Steroids and working out: your experience

yirara

edit: this is not about illegal drugs, but medication and their influence on sports performance.

I had my gallbladder removed last week Monday. All went well and I was fit enough again quickly, if the anesthesia hadn't annoyed a nerve in my throat resulting in endless cough. I'm currently on corticosteroids after trying everything doctors could think of to stop the endless cough for a week without success. So this works, and I'll be weaning them off from tomorrow.

Now, it seems that the longer I take them the worse my sports 'performance' gets. Performance in '' because I'm not doing a lot at the moment, basically only doing a bit of inline skating. But yeah, my muscles feel so heavy and so soft, my tummy sticks out instead of having it's normal 2-4 pack, I'm quickly out of breath as well. I certainly look and feel a lot different than right after surgery, and it ain't better. I'm going on summer vacation at the end of the month and the plan was to do a few nice mountain hikes. But if this doesn't get better I'll have a problem.

Can anyone share their experience with this stuff, especially in relationship with sports?

lorrpb

You’re 10 days post-surgery! It takes awhile to recover, even with laparoscopic surgery. You probably shouldn’t even do anything too strenuous yet because the internal wounds haven’t completely healed. It will likely take 4-6 weeks for full recovery. This is normal for surgery and not related to the steroid meds.
What did your doctor tell you about recovery and activity level?

glovepuppet

If course you feel heavy and soft, you've just had surgery!

yirara

lorrpb wrote: »

You’re 10 days post-surgery! It takes awhile to recover, even with laparoscopic surgery. You probably shouldn’t even do anything too strenuous yet because the internal wounds haven’t completely healed. It will likely take 4-6 weeks for full recovery. This is normal for surgery and not related to the steroid meds.
What did your doctor tell you about recovery and activity level?

Do what I feel like doing, only not go swimming for two weeks. The swelling is long gone, no more pain. But just walking through the supermarket feels difficult. I didn't even feel so bad directly after surgery.

I have some experience with inhaled steroids from a few years ago, and the same happened, if not as bad.

aokoye

While part of the issue might be the steroids, I suspect a far larger contributor is the fact that you had abdominal surgery 10 days ago. Was this surgery done laparoscopically or via an open incision?

After some quick googling, everything that I'm reading that seems reputable says 2 weeks minimum in terms of getting back to exercise that is more than casual walking.