Since childhood, we’ve all been told about the health benefits of exercise — it helps you maintain your weight, increases your energy levels and helps to improve your overall well-being. For some, though, exercising is not as easy as going to the gym or running on a treadmill.
Patients with HIV, for example, can benefit from regular exercise, but must understand the challenges of exercising with HIV and most importantly, how to safely overcome them.
Challenges
We’re not going to call these “problems” with exercising, because that word implies that there’s something wrong with exercising with HIV, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Instead, we’ll call them challenges: Challenges can always be overcome.
The most common challenges that exercising individuals with HIV face include:
- Dehydration
- Fatigue
- Injury (and subsequent healing time)
- Foot or leg pain (Neuropathy)
Are you seeing a pattern here? That may be because these are challenges that everyone faces while exercising.
How to Overcome
Now that you know what to expect while exercising with HIV, the biggest question becomes how to overcome these challenges so you can experience all of the benefits of exercise without any of the potential negative side effects.
Step one is to prepare yourself — don’t walk into the gym and simply head to the first exercise machine that looks neat. Instead, talk to your doctor to find out what the best options are for exercise for your particular health and fitness levels. Make sure to include both cardio and strength training as part of the workout you plan with your doctor. Cardio is great for improving overall cardiovascular health, but strength training will really help improve muscle and bone density, as well as helping patients adapt to lipodystrophy, or the redistribution of body fat, by replacing that fat with muscle.
Step two is to take it slow. You might be tempted to jump right into a heavy-duty workout regimen right out of the gate, but all you’ll do is hurt yourself and make it harder to work out as time goes on. Start out slow, with 20- to 30-minute workouts at a time, and slowly work your way up to longer and more intense workouts.
If you’re worried about injury, consider low-impact workouts like swimming, yoga or underwater treadmills. These treadmills provide a steady cardio workout without the high impact requirements of running on a regular treadmill or down the sidewalk.
Things to Remember
Don’t push yourself too hard. If you’re sick or your symptoms flare up, skip your workout and resume your exercises when you’re feeling better. Exercising while you’re feeling ill can actually negatively affect your immune response, making it more difficult to recover.
Also, don’t let yourself get discouraged if you don’t see the sort of progress you’re looking for right away. It can take weeks to see any sort of results or change from starting a workout regimen and your friends and family will likely notice any changes in weight or muscle mass well before you do.
Don’t focus on how you look or the results that you’re hoping to see. Instead, focus on how you feel, because when you’re starting an exercise plan, your health and how you feel after your workout is really all that matters.