Hi Matt

Thanks for your tip on getting rid of beer bellies.

It’s been quite a few years since I’ve shot beer out of my nose … I’ve had some pretty funny drinking mates over the years and there is nothing better for the soul than when one of them cracks you up while you’re taking a sip of your beer … and VOILA … out it comes … through your nose … yep, there’s nothing better than a true belly laugh and beer shooting out of your nose … it really makes your eyes water … and sooths the soul. These days, however, I’ve been drinking more milk than beer.

Hi Beaches

Same here for the last few years … no matter what I did … I still had that belly … everyone falsely assumed that it was a beer belly … thank god it’s shrinking.

Glad to hear that I wasn’t the only one that was weight loss resistant …

Thanks for sharing

Hi-five fellow fixhepc forum fanatics

I start my third and final bottle of generic SOF + DCV tomorrow. I’m amazed at how quickly the time has flown and how much better I am feeling. HCV RNA was Not Detected after 29 days of my treatment. This news made me feel even better and put a spring in my step. The resulting reduction in stress, after hearing this good news, no doubt enhanced my feeling of wellbeing.

I have lost 4.5kg over the last 8 weeks. I have progressively lost weight and felt better from the start. However, I have plateaued over the last week or so. I think that I may have reached a new steady state for the time being. Thankfully, most of the weight loss has been around my mid drift. Hopefully, I’ve lost some of the visceral fat around my liver that was noted on my ultra sound prior to treatment.

My eyes, skin and thinking are a lot clearer. I think that it is due to the reduction in the viral load, regular exercise, and drinking plenty of water. For anyone interested on how beneficial exercise can be after the DAAs have worked their magic, now that you may have energy to burn, click on the link below to see how you can get fit in 6 minutes.

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/4319131.htm

The above link is to a Catalyst episode called “Fit in 6 Minutes a Week”. Like everything in life, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. As it turns out, the six minutes is of intermittent fast paced exercise mixed into a 20 minute workout, otherwise known as interval training, which fires up your mitochondria and improves your health and fitness very quickly. Most people think interval training is sprinting flat out for a minute or so, rest, then repeat. This works fine for athletes, but for us mere mortals it can increase our heart rates to dangerous levels.

At 18:25 in the video, Assoc. Prof. Boutcher from UNSW discusses his program for menopausal women where they pedal fast on an exercise bike for 8sec, pedal normally for 12sec, then fast for 8sec … repeated over 20mins … results in participants pedalling fast for a total of 8mins. Apparently, this is all that is needed to fire up your mitochondria. You can adapt Boutcher’s program to suit your level of fitness ( e.g. 30sec/60sec/30sec; 60sec/120sec/60sec … etc) on any cardio exercise equipment (rowing machine, cross-trainer, spin bike … etc.). Boutcher’s easy version, however, is perfect for otherwise sedentary people recovering from HCV.

Moreover, Boutcher discusses visceral fat, how it inflames the liver, and why it is thought to be one of the major drivers of type 2 diabetes. Interval training helps to reduce visceral fat resulting in an array of positive health effects.

At 16:30 in the video, Professor Mark Tarnopolsky discusses the beneficial effect endurance training has on your skin.

“We took sedentary people over the age of 65, we did a skin biopsy from the outer butt cheek to avoid the sun before and after three months of endurance training. Biopsies of the active elderly participants improved to the point where they were indistinguishable from younger skin under the microscope. They looked like a 20- to 30-year youthening, if you will, of the skin after just three months of endurance training.”

I hope that this information helps those thinking about starting to exercise now that they may have more energy to do so for the first time in many years.

Yeah, I know … there’s always an excuse …

On reflection, after 8 weeks of treatment, I feel as though I’m running at 80%. I guess that the last 20% will be achieved in the months after EOT when the DAAs wash out of my system and my body continues to heal itself. I’m not there yet, but like a good little nomad I’m well on my way …

Take care and, above all, take it easy …

[video]http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPItPf4yU8Y&list=RDLPItPf4yU8Y[/video]