Ananthakrishnan N. Unresolved conundrum of the role of physical activity in inflammatory bowel disease: What next? World J Gastroenterol 2024; 30(21): 2744-2747 [PMID: 38899327 DOI: 10.3748/wjg.v30.i21.2744]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Nilakantan Ananthakrishnan, FRCS, MS, Emeritus Professor, Department of Surgery, Sri Balaji Vidyapeeth, Pondy Cuddalore Main Road, Pillaiyarkuppam, Pondicherry 607402, India. n.ananthk@gmail.com
Research Domain of This Article
Gastroenterology & Hepatology
Article-Type of This Article
Editorial
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World J Gastroenterol. Jun 7, 2024; 30(21): 2744-2747 Published online Jun 7, 2024. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v30.i21.2744
Unresolved conundrum of the role of physical activity in inflammatory bowel disease: What next?
Nilakantan Ananthakrishnan
Nilakantan Ananthakrishnan, Department of Surgery, Sri Balaji Vidyapeeth, Pondicherry 607402, India
Author contributions: As single author I have contributed to conceiving of the idea, collecting references, writing the editorial and all parts of the article.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Nilakantan Ananthakrishnan, FRCS, MS, Emeritus Professor, Department of Surgery, Sri Balaji Vidyapeeth, Pondy Cuddalore Main Road, Pillaiyarkuppam, Pondicherry 607402, India. n.ananthk@gmail.com
Received: March 1, 2024 Revised: April 24, 2024 Accepted: May 15, 2024 Published online: June 7, 2024 Processing time: 94 Days and 1.1 Hours
Abstract
There is considerable controversy on the role of physical activity in irritable bowel disease (IBD) since published reports are conflicting. It is well known that there is known relapse with specific treatment in IBD. This, in addition to onset of extraintestinal symptoms creates a need to think of alternate approaches. In this context, the current article describes the need of a multi-institutional study with standard protocol of physical activity for documenting its effect on both the primary disease and the extra alimentary manifestations. This paper also points out the possibility of using adjuvant complementary medicine such as yoga, whose effects have been documented in other diseases like irritable bowel syndrome. A third approach could be to focus on the intestinal dysbiosis in IBD and concentrate on research on restoring the microbial flora to normal, to see whether the extra-intestinal symptoms are alleviated.
Core Tip: A multi institutional study has been suggested and the parameters defined to finally develop strong evidence for the use of complemetary measures for management of extralimentary symptoms of inflammatory bowel diseases such as depression, anxiety, stress, fatigue, poor quality of life etc.