would end up complete and permanent. Luckily, I caught it about 6 months after my other joints started hurting, and they stopped hurting right after I went gluten free, and haven't hurt since. I of course did the necessary research after the results of the second scan, and found out that the TMJ is the most commonly involved joint in autoimmune disease of the intestines, and if mutliple joints are effected, it is usually the first one effected. This makes complete sense, since the TMJ is the most closely related joint to the intestines, and literally controls the opening that allows food passage into your intestines. I am here to tell you, that if anyone says there is no potential relationship between TMJ issues and celiac disease, they are absolutely wrong. Just google TMJ and Celiac disease, and read the scientific articles you find. Research on issues regarding the TMJ is relatively sparse, but you will find the association you're looking for validated.
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      Welcome to the forum, @SuzanneL! Which tTG was that? tTG-IGA? tTG-IGG? Were there other celiac antibody tests run from that blood draw? Was total IGA measured? By some chance were you already cutting back on gluten by the time the blood draw was taken or just not eating much? For the celiac antibody tests to be accurate a person needs to be eating about 10g of gluten daily which is about 4-6 pieces of bread.
    • SuzanneL
      I've recently received a weak positive tTG, 6. For about six years, I've been sick almost everyday. I was told it was just my IBS. I have constant nausea. Sometimes after I eat, I have sharp, upper pain in my abdomen. I sometimes feel or vomit (bile) after eating. The doctor wanted me to try a stronger anti acid before doing an endoscopy. I'm just curious if these symptoms are pointing towards Celiac Disease? 
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