How Soon Can You Exercise?

[handshedown]

Hi,

I recently got diagnosed with UC and am having a little difficulty doing exercise with my condition. Even though I'm having a bit of an easy periods in terms of my UC at the moment (no flare-ups, light symptoms), I thought I'd try a little bit of light yoga this morning after resting up for a week and taking things easy.

I only did about ten minutes this morning, but my stomach feels incredibly tense and I'm getting an increased need to go to the toilet, which I've not had over the past week. Is this normal for people or is there a certain time limit I have to wait before I'm able to exercise again?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Cat-a-Tonic]

There's no timeframe really - we're all different and it's impossible to say (and honestly for me it's different from flare to flare too). All I can tell you is to listen to your body and don't push things too much at first. Even though you're having few symptoms right now, that doesn't necessarily mean your body is going to be happy with exercise right now and you could still have inflammation going on (symptoms don't always correlate with inflammation). You mentioned having light symptoms - is your doctor aware that you're still having some symptoms? Are you on medication right now? You may need to get into remission before your body allows you to exercise. That's been my experience in the past, it is possible for me to exercise in a mild flare but it's best and easiest when I'm in remission. Treat the flare first and then go from there. Good luck!

 

[handshedown]

That's the annoying thing: I'm still waiting for more tests before they put me on any medication, so I'm just trying to self-manage at the moment.

Thanks for the guidance about the inflammation. I hadn't even considered that side of things! I just thought that, if the symptoms were light, I was ok. Beginners ignorance, I guess.

 

[Cat-a-Tonic]

You've been diagnosed but they want to do more tests on you? Did your doctor explain their reasoning for that? That doesn't really make sense to me - usually when someone gets a diagnosis, then they are put on medication. Is your doctor not 100% sure of the UC diagnosis? What other tests do they want to run on you - are they doing something like the pill cam to look at your small intestine?

 

[1sickpuppy]

Some people exercise when flaring but I don't know how they do it...I've given up trying until I'm in remission. It does seem like exercise can aggravate things. Maybe our bodies need all the energy to go towards healing?

 

[handshedown]

You've been diagnosed but they want to do more tests on you? Did your doctor explain their reasoning for that? That doesn't really make sense to me - usually when someone gets a diagnosis, then they are put on medication. Is your doctor not 100% sure of the UC diagnosis? What other tests do they want to run on you - are they doing something like the pill cam to look at your small intestine?

To be honest, I'm not 100% sure what's going on myself. I've been passed between different doctors and no one has really told me anything. I'm going back to the doctors on Wednesday to chase this up.

They want to do a colonoscopy and a biopsy. They told me that they want to figure out what caused it.