Disabled People Should Count, Too

Fitness is critical for us, just like you

I just caught a story on NBC Daily, where Jillian Michaels (remember The Biggest Loser? She has scads of videos and shows other than Loser) was the featured guest. She spoke briefly about weight loss and exercise, especially after her back injury, which I didn’t know about. Here are the deets according to Forbes magazine, March 26, 2023. (This may be old hat to you, but I don’t follow Jillian Michaels.) Ms. Michaels ran into her bathroom for ‘something urgent’ but slipped on the wet floor, had a body twist and landed on her lumbar spine on the edge of the tub. Without repeating all the gory details of the non-medical things she tried, and how she kept up her crazy schedule including travel, finally, she sought out the care of several doctors, she found a smart one in Canada. He asked when she broke her spine? Did she know she had three herniated discs? She realized that she had not appreciated chronic pain. Oh Jillian, we should talk, but since that won’t happen, I have some comments I would like to make, and along with you, I hope a bunch of gym owners and yes, even certain physical therapists and doctors will read these.

I was diagnosed with MS at 30. Lots of things happened to my body that I knew were abnormal. Usually, I had to just wait it out, meanwhile, hoping and praying that post-exacerbation, I would regain most or even all of my effed up functioning. Mostly, I did. And for a long time, despite fear and anxiety, I never had any pain. Now, a lot of the sensory symptoms I have had, I never thought of as pain, per se. Tingling, itching with no obvious cause, dropped foot (when you walk, one foot won’t fully pick itself up, making walking slow and sometimes impossible), a feeling described as numbness, can occur anywhere, but for me was always in my feet was really a change in sensation. Sometimes I’m not sure if I have on shoes without looking; I believe it’s part of another loss many people with MS experience: the loss of proprioception, which is the ability to know where in space a body part IS. Eventually, this (and probably other symptoms, too) prevented me from wearing any type of shoe except flats. And I do mean FLATS. Zappo’s lowest heel height offered is 0-1”. That’s typically where I start.

So back to information that a lot of people, medical but mostly fitness, are unaware. Without buying Jillian Michaels’ latest fitness app entitled The Fitness App (pricey, but with discounts for nurses, first responders, military, teachers and students), I wasn’t able to see if there was any workout I could even attempt. I can only do seated exercises now.

Honestly, this post is just me complaining about people with disabilities continue to be excluded, ignored, forgotten, in many ways, but today, in the area of fitness. I can find seated workouts on YouTube and on the websites of MS organizations. But there’s no such thing as buying off the shelf for pwMS (people with MS), and doing a lot of trying before you find things that work.