Following the guidelines and tracking the progress

[Evren]

I'm 35 years old. I have a mild PE, which interesting I wasn't aware of until the day I went to a cardiologist for a routine check-up. I've been into endurance sports of long distance running and cycling for some time and I just wanted to be sure that everything is okay so that I won't encounter any health problems during my activities. The doctor let me know of the PE I have, but also added that I don't need to mind as it's not severe. Nevertheless I did quite some research about what it is and how it can be fixed. After reading several articles and ultimately Björn's all blog posts, I ended up here to share my progress of fix and recovery of my PE.

I have to admit that, when reading Björn's blog posts, I've seen many mistakes I've been doing for years.

My posture was always a bit of kyphotic and from time to time my family members were warning me that I should stand up more straight.

I had always hated the shoes with high heels, never being able to walk in comfort with them. I even had a minor injury of heel spur and plantar fasciitis when I was running with a wrong choice of running shoes with a bit of high heels. After switching to bare-foot like running shoes my complaints had disappeared.

I'm sitting for a very long time every day as a part of my job. I frequently realize that I don't sit in a correct upright position and try to fix it as I notice.

I'm not peaceful in sleep, rotating one side to other all night long, mostly complaining that the bed being too soft. I also never got along well with high pillows.

After having this many issues in common, I started to believe for the first time that a non-surgical treatment to PE might exist.

I'll be starting with the Short Quick Start Guide of Björn. My priorities will be wearing bare-foot daily shoes additional to running; stopping the use of the slippers at home of which heel height I always complained; sleeping on a stiff flat surface without a pillow; sitting perfectly upright when working and standing up straight when walking; and do the exercises which Björn suggests, especially the kyphosis fixer, regularly on a daily basis.

My PE is symmetrical and currently 18 mm deep. I hope to achieve some progress and share it here.

[Evren]

It's been two weeks since I started to follow Björn's guidelines and tracking my PE depth alteration.

I mostly focused on posture, both standing up and sitting down; and sleeping without a pillow.

I've done kyphosis fixer exercise several times too, but I couldn't be sure if it has a good effect or not. A few times just after the exercise, I measured my PE depth as 20-22 mm, meaning a few mm more than usual, which was 18 mm when I started the follow up. However I also suspected if that could be caused by the chest wall to pop up, if it does. Naturally I only can measure the depth of the PE as compared to chest wall. A higher reading can both point to a sunken sternum, or popped out chest wall. Under this circumstances, I couldn't be sure of the effects of kyphosis exercise and decided to take it easy, not putting too much pressure on flared ribs.

I haven't used any brace until now, mostly thinking that the back muscles better be developed rather than using a brace, but later on I decided to try an abdominal brace, meanwhile using it instead of kyphosis exercise for flared ribs. Applying a gentle but constant pressure for the whole day might give better results in total, rather than putting too much pressure for a limited exercise time. Of course I'm not sure from any of it, but I'll see through a trial-and-error process.

Yesterday I've come across to an article which enlightened me in a similar way Björn's blog did. It states that the abdominal breathing or belly breathing, which is mostly said to be more efficient and relaxed for a breathing method, can effect the posture in a bad way. I had never paid attention how I breath, but as I did, I've seen that I automatically breath the way it's said to be belly or abdominal. Actually this method is promoted as a better way of breathing, also called as diaphragmatic breating, mostly populated by yoga instructors, but this article I've read was claiming that it's not the best method for the posture, and it made sense to me. After researching more about it, I've learned that not every belly/abdominal breathing is diaphragmatic. It's commonly said so, but actually there are two different types of diaphragmatic breathing, which are abdominal diaphragmatic breathing and thoracic diaphragmatic breathing. In this case, if it's done properly, you can effectively breath both focusing on abdominal or chest are. And similarly if it's not done properly, it isn't diaphragmatic, even if you think you breathe focusing on your abdominals. Anyway, the thing I want to draw attention to is, thoracic breathing promises a better posture and an expanded rib cage, popping the sternum out in time, when done properly. It's also hinted that restraining abdominal breathing can prevent excessive flare of the lower ribs.

I want to share the whole article in case you want to have a look at that.

http://www.stevecuddy.com/2012/04/25/cycling-faulty-breathing-mechanics/

I'll follow these guidelines in the following weeks in addition to Björn's and see how it goes all together.

By the way, through the past 2 weeks I was tracking my PE depth, I've seen fluctuating readings between 13 mm and 22 mm, mostly close to 16-18 mm. Don't get me wrong, the measurements were perfectly accurate and precise, but the depth interestingly varias day to day, even hour to hour in a day. Let me keep up my recovery attempts and share the future results in the following weeks and months again here, by better seeing and understanding the trend of improvement in time.

[Björn Åkerström]

After reading your post I have one advice to give: I have found that it is important when doing the kyphosis exercises to not lift oneself up to high and therefore put to high pressure on the flared ribs and bend the upper back to much. And I also recommend to not do this excersise to much. Sternum lifter is (especially the first one) is my favorite and i recommend to do this excercise right after kyphosis fixer. But as I said; take it easy with it. My pe is sometimes deeper and sometimes less deep. I belive that it depends on a lot of factors. Especially if I am very active (up on my feet with zero drop) during a day, I can really see a difference compared to sit down in front of a computer all day.

/Björn Å.

[Evren]

Thanks Björn. I'll keep these in mind. Unfortunately I sit for very long times everyday because of my job. My posture problem and sometimes backpain is certainly related to this as well. We'll see how it goes after taking better care of all the things discussed here. Today I've started to use the abdominal corset brace as well. I hope it helps to shape the posture, rib flare and the sternum the way we expect.

28 Nisan 2015 Salı 17:39:19 UTC+3 tarihinde Björn Åkerström yazdı: