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Practicing yoga seems to help my UC. Aerobic exercise and weight training don't (although are obviously good in and of themselves). You can call it "woo", if you like, but I believe there's something to integrative practice that aligns the endocrine and sympathetic / para-sympathetic nervous systems. It at least seems to damp down my particular inflammation reactions in ways that other kinds of exercise do not. Oh, also nicotine. I don't like being addicted to my vape pen, but a steady dose of nicotine gives me a much wider margin for error with my diet. Curiously, this connection was pointed out by my first, and best, gastro doctor: the two groups who present UC much less frequently than others are smokers and Ashkenazi jews. He told me that (prefaced by "I'm a doctor, so I can't really recommend this, but...) some of his patients found cigars helpful, and are fairly low-risk, as smoking goes. I used cigars for years to kill sub-clinical flares, before getting tired of the smell, and the time-commitment and hassle, and worried about the blood-pressure spikes they induce. Vaping is superior in every way, and I have made the cost-benefit wager that whatever (fairly low, so far as we can tell) health risk that comes with vaping is less than the risk and consequence of colon cancer from less-controlled UC. That is, by the way, one of the big clues to varying etiologies: some people's UC is exacerbated, not helped, by nicotine. (My understanding is that Crohn's is always exacerbated.) My doctor friend and I believe we understand the mechanism behind why it works for my particular case. |