Common Exercise Side effects
Don't Quit, Get Educated
ENS Marylou Dryer, MS4
Journalist, BodyTek PT
Most people truly enjoy exercising. They feel good about the positive long-term effects they know their efforts will have on their body. And nothing beats that empowering endorphin rush. But for those who associate their workout with endless yawning, uncomfortable nausea, and pounding headaches, it can be a dreaded, sweaty chore. So, since you can’t fix a problem until you know what’s really wrong, here’s the skinny on some of the less desirable effects of the time you spend at the gym.
On nausea-
Sufferers of nausea during their routine can be literally stopped in their tracks; it is an unbelievably short journey from the endorphin high all the way down to feeling so sick to your stomach that some people actually vomit. Luckily, this level of discomfort related to physical activity is not very common; regrettably this also means that interest in researching the phenomenon is not common either. Still, a few theories exist.
Activities like lifting weights that require you to tighten your core, also squeeze your insides and increase abdominal pressure. This maneuver, called the Valsalva, can push stomach contents against the muscular sphincter meant to keep the food you’ve swallowed heading in the right direction, which can be painful and cause feelings of nausea. Also, many people tend to clench their jaw during such maneuvers which can itself cause temple pain and incite nausea in a manner similar to those who suffer from migraines. Other activities like running and cycling that demand maximum function from big muscles can cause nausea too since those working tissues demand higher percentages of the blood supply and require that the snack in your stomach wait until later to be digested. Finally, even rehydration can lead to nausea as your body tries to signal you to stop drinking too fast or too much.
In order to prevent feeling sick to your stomach when you should be feeling great, here’s a few things to consider for your next trip to the gym. Try not to eat any sooner than two hours before beginning your routine – just like your mom told you not to eat right before jumping into the pool – saving your meal until after your exercise allows your body to focus on sending blood to your muscles instead of your belly and prevents you from having anything present there in danger of being squeezed out. Next, relax and breathe, even count if you have to, but don’t test the durability of those molars by crunching through your sets. Then, try to re-hydrate over time or even experiment to see if you’ll tolerate a different solution better. One study suggests drinking fresh young coconut water after workouts and showed that athletes were able to consume more of this than either plain water or carbohydrate electrolyte beverages without becoming nauseous and that it re-hydrated them better.
Pounding headaches-
While some headaches can be serious and require medical evaluation (such as those that come on like a thunderclap and are often described as the worst headache of one’s life or changing headaches that stop responding to the same medicines that used to relieve them), the pounding headaches that follow a workout are just painful and aggravating. And unfortunately, no one knows why people get them. The Mayo Clinic recognizes what it calls exertional or exercise headaches as separate from other types such as vascular, migraine, or the serious ones mentioned above. They point out that exercise headaches are triggered by strenuous activities and reiterate that they are not serious, but offer no cause or cure.
People who are prone to other types of headaches like vascular headache may aggravate one into existence with aerobic activity due to changes in blood flow. And prolonged Valsalva maneuver, which decreases blood return to the heart, could hypothetically induce a headache for anyone. However, routine exercise has been proven to be beneficial for sufferers of migraine without aura. So, you can only hope that sticking with it will condition your heart and any other factors playing a part in your pain to eventually give you the relief that for now you’ll only find in your bottle of pain reliever.
Saving the good news for last, Yawning-
You’re feeling great, working through your routine at the gym, surrounded by everyone who’s fully alive and in a good mood about doing something good for themselves, and you pause to mark the moment with great big yawn? It’s probably the most awake you’ve felt all day, especially if you’ve saved your workout until after a long day at the office, so why does your body seems to fight your mind and ruin the mood with a six-second break? Although no one knows for sure what makes us yawn, really your body is probably trying to help you out a bit; think of that long, contagious yawn as a mini whole-body workout.
The act of yawning itself allows your lungs to open up some of the extra lung spaces you weren’t using all day while sitting at the desk and exchanges a lot of the carbon dioxide your body produced during your warm-up for fresh air to keep you going. It also equalizes the pressure in your ears, which might help your balance, and stimulates tearing keeping you focused. Stretching the muscles in your face and jaw encourages blood flow to your head at a time when your straining muscles are vying for more and more of the blood supply. And yawning has also been shown to induce the release of nitric oxide, a compound that dilates capillary beds allowing your body to work more efficiently and shunt blood to the most active tissues. So, don’t be embarrassed if someone looks at you in the gym confused at how you could be bored and active at the same time; that little yawn may be the most time-efficient part of your routine.
Reference
Body Bits: Programmes. Printed from http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/tv/bodybits_programmes.shtml November 5, 2006.
Drummond PD, Granston A. Painful stimulation of the temple induces nausea, headache and extracranial vasodilation in migraine sufferers. Cephalgia 2005 Jan; 25(1):16.
Exercise Headaches. Printed from www.mayoclinic.com/health/exercise-headaches/DS00641 on October 13, 2006.
Fitterling JM, Martin JE, Gramling S, Cole P, Milan MA. Behavioral management of exercise training in vascular headache patients: an investigation of exercise adherence and headache activity. J Appl Behav Anal. 1988 Spring;21(1):9-19.
Koseoglu E, Akboyraz A, Soyuer A, Ersoy AO. Aerobic exercise and plasma beta endorphin levels in patients with migrainous headache without aura. Cephalgia 2003 Dec; 23(10): 972.
Oelberg D.A., Systrom D.M. Exercise Physiology. UpToDate. printed from www.utdol.com on October 13, 2006.
Rehydration after exercise with fresh young coconut water, carbohydrate-electrolyte beverage and plain water. J Physiol Anthropol Appl Human Sci. 2002 Mar;21(2):93-104.
