Hopefully, you are not sitting at your computer saying “Oh no, another exercise article!” I have been on a bit of a roll regarding IBS and exercise. This should be the last one for a while, but it is an important one. It occurred to me that the nature of IBS is such that a home exercise routine might best fit the bill. It allows you to exercise in the comfort of your own home and to schedule your exercise for times when your system is at its quietest. Therefore, my new article “Home Exercise for IBS” points you in the direction of a variety of About articles on how to best set up a home exercise routine. Here you will find a variety of tips for buying exercise equipment and for deciding which exercise is best for you.

What do you think of my series on IBS and exercise? Leave a comment here or in the IBS discussion forum!

The last (for now) of my series on IBS and exercise has just been published: Home Exercise for IBS. This article might be the most practical of the bunch as it helps you to incorporate exercise into your life within the comfort of your own home, or more importantly, near your own bathroom. The article directs you to information published by About.com’s own exercise gurus and covers what you need to know before you buy exercise equipment, what are the best equipment choices, and how to set up a home exercise routine.

If you haven’t been following the series, here are the links to all four articles:

• Home Exercise for IBS
• Does Exercise Really Help IBS?
• Yoga for IBS
• Reduce Your Risk of Runners' Diarrhea

Coming on the heels of my new article “Yoga for IBS”, Ann Pizer, About.com’s Guide to Yoga, has just published an extremely important article: “Plus-Size Yoga”. It is often the people who most need to incorporate exercise in their life who are the most intimidated by it due to their size. Yoga provides an easy way to slowly incorporate exercise in to a sedentary lifestyle due to its slow pace and emphasis on paying attention to inner cues. For the overweight person, yoga provides a means for developing a respect for your body, no matter its shape or condition. Ann’s article provides a nice overview of yoga for the plus-size body and offers some practical suggestions for getting started. Given the fact that yoga may offer some unique benefits for IBS, this article is worth checking out if your weight has made you reluctant to try yoga.

Read Ann’s article: “Plus-Size Yoga”.

Read my article: “Yoga for IBS”.

A recent study provides some support for asimadoline as a treatment for IBS-D or IBS-A. Asimadoline is a kappa-opoid agonist – please don’t ask me what that means – manufactured by Tioga Pharmaceuticals. The medication is currently undergoing clinical trials to determine its safety and effectiveness.

The study, published in the October issue of the journal Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, evaluated the effectiveness of asimadoline on almost 600 IBS patients. Results were related to IBS sub-type: IBS-D patients experienced improvement in pain, urgency and stool frequency and IBS-A patients reported “adequate relief”. The medication was reportedly well-tolerated.

So there you have it. I will be interested in learning about other clinical trials of asimadoline as they come on down the line and I hope that it will be a helpful medication for IBS sufferers. In the meantime, at least you can say that you heard it here first!

_Source:

Mangel, A. et. al. “Clinical trial: asimadoline in the treatment of patients with irritable bowel syndrome” Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics 2008 28:239-249.