Stress Relief for IBS
Having some level of stress and anxiety is normal for anybody. After all, no one lives a completely stress-free life. You don’t mind a bit of stress, but since your irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) symptoms became more intense, more frequent and longer in duration, it seems your stress and anxiety have been on the rise. Now you have two problems instead of one.
As time goes on, it is beginning to feel like your stress makes your IBS worse and your IBS makes your anxiety worse. This cycle cannot end well for you. You need to take steps to prevent and manage your IBS symptoms while you take steps to prevent and manage your anxiety and stress.
Follow these tips to achieve a life with more happiness and less stress, anxiety and IBS. Here’s how:
1. Find a Good Doctor
With IBS, there can be a good amount of confusion with your diagnosis. You may think that you have a more serious condition like ulcerative colitis or Chrohn’s disease. If you have a trustworthy doctor, he or she can rule out these other conditions, which allows you to focus more on IBS, what it means and what you can do about it.
If you do not trust your doctor, you will have sleepless nights worrying about missed symptoms, new tests or overlooked lab results that lead you to believe something more is going on with your body. This doubt will steadily raise your stress until you reach a breaking point.
There aren't many controlled studies on exercise for IBS, but there’s a good deal of evidence to suggest that activity can change things for the better.
