Enzo,
I wish I could solve the problem of bloating. It could help a lot of people and maybe I can retire rich. I am going out on a limb here and suggest you take up Yoga. I am not talking about the usual Energy Yoga classes for the too healthy.
Every topic post you have placed is all one topic. You can’t decide how you feel about having CF. Part of this is taking responsibility for your body including getting to know it. With all your great questions, you will soon master the art of CF management. Yoga is a philosophy first, sort of like a religion or a life code, it has a more comprehensive scope than firming your abs.
Yoga may have saved my life. I am possibly the happiest person in the world. This comes naturally and I had never really worked at being happy. When I was around twelve, I realized that I felt like crap most of the time. Food, which I had been the original garbage gut had betrayed me. The period of time from eating to feeling like dying was short enough to associate food with nausea. Take this example and apply it to four or five other issues and life gets a little hard to push through.
If you really want to conquer CF, master Yoga. To save you some time, find these books and study them.
- Hatha Yoga by Yogi Ramacharaka
- Raja Yoga by Yogi Ramacharaka
- Gnani Yoga by Yogi Ramacharaka
Hatha and Raja are inseparable so count on reading both. Google Hatha Yoga and it will explain what is in store for you and how it can help.
Gnani Yoga is a meditative form of exercise. Although meditation is probably hard for your CF strained, hormone filled body, it is cool meditation. I learned to alter my heart performance, years ago getting it down to a dozen or less beats per minute. When it comes to controlling your abdomen, Hatha and Raja yoga can help reduce the inflammation and eliminate the gas that cause bloating. Don’t underestimate how much of your beer belly is just normal tissue very inflamed, distended or bloated. Bloating usually implies gas and most times it is part of it. Gnani yoga will give you a philosophical base, or acquiring the wisdom to deal and cope with life’s issues which for you includes CF. You have it, don’t let it have you. Gnani Yoga can help you fast track the sense that CF is just CF and Enzo is far more complicated and precious than some disease.
Getting religious with your yoga routines can help you take control of your insides, literally. While Hatha and Raja yoga are making you healthy, you are also learning to consciously control organs otherwise believed to be beyond your ability control. Learn it well and you can do things you can’t now imagine. How about being able to lie down for twenty minutes and command your intestines to move all the gas through the bowels. A stop in the bathroom and you’re out for the evening without a beer belly.
Right now bloating is “just part of the fun” of having CF. If you are determined to change that, what I have described works. It works for anybody willing to dedicate the effort it takes to control the autonomic functions of our bodies. I would warn you that there are thousands of books on yoga. The three books I listed were published around 1900 so look online for used books. This is pretty much the source material for all the English language Yoga books written since.
If you want to dip your toe in Yoga, pick up “An Autobiography of a Yogi” by Paramahnsa Yogananda. There is a series of pictures showing a yogi dropping his colon and intestines out his anus into a large pan of water. I worked on that trick for about five years. I got as far as my sigmoid colon but my brother could duplicate the Yogi’s turning his intestines inside out for a washing. Oh, Paramahnsa Yogananda had a pot belly too.
LL
