Graded Exercise - one of the triad of recommended treatments. My thoughts

Here's an excerpt from an email I recently sent to a friend who is about to start graded exercise therapy...

"I was always very sceptical and threatened by the idea of graded exercise and so I wanted to tell you my experience of it in case you were feeling the same. Sorry if this email seems very nosy but no one really knows how this blummin illness works - even people who've been there and so I always feel its important to stick together!

Anyway. Graded exercise... I always felt threatened by the idea as I worried that it was a 'nice' way of saying 'get off your arse you're not ill just forgotten how to get on with things'. Then I realised that I was already on a self-imposed graded exercise programme that I feel has been remarkably beneficial.

I think it gets sold badly. They sell it as a 'cure'. What they should do is explain that by making sure your body is in the best physical shape possible you can make the most of what little energy you have. I think for some people this ends up seemingly to 'cure' them as perhaps they were simply managing their energy poorly before. By starting with yoga, then swimming and progressively building those up by stupidly small increments I got so much better. Right now I am very ill again but I know that carrying on swimming even if its a tiny amount and keeping my body fit I will stand a better chance of pulling out of this slump. When you look at it scientifically it makes a lot of sense. Poorly conditioned muscles take more energy to get going than well conditioned ones. So if you have less energy to start off with you're going to be wasting a lot of it on getting your body kickstarted.

I just wish they would explain it like that to people. Whenever a medical professional's talked about graded exercise to me I've felt like they're being condescending and I've felt I've needed to protect myself from them. I call it the hedgehog reflex. Retreat and resist. But graded exercise is a good thing. I've just had to do it myself because I've found it hard to trust any doctor besides my gp and a psychologist I once used to see.

Sorry for all that! I just wanted to offer you my thoughts incase you were as dubious about it as I once was and hope that this treatment centre can help you get a little more from life if not a lot more.

I've been ill 11 years now and I've learnt one thing. That there is no cure but hundreds of little thing we can do to manage the illness and build our energy up to get the most from ourselves. Even when we're in the worst of slumps/relapses like I am now!

Sorry again! This has been a bit of a soapbox rant! Please don't be too pissed off or scared to email me back. I am capable of listening too!"