The Importance of Proper Rest and Recovery Days When Living with Autoimmune Disease

Here at Autoimmune Strong, we believe in the importance of “training for everyday life”. The idea here is that we need to exercise and train our bodies for the physical demands of our day to day activities, just like an athlete would train for the physical demands of his or her job.

As a coach and personal trainer who specializes in working with people with autoimmune disease, I encourage folks to do a little bit of exercise each day, consistently throughout the week, so that we are able to increase our body’s strength, flexibility and mobility over time. The goal here is to gain strength, energy and physical capacity, so that the physical demands of running errands, playing with our kids or grandkids, or going for a walk doesn’t completely wipe us out. (If you want to know more about the concept of training for everyday life, you can learn more here)

When we think of strength training, we always think of the exercises. We think about what we need to do in order to get stronger. But in actuality, there are two components that are necessary for strength training: exercise and recovery. Exercise and recovery must go hand in hand in order for us to build the strength and energy that we need.

In the previous blog post, I talked about exercise. Here, I want to talk about rest and recovery. 

So many people think of resting as being lazy. As giving up. As not trying. This is a misperception, an incorrect notion. A body needing rest is not a weakness. It is an essential component of both exercise training and basic self-care.

In the same way that we need to exercise and train like an athlete to be able to handle the physical demands of life, we also need to take rest and recovery days, just like an athlete does. This is an important part of increasing strength and without rest and recovery, we completely deplete ourselves of energy, which ultimately lands us back on the couch with a flare… and nobody wants that. 

So, let’s go deeper into why we need to alternate our exercise days with rest and recovery days.

Think of the body like a machine- like a car for example. We have a certain amount of energy available to us, just like a car has in it’s gas tank. When we exercise or have a demanding day (either physically or mentally) our body uses up energy. Now, when you use up the gas in your gas tank, what do you do? You head to the gas station and refill. Yet we don’t often do this with our bodies. We often push our bodies day after day without replenishing the energy stores. Eventually we are going to end up with an empty tank, which is where the exhaustion, fatigue and flare-up comes in.  

The tricky thing with the human body is that we have something that a car does not- a back-up energy source. This makes it more difficult for us to tell if we have depleted our main energy source. Here’s what happens. We deplete our main stores of energy, and our body begins to send messages that it needs recovery time. These messages can look like exhaustion, sugar cravings, a bad mood, body aches, a headache, joint pain, and other such symptoms. Typically, these symptoms are slight and somewhat easy to ignore- and they also can trigger our backup energy source. If we keep ignoring those exhaustion signals and push through, we often experience “a second wind” which helps us power through the physical and emotional demands of the day. That second wind comes from adrenaline, and while it feels like energy (and often feels like a really good, productive, super-human kind of energy)- it’s actually a sign that we are so depleted that we will soon crash out. We only have a small amount of adrenaline reserves and once they are gone, that’s when the real flare sets in and we experience true exhaustion and other uncomfortable symptoms. 

So, factoring in rest and recovery days are very important- even if you think you don’t need them. We need to rest and recover BEFORE the situation gets desperate and our body calls upon adrenaline to come in for backup. 

This isn’t just important for restoring your energy levels, it’s also important for muscular recovery. Our muscle fibers break down during movement and that’s actually how they get strong- as they break down, they have to re-build, and as they re-build, they knit themselves together in a stronger, more durable way. If we don’t rest, then the body continues to break down without moving into it’s re-build state, which is not a good thing. Our rest days give our muscles the time to recover and re-build and create strength. 

Now- this is important point. A rest day doesn’t just mean taking a rest from your daily exercise routine. This means taking a true rest and recovery day, from all things demanding.

Jenessa, an Autoimmune Strong member, shared this on the members only Facebook page and I think it covers this topic nicely: 

Yesterday (day 7) was the kind of day I used to think of as a rest day, back when I started AIS:  a day when I didn’t do AIS exercises because I needed to do too many other physical things that day. I’ve realized that that isn’t really a rest day, since I’m not resting, I’m just busy! So today I’m going to take a real rest day.

A rest day is not a recovery day simply because you are not doing exercise. It actually needs to be a day when you slow down and give your body time to recover. 

This is especially true if we have had a very busy week- whether it’s busy with stressful things or happy things- the busy-ness still uses up energy that we need to restore. So, if there is something different about the week, like a birthday event or a work deadline or a trip of some kind- I do not recommend pushing forward, and I encourage you to take extra rest days until the big thing passes. Any event can cause stress- even happy ones! And so we want to manage your stress levels and keep the demands on your body in check until this event passes. 

Hopefully this helps give you extra insight into when and why we need extra rest days, and how to make that decision for yourself. There is no badge for busy-ness and pushing through, our job is to give our body what it needs so it can replenish and restore itself, so we can continue living the life we want. 

There are going to be some weeks where you need a little extra rest and recovery. I hope that this blog gives you permission to take those extra days when you need them and gives you the ability to give yourself some grace, love and understanding on those harder days. Rest days are self-love days, just like exercise days. They go together hand in hand. 

Autoimmune Strong is an online exercise program designed specifically FOR people living with chronic illness, BY a personal trainer who lives with multiple autoimmune diseases herself. Click here to learn more about Autoimmune Strong.