Sitting at my desk playing Sid Meier's Civilization yesterday, I realized two things. First, Sitting Bull will continue to be warlike and ruin my fun at building my cities no matter how many trades I place with him. He may even cost me the game. Second, my right arm and hand tingle and feel dead way too often for it to be healthy when I am at my desk. I told Christopher about it, and he said my symptoms were like Carpal Tunnel. Yikes.

So, knowing me - as you do - you know that I must do more research on the topic to find out if I indeed have Carpal Tunnel (because I'm not likely to believe the snake will injure me unless it bites me square on the nose). I found this information from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. It states that Carpal Tunnel sufferers have pain often radiating from the palm and going down to the elbow in addition to tingling in the thumb, index, and middle fingers. They may feel like they cannot squeeze or grip objects and/or feel a need to "shake it out." This information, Christopher had shared with me already.

Since I work at a computer all day every day, Monday through Friday, I do feel like it is not unreasonable to expect I may develop this one day. But now? Also, my symptoms do not match exactly. For example, there is no pain associated with my tingling. It feels like my arm went to sleep, but I could still hold a cup of coffee if I needed to. Second, my arm and fingers are ridiculously cold when this happens. This leads me to think that it may have more to do with poor circulation or with keeping my arm up too high in comparison with my heart, or something to that effect. Finally, it seems to affect my pinkie, ring, and middle fingers far more than my thumb and index fingers. In fact, my thumb never feels numb when this happens. I am not ready to go to the doctor just yet. Last I checked, the most common remedy for this injury was surgery. Eek. I don't think I'm there yet. In the meantime, if you see someone looking like a hobo at their desk wearing gloves with the fingers cut off, that would be me.

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As you may have been able to tell based on the recent onslaught of food related posts that I have made, I am becoming more and more interested (read: obsessed) with healthy living, good cooking, and fun calorie burning exercise. This interest lead me to seek out various personal trainers in the area and do a little research on what they offer.


I took a look at the type of personal trainer one would meet at a Gold's or Bally's gym. Then I looked at the kind who work in separate smaller gyms or studios. Finally, I searched personal trainers in the area who would come to you. In the latter group, I found Thomas Jensen, founder of Elect Wellness. Last week, Christopher and I met with Thomas to talk about his program and to go over basic lifestyle assessment type stuff. True to the ad on his website, this assessment was free with no obligation to sign up for anything. He did give his service list and pricing information at the end of our session; however, it was not a "hard sell" and we did not feel like he was pressuring us nor was he upset that we didn't sign up right away.

Overall, his program seems well thought out based on eating right (whole foods, lots of fruits and veggies, no soda, that kind of thing) and working out with resistance training being the key to fat burning. There's probably some cardio in there as well. He's also very personable and professional, and he let us know about his own journey to eat right and find the best way to work out and maintain a healthy body. He seems like the kind of guy you'd play some half-court with, not intimidating or condescending at all.

The price tag, for us, was too high to be able to sign up for a program. Thomas does offer smaller monitoring programs and body composition assessment sessions that might be worthwhile as we both continue to eat well and become more fit. Whether or not we decide to do that later, I'll continue to subscribe to his weekly fitness e-newsletter (which has only come with one additional sales email in the entire time I've been signed up for it) and enjoy what he has to say about dairy, testosterone, flax seed, or whatever other topic he picks on any given week.

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