Nausea and light-headedness.

[Eric Persson]

Whenever I lift weights, I get lightheaded but most of all, I get nauseous. Bad nausea. What am I lacking? Vitamins? I have a hard time getting the pump in the gym and due to the nausea I seldom leave the gym with that feeling of acomplishment we all come worship.

Short about myself and my trainingroutine, diet and so on. (Probarly not needed but I personally enjoy reading how our posters train and eat so why not?)

I usually train from 08:00 to 8:35-50, depending on the length of the warmup.
My routine usually consist of:

2x12 Benchpress (or 4x5, it's not a real gym I work out on, so there is not enough weight to train for strenght properly.
2x25 Military Press
2x10 Bicepscurl
2x10 Tricepcurl (Bar behind head, dont know the word of the exercise)
2x20 Abrotator
2x50 Crunches
2x10 Shoulderlifts with dumbells.

I do this twice a week. I do Muay Thai and Vale tudo 3-4 times a week to, I don't have the time to lift more. I am new to lifting, although I've lifted on and off for a few years, I've never been serious about it as I am now. I will do my best to perform a better routine for strength more than conditioning, but the gym is very limited, and I want to stick with this routine April out.

My diet usually consist of:

07:30 Breakfast: Orangejuice, a bowl of oatmeal.
12:00 Lunch: Meat or fish, often enough along with pasta.
15:00: A can of tuna
18:00: Chicken, pasta, makrill* (Don't know the english word but its energyvalues and proteinlevel are almost identical to tuna), or a stake.
22:00: Oatmeal, or a can of makrill.

I eat this mostly throughout the week with junkfood 3-4 times a month (pizza, mostly).

I'm currently on Paroxetin, no other medication.

I am also considering starting a trainingdiary-thread on kakutougi, if anybody is interested, I will start this week, if not I guess it will wait ;)

Appreciate any help.

[freefightdave]

Do you get enough sleep?

[Eric Persson]

Do you get enough sleep?

I've considered this, and as of late, no. I do not get enough sleep. The Paroxetin does not help anymore either. The thing is that even a week with consistant 22:00 to 07:00-sleep cant make the nausea go away. But even so, inconsistant sleep may be a big factor.

[freefightdave]

Do you feel energetic and so when coming to the gym? You might have too low glycogen levels in the morning. You might try eating more carbs before going to bed on the night before. But I´m no expert, wait until someone like jodi answers you:) And do you drink enough water?

[Eric Persson]

Water, yes. 3 liters a day.

Energetic in the morning? Never. Energetic on the way to the gym? Sometimes, but often no. I suspect that has to do with my depression, it gets harder to motivate yourself when you have constant selfdoubt.

[Titan]

What do you eat before you go to the gym? Like drinking orange juice or get other sugars into the system before workout can make you tire quickly and get nauseaus.

[Titan]

Water, yes. 3 liters a day.

Energetic in the morning? Never. Energetic on the way to the gym? Sometimes, but often no. I suspect that has to do with my depression, it gets harder to motivate yourself when you have constant selfdoubt.
One thing I appreciate about getting older is I started training for my own sake and my own well-being. It makes it much easier to work out when I'm not doing it to become the best, run the fastest, lift the most, win the best-chest-award, or beat everybody in sparring. I go to the gym with a different peace of mind. Maybe looking at reasons for training from a different perspective might help you out in some way with the above ...

[Eric Persson]

One thing I appreciate about getting older is I started training for my own sake and my own well-being. It makes it much easier to work out when I'm not doing it to become the best, run the fastest, lift the most, win the best-chest-award, or beat everybody in sparring. I go to the gym with a different peace of mind. Maybe looking at reasons for training from a different perspective might help you out in some way with the above ...

I have been trying to focuse on the "pump" and the good feeling following a workout but it has been increasingly more difficult. I do believe that the cramp and limited area and supplies in this so called gym make it less fun and enjoyable.

I train to improve myself, but I compare myself to other athletes way too often. I have less experience than most I sparr with, I lift alone, and I was not blessed with good genetics, body-wise that is.

Perhaps we should begin a beginners mental-training thread to prevent people (like me) to "invent the wheel" again?

[Titan]

Go right ahead. You can start one in "The Psychological Edge" forum. Will be interesting to see what people have to say!

[Eric Persson]

Go right ahead. You can start one in "The Psychological Edge" forum. Will be interesting to see what people have to say!

Will do.

... in the morning :)

[unicorn]

>'m currently on Paroxetin, no other medication.

This can be an explanation, as the compound diminishes the adaptive vasopressor reaction when one is doing the type of muscular contraction needed to lift weight, affecting much less this thing when one is doing violent motions but with no load.
This is an antidepressor, it can by itself anyhow drop the blood pressure, and also affects the level of serotonine, which is needed to regulate the normal bowel tonus. If the indication of taking it remains firm, you might want to use some drug compensating the effect of bowel stasis - there are bunch of derivatives helping the gut to empty by moderating its kinetics. A good one I have in mind - Motilium (Domperidone = the International Common Denomination) is usually an OTC (at least in my part of Europe) and even though can have punctual interference with serotonine-modulators like paroxetine they are neglectable. The regular dosage is 10 mg a day unique administration, evening 20-30' before the last meal of the day. Instead, there are serious interferences of paroxetine with theine (the alcaloid in the black tea) and partially with caffeine too, they augment side-effects, especially cardio-adapting related. Eating food which contains large amounts of tryptophane (essential aminoacid) - like fermented cheese, too much dairy products, amino supplements etc. can increase dramatically the side-effects of paroxetine. Eventually you should have a feedback from an Internal Medicine physician, the shrinks are in my experience lousy in phisiopathology. A good alternative if it still causes problems is the derivatives of non-serotonin non-tricyclic families. Tianeptine is one of them, but this change needs medical advise upon careful examination. Tianeptine can have the advantage that it acts also as corticosuprarenal modulator (its a side-effect of the main pharmacologic action but a good one), which can diminish catabolic effect after the training consumption. It is deprived of the side-effects of serotoninergics, but less potent - thus it needs advise from the consultant physician. Regular dosage is 12,5 mig tid.

[unicorn]

Exact quote of Paroxetine's side-effects :

>Nausea, somnolence, sweating, tremor, insomnia, asthenia, dry mouth, dizziness, male >sexual dysfunction, constipation, diarrhea, decreased appetite.

Serotonin (the effect of which Paroxetine modulates by inhibiting the re-uptake in neuronal endings) causes the bowels to have normal contractions, and is also somehow related to the well-being of all the neurovegetative functions under effort, strain etc., with adapting blood pressure within effort and many other less known effects.

Another possible idea : to have the dose taken in the evening after training (usual routine is to prescribe Paroxetine in the morning, but it is little suspicion that changing the time of intake can affect seriously the global action, except that at the regular time of the training the intake being a bit farther, the action on the vegetative system is lesser, thus also the possible side-effects.

[Eric Persson]

A great, great post unicorn, I had no idea. I'll def. push this matter forward.

I owe you one.

[freefightdave]

Good to have an MD on the board.

[Eric Persson]

Good to have an MD on the board.

Agreed. Give these people some kind of status.

[unicorn]

Oh never mind about status. I am an informal person and glad to help whenever possible. By chance my two focuses were internal medicine-cardiology and elder age psychiatrics, so this topic is familiar to me. Hopefully I could also help for some objective change too:)

[pollux]

The nausea, extremely low energy, and the no pump effect sound very familiar to me. I had loads of all of those whenever I tried to work out, and eventually they creeped into my everyday life. My problem was Insulin resistance. Apparently, Insulin not only regulates your blood sugar/energy ect, but it also dilated the blood vessels which, when you are resistant, wont happen. So you dont get a pump. If the meds you are using arent the problem, you may want to ask a doc about the Insulin resistance possiblity. just a thought.