11/11/2005

ACTIVITY - PHYSICAL & MENTAL

Your day needs to be organised into a clearly defined programme in order to keep all activity under control in a manageable way.  This should cover the time from after breakfast to your evening mealtime and should apply to every day of the week.

First, assess how much PHYSICAL ACTIVITY you can cope with per day, without being ill, (i.e. initially less than you can achieve), undercut the total and divide it by the number of hours over which your daily programme will run. If, for example, this undercut, maximum total works out at  thirty minutes take a two and a half minute walk, every hour for ten hours, or two and three-quarter  minutes for nine hours, each followed by five minutes or up to half an hour rest, (depends on how much YOU need). If this still proves too much, cut down more. After a period of time, maybe six to eight weeks your symptoms should be more settled (i.e. the same every day) and you should only feel a general tiredness, which will continue until you reach the recovery marker.

The same is done with MENTAL FUNCTION and split into hourly slots. There are many things, which can make you feel ill, (they vary from person to person) and they might not be immediately obvious so trial and error or keeping a diary might help.

The best way to assess your mental function capacity is to see how long you can read a book, as concentration is involved in most of the other things you do with your brain.

If, for example, reading knocks you out, you ration it as above but if it doesn’t make you ill you can read more. The same applies to talking, hearing & listening, thinking, socialising, even watching the world go by. Test them by re-introducing them one at a time and monitor your response.

Never do things today that will make you suffer tomorrow

Anything that can be done without making you ill can be done with less control, although anything done to excess will make a 'well' person tired. Things that fall into this category can be incorporated into leisure time at the end of the day.