My body has been falling apart lately.

I refuse to go Doctors for no rational reason, but I guess I grew up poor and with zero access to doctors, so I'm used to the idea that its reserved only for serious things. Plus, I get very little free time and I wanna use that time for leisure.

None of it is serious, but it's all a bit weird, and probably just weird signs of aging.

This time last year, we were going skiing in Japan and I certainly didn't feel any of these issues then.

Cracks & Pops

My whole body is cracking and grinding. if I am walking and I turn, my knees and ankles crack. If I look up, my neck grinds. Arms, too. None of it painful but the neck stuff always feels pretty scary. I'm pretty certain it's due to bad posture.

I improved my posture big time once after my back injury but I've definitely been very... laid back, lately. I was on a treadmill non-stop for 40 minutes at 10km/h a year or so ago. The other day, I jogged to drop off trash and back, a journey of about 30 seconds of jogging, and I was exhausted!

Twitching

My eye has been twitching for weeks or even months. On and off throughout the day. At one point, I was twitching all over the place. Inexplicable, but suspicions of caffeine or stress.

Bowels

I had several weeks of diarrhea (sorry for the TMI) which, though never serious, made me uncomfortable all day at work.

What to do?

I've already fixed some of it. I tried to pin down what I was consuming that could be the cause of such chronic diarrhea. After cutting out things like milk with suspicions of new lactose intolerance, and things like fibre, I started worrying I contracted IBS.

But then I thought about the Coke Zero's and Dr Pepper Zero's I had been drinking daily as an alternative to sugar. Some of the artificial sweeteners can indeed affect people's bowels so I cut it out and... within a day, problem resolved. And a week has passed and the problem has not returned. So I've no idea what's in that stuff but I guess my body can't handle it.

As for the eye twitching, it's still going on but not nearly as much as before. I think it's about sleep. On the weekends, where I get to sleep as long as I want, I don't get twitches. But a workday I'm getting 6 or less hours. It's not something I can realistically and consistently change for now but... at least I can minimize it.

Cracks and pops, well, for my neck I'm working on my posture again, walking around a lot with my shoulders back and my chest out. Actually feels pretty good. Standing up more at work, too. For the rest, arthritis? I don't think so. It doesn't hurt. Probably just my body wearing out cuz I've been lazy. But not that lazy.

I do cycle every single day in my work commute, and at work I use these kind of resistance bands to 'weight lift' with strong elastic, I find it more difficult than my 5kg weights at home. My main problem is I'm limited to what exercise I can even do, because of my herniated discs. If I do standard things like sit-ups, planks and so on, it can completely wreck my back again, even after all these years. I was out for days a few months ago after a single attempt at that stuff.

There's a few alternatives that put less strain on the lower back but... it really is limited. Running is out, crunches are out. Gym machines are mostly out. Ah well. I'll do what I can.

Thanks to my new love of tea, I've been drinking at least 1.5 litres of water a day too, a significant increase from before, which would vary from 0 litres to 0.5. Hopefully being more hydrated will have wondrous effects?

But I'm not crippled yet. Still going skiing for Christmas in Hokkaido, still on my feet and singing in all my classes, cycling daily, eating better each day. Just trying to slow down the degeneration!

Aging sucks.