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Strong Women
IBD and exercise: “How Crohn’s disease helped me to define my relationship with fitness for good”
4 years ago
2 min read
Like 300,000 other people living with an inflammatory bowel disease in the UK, writer Franchesca Flack has had an on-off relationship with exercise. She explains why, after a flare-up, she always comes back to movement as the thing to rebuild body and mind.
Christine* was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease aged 13, and it was only after her second bowel resection surgery in her late 20s that she felt well enough to begin her fitness journey. For Christine, exercise has become a vital part of her self-care routine, both for its mental and physical benefits. “I made sure I exercised consistently and realised that it was helping to relieve stress, which I believe in turn helped keep my disease under control,” she explains.
Her story isn’t unique. While exercise might be inexorably caught up in diet culture for many women, over the past decade, I’ve experienced how transformative movement can be for chronic illness.
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