The following three sections cover how I’ve managed to do it…

Exercise

The premise of my last post was mostly alcohol versus exercise and thanks to the combination of reasonably decent weather and my recently rediscovered motivation I’ve managed to haul out the bike and rather than taking two bus journeys to work, I’ve replaced the first one with a mile and a half on the bike and the same again on the way home. I did some quick maths and reckon I must be checking in at about thirteen miles on the bike and five miles on foot per week, and that’s just getting to work and home again.

Herbal Remedies

For the majority of this year I’ve been trying to find some sort of natural solution to help deal with the annoyances caused by spasticity, I didn’t have much success until after mentioning it to my mum and being given a bottle of Kalms, which are intended for dealing with stress. I’ve found that two of the tablets combined with a cup of camomile tea about an hour before bed seems to do the job rather well. Interestingly the main ingredient in the Kalms is hops which is also used in brewing, so I’m wondering if it’s the hops in the beer that made alcohol such a good solution.

Minimalist (Barefoot) Shoes

One thing that has caused me a lot of confusion since I started looking into Cerebral Palsy is the advice I was given on footwear as a child. The general medical consensus back then was that shoes that offer support are the way to go, from a quick googling it seems that nothing has changed.

I can’t see how that makes any sense! The way I see it is that if something is weak you should do what you can to improve it, and to me offering support isn’t the way forward.

Last year I discovered the concept of minimal footwear and since then have pretty much switched to only wearing Vivobarefoot shoes, the main two advantages of which are the 4 millimetre sole with the lack of raised heel, which forces the leg muscles to extend further than standard shoes and secondly, the increased size in the the toe area which helps slow down the brutality caused by the bunion and subsequent deformity that is the by-product of the hemiplegic gait.

In my last post I said I would write about the various symptoms of CP and how they affect me personally. I’ve decided to start with the most evil of them all, the bane of my existence, the source of all things evil for CP people, which is otherwise known as spasticity.

“Spasticity is a feature of altered skeletal muscle performance in muscle tone involving hypertonia; it is also referred to as an unusual “tightness”, stiffness, and/or “pull” of muscles.” – Wikipedia

“Hypertonia is a condition marked by an abnormal increase in muscle tension and a reduced ability of a muscle to stretch. It is caused by lesions to upper motor neurons in the central nervous system, which carry information from the central nervous system to the muscles and control posture, muscle tone, and reflexes.” – Wikipedia

As I mentioned in my last post, there were complications during my birth which resulted in me being deprived of oxygen, this in turn damaged the motor region of the cerebral cortex on the left hand side of my brain, and since brains work in reverse, that’s how I ended up with right side hemiplegia.

Due to this damage my brain doesn’t do a very good job of communicating what it wants the right hand side of my body to do, which results in it keeping the majority of my muscles tense when it tells them to relax. This in itself wouldn’t be too bad if there were a way to consciously relax the muscles like I can with my unaffected side, but sadly that’s not the case, it is very difficult to get them relaxed.

Exercise and stretching help, but get complicated quite quickly, if you do too much it tires the muscles out and makes them tense, if you do it regularly then miss a day it makes them tense, if you don’t do it enough and then do some it makes them tense. I’ve came to the conclusion that consistant exercise every day for the rest of my life is the only real solution, but sadly not all that easy to achieve!

In my case, it’s my lower right leg that suffers the most, and it usually occurs when trying to get to sleep at night. I’ve tried numerous things over the years and the only ways I’ve found so far to make it more tolerable is the exercise roulette mentioned above or the consumption of alcohol. Alcohol seems to work wonders on the spasticity, most nights making it barely noticeable. However, whilst alcohol may offer the relief that I’m after it’s not exactly a viable solution in the long term for a lot of very obvious reasons.

Over the last wee while I’ve chose alcohol over exercise and I’m starting to see a few of the negative effects. That was one of the main inspirations for starting to write about CP in the first place, I’d much rather rely on exercise more and drink beer less, hopefully announcing that to the world will motivate me to get my arse in gear and get physical!

Cerebral refers to the cerebrum, which is the affected area of the brain and Palsy refers to disorder of movement.

It is an umbrella term for a list of conditions that all end with the suffix plegia which translates to paralysis;

• Monoplegia – is one single limbing affected.
• Diaplegia – is the legs being affected.
• Triplegia – is three limbs being affected.
• Quadriplegia – is both arms and legs being affected.
• Hemiplegia – is one side of the body being affected.
• Paraplegia – is the who body being affected.

Symptoms can include spasticities, spasms, other involuntary movements, unsteady gait, problems with balance, and/or soft tissue findings consisting largely of decreased muscle mass. Scissor walking and toe walking are common among people with CP who are able to walk. The effects of cerebral palsy fall on a continuum of motor dysfunction which may range from slight clumsiness at the mild end of the spectrum to impairments so severe that they render coordinated movement virtually impossible at the other end the spectrum. – Wikipedia (paraphrased)

In my case I have mild right sided hemiplegia, which came about due to shortage of oxygen and some sort of fit shortly after birth.

Over the next few articles I’d like to cover the major symptoms of Cerebral Palsy and how they affect me.

I must admit that I find it rather strange announcing that I have a form of CP to the Internet, it’s not something that I’ve ever really discussed with my friends and family properly, only really mentioning it briefly over the last couple of years. Don’t get me wrong though it’s not something I’m ashamed of, it’s more that I’ve just never let it bother or affect me to the point that I’ve needed to discuss it and because of that people have either not noticed or saw that it doesn’t bother me so never felt the need to bring it up.

Why should I start to care now then? I’ve always been pretty active and generally quite well exercised until this winter when the convenience of Internet grocery shopping and a new biomass heating system saved me the hassle of chopping wood for five hours per week and cycling three miles every Saturday. Over the past couple of months I‘ve started noticing aches and pains that weren’t there before and in turn have taken to googling around to see how other people cope with the it. The result wasn’t too positive as it appears that there isn’t really much information out there for adults with CP, so I thought it would be a worthwhile learning experience for me to investigate it myself and that by documenting my experiences I may be able to help out other people in a similar situation.