Crohn's/Ulcerative colitis question

[kel]

Rip,

I would like to know if you ever coached or trained anyone with Crohn's or UC, and if so, what you did to work around it.

Thanks,
Andrew

[Mark Rippetoe]

No experience with it. Sorry.

[Platus]

I have UC. My interest in strength training and increasing my bodyweight initially stemmed from my desire to have more meat on my bones, should I ever have a particularly bad flare up (i.e., I wanted to be harder to kill). I have, however, been extremely fortunate in that I have not had life-threatening problems with my UC; I have periodic, low-level symptoms and have never been hospitalized. For what it's worth, here's my experience:

During college and grad school, I had more frequent symptoms due to general stress, lack of sleep, and poor diet. I was put on medication to manage it and I got down to around 150lbs. I'm 5'11", so that was a fairly low bodyweight (I was also doing stupid things, like cardio for 'exercise', which made it difficult to maintain body mass). By the end of grad school, I decided that I simply had to put my health first and my work second. I made sure to get 8 hours of sleep a night, regardless of pending work. I started eating a better diet (i.e. less pizza and ramen noodles, more whole foods), and I started lifting weights. I soon found SS and, over about a year of on-and-off training, got up to my current weight of 210lbs. It seems as though the diminishment of my symptoms has coincided with my strength training and gaining body mass, but it could just as easily be that my luck with the disease has enabled me to make better strength gains.

If I have UC symptoms (which is rare these days), I tend to back off on my training volume and make an effort to get more rest; usually, the issue for me seems to be stress in work and life, and not the stress of strength training. I think you'll just have to do whatever you can to get your symptoms under control and be careful to try and plan your workouts around what your body is able to do, and know that your gains may be slower and hard-fought than will others'.

[brettd]

i have colitis. if youre having a flare don't train man. i did that and it makes it that much harder for it to get better. i ended up in the hospital for a month. just take care of it. i know its hard to not train and you feel like a pussy if you dont but it's just not worth it. take the medication and lots of l glutamine and rest. your body cant repair the colon if its busy repairing muscle fiber. if its treated correctly it wont be long at all before youre up and running again.

also feel free to pm me if you have any questions etc...

[kel]

My interest in strength training and increasing my bodyweight initially stemmed from my desire to have more meat on my bones

This is exactly what got me started lifting weights. I appreciate your response, it's good to hear from someone with a somewhat similar experience.

Rip: It's ok, I was just curious. You may have had someone with either one of them and not even known about it.

[Mark Rippetoe]

True, but people -- especially personal training clients -- just LOVE to tell you about what's wrong.

[sunetdanne]

UC/Chrons and IBS can be triggered by a lot of different things however the main factor is STRESS.

I would suggest that you try the following.

1) Try a diet that does not involve anything like E621 E62x glutamate, skip everything connected with yeast,cow milk and wheat,rye and barley,.(It does not have to be the gluten that fights your bowel it could be that you are "allergic to"/current stats of bowel makes it hard to digest grains"

You need to feel what causes your bowel problems. Perhaps cow milk is fine but wheat is a no,no

1b) Trie to drink/eat rice water once or twice a day.

Heat upp 8dl of water with 0,5dl or jasmine rice with 0,5 table spoon of TURMERIC/CURCUMA and 0,5 table spoon of dried ginger. Cook for 40 min on low heat

1c) Add UltraClear Sustain to your life. It helped me a lot.

2) In Sweden we have something called SPC-flakes that are specially processed oats. This has showed good result for these problems(medical studies confirm it) perhaps you can get a hold of something like that.

3) Also a bit strange as it may sound the inflammation is the body's way of healing it self,

One need to focus on what causes the "injury"

Could be

1. Food like mentioned above
2. Candida
3. Bowel parasitets
4.STRESS

and not do like the doctors do all the time and just treat the symptoms(anti-inflammation), never the cause.

Who am I to talk about this.

I have been having IBS as long as I remember and my wife "got" UC for 4 years ago, my IBS became worse last year but is fine now when I am off milk and using UltraClear Sustain,

And by the way skip the glutamine preps put the direct into the trash can they will just make you bowl a lot worse.

Best regards
Daniel

[kwerk]

How about instead of listening to Dr. Notarealdoctor up there, find a well-respected gastro and get their opinion?

[DV]

How about instead of listening to Dr. Notarealdoctor up there, find a well-respected gastro and get their opinion?

+1.

I was diagnosed with Crohn's last year and my doc is a very well-educated and experienced expert in IBS. He said that no food is off-limits, unless you actually feel that it messes with you, and even then it will probably only do that during flare-ups. He did recommend "moderation" when it comes to alcohol, spicy foods and stuff - with "moderation" being an individual call. He also directed me to some research, and I've done some on my own, and you will find that there is no proven link between symptoms and diet (not to say there isn't one, just that if there is, it is very individual and thus hard to prove).

I drink my GOMAD, eat glutamine, protein powder and whatnot without any problems. The only thing that slightly bothers GI is oats (unfortunately) so I don't eat that much of those anymore.

An interesting fact is that they had a hell of a time diagnosing me with Crohns. My bowels were inflamed to hell, when they finally did a colonoscopy as sort of a long shot, yet my symptoms were very subdued. They attributed this directly to my BW and musclemass, and I am under doctors orders to keep training and gaining/maintaining weight. I usually feel BETTER post workout, even during mild symptoms, so I always work out - again with the approval of my doc.

UC/Crohns is not something to toy with, so definately seek out an experienced gastro with this as his specialty, if you haven't already. And remember that these diseases are extremely individual in their manifestation, so alot of trial and error will be necessary. John Sheaffer has apparently coached a couple of Crohns/UC guys, so you might want to ask for his advice.

[MEbigUsmall]

well the sad truth is that a real doctor might not be as helpful as the above poster since they are usually just pushing big pharma, as with most things the truth lies somewhere in the middle.