Inspiring Update from Jill - Celiac, Knees, Fasciitis, and Restoring Happy Life

Reader Jill hasn't sent a photo yet, but her words are a beautiful picture. Her story can help many readers stop pain and improve strength and function for happier daily life.

In the post Lunges and Beans Jill commented on Celiac disorder, an immune reaction to foods with the gluten protein - principally wheat plus a few others. Symptoms can be baffling until identified as coming from gluten.

Jill writes: "I had bad and steadily worsening joint problems, especially in the knees, for ten years before I found out about my gluten sensitivity. By that time my legs were extremely weak from having been unable to put weight on a bent knee for so long.

"I let the knees heal without doing anything special for them until I hit a plateau, then started doing isometric exercise for the quads (the classic wall chair), then six months after that started running slowly on an elliptical trainer. Weightlifting exercises for quads, though, still left me hobbling.

"That's where I was when I found your blog, and since then I've been doing squats at every opportunity, which was very hard at first and got much easier. Along with the foot stretch you gave, the Achilles tendon stretch in the squats also caused tremendous improvement in my plantar fasciitis.

"After a few weeks of that you posted the stair climbing posts and now I'm having far less trouble on the large numbers of stairs I climb every day. I am shying away from lunges from long associating them with pain, but plan to get over that soon and try them (gently) according to your detailed suggestions.

"Your blog has given me an enormous number of ideas to help in rehabilitating my knees from the years of gluten, which has made an enormous improvement in my quality of life. Thank you for the care and skill you put into it."

Jill, thank you for your care and skill to write things that will help many, and to do empowered good work to shine again. I put the posts with their links. Everyone, add your favorites:

• Foot stretch - Healthy Toe Stretches
• Achilles stretch - Better Achilles Tendon Stretch
• Achilles stretch built into daily bending with half-squats - Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle and Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending
• Happy knees during stair climbing - Better Exercise on the Stairs
• Plantar fasciitis - see the comments in Why So Many Aerobics Injuries?
  
• Lunges - Strengthen Legs Without Knee Pain - Standing Lunge and Strengthen and Retrain Function With The Lunge
• All posts helping knees

To stop pain and regain your life, you don't have to "do exercises" - use movement for healthy life. Have fun. Shine!

Labels: achilles stretch, celiac, feet, fix pain, knee, lunge, planter fasciitis, readers inspiring story, squat

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