Monthly Catch-Up

If I have any readers left, welcome.  It's been nearly a month of silence, so I figured I need to update everyone.

A.  I've been on a CPAP/BiPAP for a month now and I'm still fighting to get affective therapy.  The good news is I took to the machine easily.  I have no trouble sleeping with it on, and actually find it soothing in the mornings.  The unit I have tracks all my data and stores it on an SD card.  The resourceful me found some software that can read this data, so I'm tracking my daily progress.  Also, I'm feeling much better.  I wake more refreshed, rarely take naps during the day, and overall feeling better.

Now for the bad news.  It's not adequately controlling my apneas.  I have central sleep apnea, meaning the somewhere along the link between my brain and lungs, the signal to breath sometimes stops. I typically have 2-3 periods of time where there is a start stop interval of about 15-20 seconds.  I recently moved to a BiPAP, which is supposed to help, but thus far, it's not much better.

B.  Our 10 day juice fast was condensed to a 7 day fast.  It was going well and I was feeling great, but the taste of green juices started getting nauseating to both of us.  I still enjoy the morning juice a few times a week, and am considering doing another 7-10 days, but modifying it with a lunch salad.

The good news, I lost nearly 10 lbs, and have only gained about 2 back since stopping the fast.  I've cut out coffee/tea, fast food, and donuts.  I'd say that I've been a vegetarian for about 85-90% of my meals, and many times, I'm eating vegan.  I still like and have the occasional meat, but only sparingly.

The great news, my blood pressure has dropped significantly.  Most of the time, I'm in a normal range, and that's with stopping the meds.  Yep, I've been sans medications for nearly a month.  If I have a fairly high sodium meal, then I've noticed it creep back up, but not to high numbers.  I'm hoping that as I continue down this path, hopefully get the sleep apnea better controlled, and loose some additional weight, that my numbers will drop even more.  Wahoo!

C.  Now for the topic everyone *snickers, as I don't think hardly anyone but Jen reads this* comes here for.. running.  Let's just say I've been keeping a minimum base going, and when I say minimum, I mean 1-2 runs per week.  Things have been busy, it's been cold, and I've got no races on the schedule.  Yup, I'm slacking it.  There is no excuses, I've just been lazy.

When I do get out there, save for the cold weather, my runs have been going well.  I'm still not tracking time, but I know I'm slower than normal.  Mostly, my running has been leisurely jogging.

I so can not wait for spring to get here!