Exercising with Chronic Inflammatory Conditions

Post date: July 28, 2022 2:33 PM

What is recommended

Many experts recommend daily exercise, but this can be difficult to achieve, and in some cases can be counter productive. Getting the amount of exercise right for the individual is important.

Experts agree that regular exercise is vital for a healthy lifestyle with its benefits of mental health, weight management, boosted energy levels, improving sleep and preventing disease.

What are we seeing?

In most cases we see 3 things.

1. Physical difficulties due to the particular disease and its features

2. Physical difficulties due to exercise and movement avoidance

3. Physical difficulties due to muscle, joint and posture imbalances coincident but not caused by the disease itself. These are common imbalances we see in the rest of the population including forward pelvic tilt, over pronation in the feet, forward head, protracted and elevated shoulders, and many others.

What can you do?

• Exercising with these conditions requires some careful consideration and tailoring of exercises and programmes to take account of an individual’s symptoms, and what movements are compromised.

• In addition, starting out gently at your level is very important to avoid aggravating the inflammation. Once a tolerable level of exercise is established, some additional manageable challenges should be included to encourage your body’s adaptation ... but not too much

• Rest becomes very important here too. Exercising too often is not a good idea. It is best to allow plenty of time for your body to recover and adapt to avoid further aggravation.

• Scheduling in an “audit” day or two is a good idea, to check in how your body is adapting, and to alter the programme to accommodate any difficulties.

• Addressing the common muscle, joint and posture imbalances is very helpful in most cases, as it helps remove many sources of pain and discomfort giving a client confidence to broaden their exercise and movement activities.

Get advice and assistance

It is important to get some good advice about appropriate exercises. Many of your movement difficulties should be able to be improved with specific exercises that help address any imbalances in your muscles, bones and tissues. Improving those imbalances and movement patterns will enable you to enjoy the benefits of a broader exercise regime.

Get in contact if you would like to talk about your particular condition and circumstances.

Additional Resources

Exercise With Inflammatory Arthritis and Chronic Inflammatory Conditions