Watch the recording: Health and Fitness webinar

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is an important aspect of living with conditions such as aplastic anaemia. With fatigue being such a debilitating problem for people with aplastic anaemia, you may have wondered how you can exercise effectively and safely, without making your fatigue worse.

On 9th February 2023, we hosted a health and fitness webinar, where Shana Tribe, a Specialist Rehabilitation Physiotherapist at Kings College NHS Foundation Trust shared tips and techniques for you to manage and maintain a healthy lifestyle, adapted to the challenges of living with aplastic anaemia

The King’s Cancer Rehabilitation service was established through the covid-19 pandemic period but it has been successfully funded and expanded to look at prehabilitation in both pancreatic cancer and haematology (pre-bone marrow transplant). The Pre-BMT physiotherapy pathway has been referred over 100 patients and the service also support haematology patients with their rehabilitation needs thus encountering many aplastic anaemia patients at different stages of their treatment journey. 

Shana is currently the Research officer Association of Chartered Physiotherapists in Oncology and Palliative Care. She is passionate about prehabilitation, health economics and working towards integration of exercise oncology being part of the standard of care for all cancer patients. 

Here are Shana's Top Tips for maintaining a healthy lifestyle with aplastic anaemia:

1. Timing is everything - if you receive regular transfusions try to plan your aerobic activity after these occur. We should all be aiming for 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week and this can be broken down into short sessions of 10 minutes or longer sessions when you are less breathless and less fatigued post transfusion

2. Eat Well - make sure you are maintaining a healthy body weight and weight loss is not promoted when undergoing active treatment. Make sure you are eating enough protein to support your muscle mass. A healthy, unprocessed and nutritious diet can help reduced the impact of treatment side-effects and to fight treatment-related fatigue.

3. Sleep Hygiene - sleep disturbances or poor pre/post sleep habits can impact on both our energy and health. Hospital admissions can affect our sleep cycle and good sleep does not come naturally to everyone. It takes training, practice, and some controlled recovery periods (otherwise known as naps). Try or borrow a wearable technology device to measure/track your sleep if you are concerned.