DOCUMENT

10 | InTouch SUMMER 2025 Iyengar Yoga uses props to help you get into a pose, allowing your body to relax as you lengthen soft tissues without injury. It can be adapted to suit your individual physical needs. Practicing yoga has helped enormously, thanks to my 83-year-old teacher Sylvia, who moves like a 25 year old. Other types of yoga can be great too, but if you are stiff and inflexible like I was, it is so easy to injure yourself doing poses in the middle of a room with no support, especially with reduced strength and support from your muscles. Iyengar yoga is online if you want to give it a go, but finding a teacher who can help you adapt it to your needs is best. The US Myotonic dystrophy Association have a video on chair yoga on their website, for those in wheelchairs. Resistance training Having DM1 makes my body feel older than it should be for my age. This feeling prompted me to do some research about ageing well. Anti-ageing experts all seem to agree that cardio respiratory fitness and resistance training are both critical to improving and prolonging your health. Some have said that the single most important thing you can do to improve health and longevity is exercise. I joined a local gym with people of all ages and abilities, making it a welcoming place to be with social contact being an added bonus. Doing resistance training and cardio workouts at a friendly gym is great. There are so many options to tailor it to your needs. I started at the gym on crutches after a labral tear repair to my hip, an injury sustained by slipping over on wet grass. Anti-ageing expert Dr Rhonda Patrick says if you could turn exercise into a pill, it would be THE magic pill to slow down ageing. The DM1 experts that I have heard discuss exercise on video presentations have said people with DM1 should exercise at a level of effort at 5-6 out of 10. Anti-ageing experts for healthy people say to exercise 8 out of 10. I choose to exercise at 8 out of 10, but I don’t have any cardiac symptoms. Whatever you do, be gentle at first as it is so much easier to pull or strain a muscle when it has reduced function. When I try something for the first time I use little or no weight at first, to see if my body can support the action before adding weight. Personal trainers at gyms may not understand how easily injured we can be. You need to decide for yourself and maybe get advice from your GP or whoever you trust. Any exercise you can manage is better than none, so take the plunge and give it a go. The science is detailed and complicated, but the results are simple – doing exercise makes you feel better, more positive, happy to be alive. Swimming pool/aquarobics Pools are a great place to get exercise in. Water displaces a lot of your weight, so it’s easier to get some exercise if you have legs that won’t take your full weight. I have never learned to swim properly, so I started swimming in a shallow public pool using a snorkel and mask to improve my cardio-respiratory fitness. I look like an idiot, but it works super well. It allows me to work on fitness, strength and flexibility all at once. I then added an aquarobics class which helps support body weight and helps me to jump up and down, something I can’t do easily. Excellent for osteoporosis prevention. Don’t let embarrassment about how you look stop you from exercising – you will be the winner. People watch me more now when I’m out and about, and it’s not because I am getting more beautiful! As the Queen apparently said to Jacinda, ‘you just get on with it’. Diet Reading ‘Ultra Processed People’by Dr Chris van Tulleken was an eye opener. LIVING WITH PURPOSE Practicing Iyenar yoga.