Cycling and Health

[stevetailor125]

I was just wondering if other people with long term health issues or old injuries have to adjust the way the cycle because of it?
I have gone back to cycling after a very long break and having various health problems have adapted my cycle and the way I ride to cope with it. I have 3 main problems, the first is after being hit by a cycle as a kid I have difficulty breathing through my nose, so run out of breath easily, what I tend to do on hills is get as far as I can, taking deep breaths through my mouth, then stop, wait till my breathing slows then carry on, there is one other major downpoint with breathing through your mouth is I know the taste of every flying insect.
My second problem is I have an enlarged prostate which meant trying several different saddles until I found one that didn't push in the wrong places.
The other problem is because of the bad cycling accident I had I was told I would never be able to ride more than about 5 miles due to injured knees, the cure for that was me being stubborn, I'm now riding about 50 to 70 miles a week, knees were in agony at the start and strapped up, now there is no pain( never let anyone tell you you can't do something).
Just got me thinking how other peoples health issues affect them

 

[asterix]

Agree totally.

Cycling is a very useful way of relieving physical aches and pains for me. It's true I might get back from a ride feeling spent but it's exercise that only imposes fairly light loads on joints and muscles.

Much of my other time is occupied lifting heavy loads and pushing laden wheelbarrows up hills as I do building work. It's all slow and heavy muscle use so in contrast it's a real pleasure to get the blood flowing round out on a bike.

After my back injury, late 2008, 3 broken vertebrae caused by a RTA, I was told the scar tissue would cause 'discomfort' and indeed my enjoyment of cycling was diminished especially when tiredness increased the aching. However, I stuck to it and 18 months after did the Raid Pyrenean successfully and now the discomfort from my back is just a memory.

 

[Durian]

I too broke my back some years ago and continue to suffer with a certain degree of pain. If I sit around the house I tend to get as much pain as I do when I exercise on the bike, may as well get my pain from riding the bike in that case.

 

[BentMikey]

As a type I diabetic on insulin, I'd say cycling most definitely affects me. I've learnt how to cope over the years though, and I went onto an insulin pump earlier this year which definitely improved things a huge amount. Mostly it's about calculating my insulin requirements and making sure I eat enough carbohydrates at the right time.

 

[Melonfish]

i've got an existing back injury from a few years ago, torn muscles in my lower back, a recent car crash has aggravated it too, i can't ride to flat, i need to get that arched back position down or i'm in agony after a few miles as my back is quite week.
other then that i find cycling to be the perfect cure for a cold. as soon as i feel one coming on a blast on the bike seems to eat it up, don't know why but its most effective.
pete

 

[Fiona N]

Another spinal injury - from a racing accident - nearly 30 years ago. For various reasons it wasn't treated properly in the immediate aftermath so that later I was warned that with advancing age I would probably have more problems - which has come to pass.

Although I've never stopped cycling, about 5 or 6 years ago I had to give up riding uprights and move onto recumbents - I'd bought a recumbent trike about 5 years before as even then I could no longer cycle reasonable distances day after day, as required for touring.

While I love the trike and enjoyed the recumbent bike, I didn't really ever convert fully to the dark side and so have spent the last 5 years working with a physio and a pilates instructor to develop the particular muscles required to stabilise my rather wobbly spine.

This was successful enough that I bought a new road bike last year and this year have been qualifying for Paris-Brest-Paris - my 600km qualifyer is the weekend after next. Getting a really good bike fit was part of the solution too - I can recommend Paul Hewitt at Leyland for anyone who needs to revisit their position on the bike.

 

[ColinJ]

I trashed my left foot when I ran into a pothole one dark winter evening many years ago. Ever since, it has been prone to cramping up. Cycling aggravates it if I do long rides in big gears. Climbing steep hills, especially so.

It so happens that I climb quite a few steep hills, so I have equipped my workhorse bike (a steel Basso) with a triple chainset and a big cassette. My steep hill gear is a 30/28.

My favourite bike (an aluminium Cannondale) only has a 39/29 bottom gear and my foot complains if I do too much climbing on that.

Over the past 3 or 4 years, I have developed a varicose vein on my inner upper right thigh. It gets pretty painful when I climb steep hills on the Cannondale and I even sometimes have problems on the Basso.

At some stage in the future, I'll probably have to have the vein operated on but I'm a nervous patient and there is always the risk of hospital-acquired infections so I'd rather put that off as long as possible. If it gets to the point that it seriously impacts on my cycling and walking, it'll have to go!

 

[rjwilki3]

well im quite a severe asthmatic, having spent a few days in hospital for it just before christmas, so it can sometimes affect my rides especially when the pollen is out

Having said that cycling is doing the asthma the world of good, im upping my miles and pace week on week, today should be my first 50 plus mile day after a quick 12 mile loop later on this evening. When I first got back on the bike 2 months ago I thought it would take a lot longer than this for my health to start improving so happy all round really

 

[Matthames]

I have wrecked my knee whilst parking a motorbike into a back of a car (Long Story). I had to get an MRI done on it to see what the damage was and the orthopaedic surgeon said that it was in a very bad way. He offered me surgery, however this would have meant I would have been out of action for 6 months, so I declined the surgery. This has meant though that I have a knee that is unstable, but having the saddle adjusted properly I have managed to avoid any major issues with my knee.

 

[funnymummy]

I'm a walking list of injuries!!
Broke my collar bone bone, left arm, pelvis, compressed the vertbrea in my cocyx, broke my left leg in 3 places & 7 bones in foot at the age of 15 after I fell off my horse jumping a ditch - the horse then slid back down on top of me! Was told at the time i'd be lucky to walk again, now have a curveture of thr spin which means I cannot lay flat.
I have broke my nose more times than I have fingers to count on, through various activities incl. hockey, karate, & 4 times in my former profession! So I now have trouble breathing through it.
I perforated my ear drum diving on holiday, got an infection, which left scar tissue, I now suffer from balance problems.
8 yaers ago I had emergency C. section, I was serioulsy unwell for a very long time after, but Drs couldn't find out why. Almost 3 years later I had a scan & they discovred a swab had been left behind during my CS, I have had 4 operations to remove the scar tissue caused by it - all of which have gome through the same spot as my CS so my stomach muscle are now pretty much defunct!
Have broken all of my toes & fingers(numerous times).. On cold wet days I have to prise my fingers off the handlebars now
I reckon if I was a horse they'd have shot me by now!!

 

[gbb]

Two things for me...a prostate gland that flares up once in a while after an accident that ruptured it years ago (or the pipework within it). I always thought it'd limit me given the hardish saddles most of us have, but it's never restricted my riding.
Poor lower back strength, almost constant backache, especially if its wet or cold. There's been a couple of times when ive struggled to get off the bike, but again, it hasnt stopped me getting on it

 

[funnymummy]

That is some list, makes me feel like a right whinge. Curious though what type of profession could you be in to get your nose broke four times, cage fighter, policewoman, nurse in a mental home, very bad hairdresser ?

I was a licensee, breaking up brawling drunks was in my job description....
FTR - I have done cage figthing.. never broke me nose doing that, mind you I never lost a fight either

 

[NormanD]

I'm an asthmatic too, so I'm prone to breathlessness on very hot days (add pollen count to that) so I've learnt to regulate my breathing while cycling and not push myself too hard (like that's going to happen lol) but cycling does help a great deal.

FM are you sure you wern't a crash test dummy but have total memory loss lol

 

[funnymummy]

FM are you sure you wern't a crash test dummy but have total memory loss lol

I do have the jersey!

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

I think the main reason I got back into cycling as a source of exercise and pleasure was to have an affect on my health. I discovered a while ago that the plumbing into one of my kidneys was seriously defective and, because my kidney kept on telling my heart to send more blood, my heart obeyed but the blood went somewhere else so my kidney sent out another ''send more blood'' message but the blood... This manifested itself as seriously dangerous hypertension. Untreated, my BP stays up at the mid-200s (systolic), which means I could easily cop a serious stroke or a heart thingummy at any time. So they gave me tablets to reduce the BP which would work for a bit and then my kidney would start to order more blood again, my BP would rise, and the dosage got increased again and again.

So I went from someone who could have died at any moment into someone who was surviving but feeling like death from the meds that were keeping me alive. Cycling was my ''kill or cure''' solution. It stopped me feeling like death all the time and gave me a reason for feeling exhausted instead of always feeling exhausted all the time. It also gave me a chance to (slightly) reduce my medication dependency with increased exercise.

Besides, being in the hands of the doctors was a bit like passively waiting in a bus queue; far far better to make your own way to a destination by getting on a bike.

56, one working kidney, 8 tablets a day - I'll never be really fit again but at least I know that the muscular ache I feel in my thighs right now is not down to sickness but from averaging 20 miles a day over the last month.

The more I cycle, the more I feel alive. And the more alive I feel, the more I cycle. If I drop down dead from feeling alive, then so be it. Better than slipping away while feeling like death.