Absolute No-No's While Struggling With IBS Part 2

Note from IBS Boy: This is the second part of the "Absolute No-No's..." series in which I talk about an assortment of things that you should not do if you have IBS. 

In part 1 of my series, I talked about the dietary problems I face daily with this dreaded disease. For today's post, I diverse from the food aspect and will focus on the physical activities - some of these being mandatory tasks, while others are optional. Although abstaining from certain foods is tough, I find it even harder to "shy away" from specific physical actives that I enjoy since I'm a teenage boy, after all.

Activities that I MUST stay away from: 

• Biking - As much as I love bicycling, I unfortunately cannot ride my bike without feeling sicker than I was before. I hypothesize that the heat of summer correlating with the rapid leg motion it takes to turn the pedals on the bike make my sickness worse. It seems that constant pounding is not good for my stomach.
• Lawn Mowing - Mowing the lawn is one of my least favorite around the house jobs; I'm not going to lie. Add an awful mix of nausea and weakness to that, and you will experience what I feel when I mow the lawn in the blazing heat. Unfortunately, someone has to mow the lawn, and it's me. 
• Marathon Running - I've never been a long distance runner, so I'm not too mad about this activity being on the disabled list. Actually, it's been on the back burner for years now. I'm glad I finally have an excuse to not run.
• Swimming - I enjoy swimming, a lot. So, this is one of those hard ones to give up. Believe it or not, I still swim about an hour per day even though it causes me pain. It's just too darn addicting to give up...
• Weed Pulling - Seeing that weed pulling is my least favorite chore of all time, I can live with the fact that I have a reasonable reason for not doing it. After all, you wouldn't want the IBS Boy to feel bad when he works, now would you?

  There are some physical activities that cause my sickness to flare, but are not necessarily as bad as the ones listed above. Almost all physical events have some sort of affect on my body; some of them positive and some negative. Fortunately, IBS is not a disease that completely debilitates your body. It just debilitates and hinders things that you may or may not want hindered with.

The amazing, and great thing about IBS is the fact that you can live a virtually normal life with it. Most chronic diseases affect your daily life to the point of utter frustration. Not IBS. In fact, many celebrities have IBS and have managed to cope with it pretty well. 

Shannon Doherty, Marvin Bush (president's brother), Pres. Eisenhower, Pres. Kennedy, and Mary Ann Mobley all have/had IBS during the greater portion of their lives. President Kennedy was diagnosed with "the worst case of IBS ever recorded," and he still lived a normal life.

As you can tell, though, IBS does have a pretty significant and negative effect on the people who have it. And that is why I need your help. That is why I call you to my blog.