The Effect of Exercise on Quality of Life for Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patients 1

The Effect of Exercise on Quality of Life for Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patients

Aaron Stachnik

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

The Effect of Exercise on Quality of Life for Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patients 2

Introduction and Rationale

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is an auto-immune disease where the body attacks its

own gastrointestinal tract. There are two main types of IBD that effect people and they are

ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. These diseases affect a large population of people in the

united states as supported by research by Taylor et al., (2018) that states, “IBD affects more than

1.6 million children and adults in the United States and little is understood about the cause of

these autoimmune diseases”. Both of these causes a lot of pain and discomfort in the people that

are diagnosed with it. Some of the symptoms include things such as blood loss from the rectum,

weight loss, diarrhea, and pain in the abdominal region. The two diseases’ symptoms usually

come and go in periods of time where the individual is experiencing the symptoms then followed

by down time where symptoms might not come up at all. When the symptoms hit, they can make

daily activities very difficult because of the discomfort and frequent trips to the restroom. There

are several environmental factors that can trigger ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease such as

the person’s diet and stress (Taylor K. et al., 2018). Once someone develops one of these

diseases, they will have to live with it for the rest of their life. There isn’t a good way to deal

with ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease because they currently do not have any cures and the

drugs that suppress the effects are both expensive and come along with various side effects

(Klare, P. et al., n.d.). With the cons of the drugs for IBD researchers are turning towards

physical activity as a treatment for those who suffer with IBD. Physical activity improves many

functions in the body and is used as a relief method for stressors. Physical activity could be an

excellent treatment because the direct health benefits and reduction of stressors that trigger IBD

could keep the symptoms down improving the quality of life of the individuals that struggle with

it.
The Effect of Exercise on Quality of Life for Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patients 3

Personal Connection
I have a strong connection to this topic because of my career choice, personal medical

history, and hobbies. I plan on going to medical school to become a doctor and anything within

the medical realm is relevant to my future career. I’m even thinking of becoming a

gastrointestinal (GI) specialist so any issues like this that effect the digestive system are within

the specialty that I plan on going into. I want to be a gastrointestinal specialist because I have

personal experience with a disease that has made me meet with different GI specialists to have it

taken care of. The main reason that this is connected to me is because I live with ulcerative

colitis which is an inflammatory bowel disease. This disease caused a major shift in my life. I

developed this disease suddenly when I was a junior in high school. At the time I was taken to

the emergency room for excessive blood loss and the doctors had no idea what the cause was at

the time. The blood loss went on for a week and reduced me down to 90 lbs. from 155 lbs.; they

eventually figured out that I had ulcerative colitis and had to remove my large intestine in order

to save me. After that I spent 2 months in the hospital recovering. They fixed my immediate

problem, but I still have to live with ulcerative colitis for the rest of my life. My life works a little

bit differently now because I have occasional flair ups of my ulcerative colitis that I need to

watch for, and there are certain foods and activities that I have to avoid or be careful with.

Ulcerative colitis flairs can make daily life tough so if there was way to reduce the amount of

flairs I get or reduce the effects of the flairs without having to take drugs I would really like to

know so I could improve my quality of life. If physical activity and exercise improve the quality

of life for people with ulcerative colitis, then it would be very beneficial to me because I enjoy

exercising. I have been very physically active throughout my life and I didn’t let the events with

my ulcerative colitis stop me from exercising. During my 2 months of recovery in the hospital,

for the first month I wasn’t able to move from my bed without the help of nurses but I really
The Effect of Exercise on Quality of Life for Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patients 4

wanted to get my strength back so as soon as I could I started walking as much as I could. I

started with building my way up to walking around the hospital room, then walking to the end of

the hall, and finally built up to being able to walk around the entire hospital. I achieved all of that

within month after practically being a skeleton and I didn’t stop once I released from the

hospital. I already greatly valued physical activity and exercise, but after not being able to be

physically active for month really taught me how important it was in my life. This research has a

lot of importance to me because it applies to my future career and its work could lead to direct

improvement in the quality of my life.

Method
I thought that finding articles for this topic would have been tough but by using the

school resources it made finding the articles fairly easy. I first went about it by going to the

university’s library page to search using the data bases. Initially searching for the articles was

easy because all I had to do was type into the single search box at the top to scan all the available

data bases. I did run into trouble at first because I first searched using the keywords “physical

activity” and “IBD” but all that would come up would be articles on physical activity and

irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), which is different that inflammatory bowel disease even though

they both effect the gastrointestinal tract. For a while I didn’t think I would be able to find any

good articles. I later decided to try to search using my specific condition, ulcerative colitis, as a

keyword. This didn’t produce many results. It only came up around 4 pages of results; however,

the few pages of articles that did come up were exactly what I was looking for. The first article

that I looked at wasn’t fit for my research paper even though it focused exactly on what my topic

was it just went too in-depth which made it extremely difficult to break down the information for

my paper. The next couple of articles I came across were perfect because they were very focused

on looking to see if exercise improved quality of life in people that deal with inflammatory
The Effect of Exercise on Quality of Life for Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patients 5

bowel disease. Those articles also kept the information really easy to understand and presented

everything in a way that people with little knowledge on the subject can understand by avoiding

complicated terms and defining terms that they used. In-between the other two articles I used

there was an article that broke down the whole procedure very well and had an excellent study

design to see if exercise helped with inflammatory bowel disease. The only issue is that it was an

experimental study done on mice on a lab and I thought it would be best to just use studies that

humans directly. Overall finding articles for this research report was fairly easy given the library

resources and I only had trouble finding articles that had to do with my topic at the beginning of

the search.

Results
The first article looked to see if there was any correlation between physical activity and

the quality of life experienced by people with IBD. The researchers wanted to see if moderate to

vigorous physical activity would lead to a higher quality of life in the IBD patients. The study

had 242 participants that fully completed the study via online questionnaires. They used a

demographics survey to gain background information on the participants and they also used 3

forced choice surveys. One survey told varying intensities for physical activity by 1-4 number

values where the sum told their overall intensity, another survey asked questions on how they

feel mentally and physically, and the last survey told the resilience using a scale form 0-40 where

the higher the score meant the more resilient. They took all the data and created multiple linear

regression models to analyze the data. The findings showed that the more time per week

moderate to vigorous physical activities were engaged in the higher the quality of life was for

those with IBD (Taylor K. et al., 2018). The next article was on how a 10-week exercise program

effected quality of life in IBD patients. This study followed a group of 30 participants that had

mild to moderate IBD. The participants were randomly assigned half and half to either the group
The Effect of Exercise on Quality of Life for Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patients 6

that runs 3 times week at a moderate intensity or the control group that didn’t exercise at all.

They measured the participants’ BMI and inflammation status to see if there were any

improvements. The results showed that inflammation went down significantly in the

experimental group compared to the control group (Klare, P. et al., n.d.). The third article studied

if exercise would keep away relapse for patients that were already in remission. The study

included around 1300 participants with Crohn’s and around 550 with ulcerative colitis. They

used an internet study cohort along with a survey. The survey worked off of scale they developed

to calculate the score that showed the intensity level of their physical activity. The survey also

included a demographic information, questions about their quality of life, and medication that

they used. The results showed that with the higher intensity level of exercise the less likely it was

to relapse into symptoms of IBD (Jones, P. et al., n.d.). The final article looked to see if exercise

with IBD effected the symptoms and reduced the chance of developing colon cancer and bone

density issues later on in life. Those with IBD have a high risk of developing colon cancer and

bone density issues. This study showed that moderate exercise can be helpful in reducing some

symptoms of IBD and that it doesn’t have any negative effects on IBD (Bilski, J. et al., 2016).

Conclusion
Overall each of the four studies showed that moderate-vigorous exercise is very

beneficial to those suffering with IBD by reducing the symptoms and keeping future issues

away. With this knowledge the gastrointestinal community can provide a way for IBD patients to

avoid getting worse and improve their quality of life without the use of expensive drugs.

Moderate-vigorous exercise is shown to beneficial for already healthy individuals and it only

shows improvements in many types of diseases. Physical activity is shown to be excellent

treatment method and preventative method in the medical realm.

The Effect of Exercise on Quality of Life for Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patients 7

References

Bilski, J., Mazur-Bialy, A., Brzozowski, B., Magierowski, M., Zahradnik-Bilska, J., Wójcik, D.,

… Brzozowski, T. (2016). Can exercise affect the course of inflammatory bowel disease?

Experimental and clinical evidence. Pharmacological Reports: PR, 68(4), 827–836.

https://doi-org.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/10.1016/j.pharep.2016.04.009

Jones, P. D., Kappelman, M. D., Martin, C. F., Chen, W., Sandler, R. S., & Long, M. D. (n.d.).

Exercise Decreases Risk of Future Active Disease in Patients with Inflammatory Bowel

Disease in Remission. INFLAMMATORY BOWEL DISEASES, 21(5), 1063–1071. https://doi-

org.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/10.1097/MIB.0000000000000333

Klare, P. ( 1 ), Nigg, J. ( 1 ), Krug, A. B. ( 1,4 ), Mair, S. ( 1 ), Thoeringer, C. K. ( 1 ), Schmid, R.

M. ( 1 ), … Halle, M. ( 3 ). (n.d.). The impact of a ten-week physical exercise program on

health-related quality of life in patients with inflammatory bowel disease: A prospective

randomized controlled trial. Digestion, 91(3), 239–247. https://doi-

org.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/10.1159/000371795

Taylor, K., Scruggs, P. W., Balemba, O. B., Wiest, M. M., & Vella, C. A. (2018). Associations

between physical activity, resilience, and quality of life in people with inflammatory bowel

disease. European Journal Of Applied Physiology, 118(4), 829–836. https://doi-

org.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/10.1007/s00421-018-3817-z