Hermes

For a moment, I thought you guys were at a strip club but then realized the money was flowing in the wrong direction.

Racer Ex 

Really?



Wrong answer young man.

You'll access a much broader knowledge/experience base asking a question here about cycling and illnesses than going to one doctor and posing the same question.

It's no different than asking training questions, the result of which also affects your health.

Then take the responses then apply a filter and your own due diligence. Which is exactly what you should do when you talk to a doctor as well. Doctors are all over the place, good and bad.

MDcatV

it's best to have a doctor who is your teammate, or former teammate.

for instance, a former teammate is a GE doc. he was in town for a convention and I had lunch with him on sunday. during lunch, my wife called to inform me that our 3 y.o. just barfed all over the car and she was contemplating taking him to the ER. I calmly described the situation to my friend, who advised taking him home and monitoring rather than sitting in an ER for 5 hours to hear the same thing. Boom. Done. I was able to drink 3 more beers before taking the metro home ... but still had to clean out the car.

Racer Ex 

I had my back surgery done by a doc who did the same procedure on an MD I raced with here in town. He gave me the referral.

shovelhd

I've been lucky that the doctors and therapists that have been most important to me are athletes and some are bike racers. Mikey's point was missed though. We can't diagnose the kid over the Internet and even if we could we probably shouldn't.

Training optimally requires that you put your body on the razor's edge sometimes. If you look at some of the training thread entries, you can spot patterns over time. It can be difficult to figure out if you are just sick because of training stress or if it's something else. Around here the pollen came super late and super heavy and thus many people who don't traditionally have allergies got sick. Out in la-la land, who knows.

After years of training and racing my body can tell me if I'm tired because of stress or if I'm coming down with something. I have no qualms about skipping a workout if I think it would make things worse. If you feel bad enough to want to skip a workout two days in a row, it's probably time to take a day off.

Strava, ewang, plans, coaches, teammates, all these things can skew good judgement. Listen to your body first.

Doge

I posted, I deleted as I thought it was obvious, guess not. I don't use BF as a single source for anything. Not for mechanics, training advice, medical or anything else. But I do value the posts here that are thoughtful and helpful. Like most here I can filter (mods seem to find that more difficult).

Yea, Daniel's physician is a Cat 1 and a GT winner doc. My buddy is a doc and he tells me he can't give an opinion on my son as he doesn't know cyclists. I'm surrounded by docs, close family are docs my wife deals with dozens of them daily. Like any other profession - acting on only one opinion is somewhat risky.
My conclusion (he's mostly better, a bit weaker) - watch the post race activities. Take a zinc after every weakening event, don't sit in a parked car with closed windows and teammates because its cold, rest through sickness, don't train trough it. Maybe a few other things that that were posted.

Mikey's posts are generally remedial (contact Specialized, Call the doc). I generally do the obvious before I post.

Racer Ex 

Doge wasn't asking for a diagnosis, he was asking for generalized advice around how folks handle illness and racing/training. No one was asked or tried to diagnose anything. Responding that he should go see a doctor for this and not bother with internet forums was a poor response.

Addressing the OP, the one pretty much universal thing I've seen is racers try to come back from illness too soon, because their fitness will fall into a giant pit if they take an extra day off. My non-medical degree advice to all my athletes is they are better off taking an extra day or two and be fully asymptomatic, and return with a light couple of days, then to jump back in with both feet and find out they aren't fully over whatever it is they have. I've seen stuff drag on for weeks which had a lot more impact on fitness than an extra day or two off.

The other thing that seems to pop up a lot is people getting sick much more frequently after riding in the rain. If you can train indoors vs. inhaling a bunch of road muck, it's probably a better call.

Big on anti oxidants and eating well. I try to pack "trip food" so I'm not eating a lot of poorly prepared junk and can avoid fast food places. Wash the hands a lot. Etc. For an old fart who trains hard I very seldom get sick. Probably make up for it in orthopedic nicks though.

So it goes.

If you have one bucket that contains 2 gallons and another bucket that contains 7 gallons, how many buckets do you have?

Doge

And I value your advice more than [most] medical degree advice.

Enthalpic

I respect Mikey (he went to f'ing Johns Hopkins) so didn't call him on his post but lets face it the guy posts tons of his medical stuff on here. He may not ask many direct questions but he brings up issues he is having, and that leads to discussion, which is damn close to asking for advice.

Lets see:
- almost certainly some form of generalized anxiety or social anxiety
- depression and/or low self esteem
- postural and/or vasovagal hypotension including syncopal events. "I fainted in the bathroom and woke up in a puddle of blood"
- short stature

Ok you can bug me now cause I really am playing Dr.

Doge

I just wanted info on what cyclists do about sickness. I don't care so much what degrees anyone has.
For me it's not about respect, but if the responses are useful. Some are and some are not.

Racer Ex 

Ditto. But from the cognitive dissonance and pretzel logic involved in a guy on the Internet advising someone not to take Internet advice, I think he might have been better served going to a liberal arts college.

Doge

Why? You are pandering.

Enthalpic

- 1 respect for Doge

Ygduf

My wife was having enamel issues with her teeth. I found out her dental hygienist had advised her to brush immediately after coffee to avoid stains, and my wife just blindly followed advice because "professional" right.

Anyway, it turns out you can learn plenty on the internet, and professionals in any field can be idiots.

Doge

Care to give your opinion and reasons for it?

Doge

+1

Enthalpic

Sure, we were giving Mike well-deserved compliments and you devalued them.

Doge

What has he deserved? He responds with the obvious. I find it useless. Call the manufacture or call the doctor. Do you need an Ivy or Johns Hopkins edu to figure that out? Degrees, college are irrelevant. And yes, I am smarter than all you kids, but not as fast. Isn't that more important?

mike868y

This thread went from doge asking for medical advice for his kid on a cycling forum to analyzing my undergrad degree and commenting on my anxiety/depression/whatever, wtf?

mike868y

This thread went from doge asking for medical advice for his kid on a cycling forum to analyzing my undergrad degree and commenting on my anxiety/depression/whatever and height...what the hell? One step above botto saying I need a father figure in my life. Thanks for the backhanded compliments though...I guess.

The point of my post was not to devalue the knowledge of people here, but to point out that with the details given it's going to be pretty hard to diagnose doge's kid and furthermore it just strikes me as irresponsible to play roulette with your kids health based on a mixed bag of responses from people who may (or may not) know what they're talking about.

Carry on, I've got an appointment with a therapist to talk about my short stature.

Wylde06

I would be brushing my teeth like, 10 times a day.

MDcatV

i have poison ivy and i think i have a cold. my doc friend is back in seattle so i cant have lunch with him, in fact, i think he gave me this cold. what should i do?

echappist

call up a lawyer buddy of yours on the team and sue your GP friend for med mal. it's the American thing to do

furiousferret

I am a big fan of alternative remedies and do feel many practicals solutions are suppressed by pharmaceuticals. If they found out standing on your head for 30 seconds a day cured cancer, they'd shoot whoever discovered it so they could keep pushing product. I've fixed these issues on my own:

• My peroneal tear I self diagnosed after 2 doctors assumed it was something else, still pissed that it cost me 2 years of fitness.
• I reduced my asthma by about 80% by learning a Russian breathing method
• I had a nerve inpingement I fixed via learning mckenzie stretches on youtube
• Internet sleuthing also help fix most of my sciatica issues

I also do a bunch of other crazy stuff like Graston, taping my mouth at night, ice baths, and netti pots, and yoga. Call me a whack job but its improved my quality of life significantly. There was a point my asthma was so bad I passed out changing a tire, and fell during a group ride.

Doctors are important, but the problem is the human body is just so extensive getting a perfect diagnosis overtime can be difficult. It seem like they only have about 10 minutes to figure it out, which really isn't enough for many issues.

hack

give your doc friend the poison ivy somehow