Another Gift of Depression
I have been going to the gym consistently for the last roughly two years, lifting weights and doing cardio. And for much of that time my knees and back were sore. I would take a week or a month off when the pain got too hard to deal with, but my thought was always, "I'm sore because I'm out of shape so I need to work harder." And I would push myself the next time I worked out.
About six months ago the pain in my knees was becoming so pronounced that I considered moving from my fourth floor apartment, the famous Apartment 404 of Apartment404.blogspot.com, to the ground floor since I found climbing up the three flights of stairs to be too painful to endure several times a day.
And then I got depressed. Again. Back in October, when the seasons changed and it began to get dark at 4pm. I had also gone off my antidepressant (Effexor) a few months prior to that since I was doing so well. The world began to feel very unwelcoming and unforgiving and I wanted no part of it.
So I stopped going to the gym.
And the pain and soreness magically went away.
I no longer had to endure the walk up the stairs: It was not an issue; I just did it without the pain. And I realized that there was nothing inherently wrong with my knees or back. I was doing something in the gym to make them sore. I talked to my pdoc and he told me that some of the leg exercises I was doing, the leg extension machine for example, were really tough on the knees. I also was going really low on my squats, getting my thighs past parallel to the floor in order to really work my quads. This was really putting a strain on my joints down there apparently.
I got back on the Effexor and the depression has been much less for the last month or so. And, unbelievably, I go to the gym and have only limited soreness in my knees and back. My depression allowed me to figure out why my body was in such pain and do something about it.
There oftentimes can be something positive gained from such a debilitating negative as major depression. It's my job to find it.
About six months ago the pain in my knees was becoming so pronounced that I considered moving from my fourth floor apartment, the famous Apartment 404 of Apartment404.blogspot.com, to the ground floor since I found climbing up the three flights of stairs to be too painful to endure several times a day.
And then I got depressed. Again. Back in October, when the seasons changed and it began to get dark at 4pm. I had also gone off my antidepressant (Effexor) a few months prior to that since I was doing so well. The world began to feel very unwelcoming and unforgiving and I wanted no part of it.
So I stopped going to the gym.
And the pain and soreness magically went away.
I no longer had to endure the walk up the stairs: It was not an issue; I just did it without the pain. And I realized that there was nothing inherently wrong with my knees or back. I was doing something in the gym to make them sore. I talked to my pdoc and he told me that some of the leg exercises I was doing, the leg extension machine for example, were really tough on the knees. I also was going really low on my squats, getting my thighs past parallel to the floor in order to really work my quads. This was really putting a strain on my joints down there apparently.
I got back on the Effexor and the depression has been much less for the last month or so. And, unbelievably, I go to the gym and have only limited soreness in my knees and back. My depression allowed me to figure out why my body was in such pain and do something about it.
There oftentimes can be something positive gained from such a debilitating negative as major depression. It's my job to find it.
posted by joe sweeney at 7:05 AM
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