This French tennis player suffers from a disease that is very debilitating on the tennis courts.
Being a top athlete is already a difficult daily task. But when you have an illness, it makes the performance even more spectacular. We notably saw it a few weeks ago during the Paris Olympics with Gabriela Dabrowski, third in the world in doubles and bronze medalist in mixed although she is suffering from cancer.
Equally impressive in terms of resilience, the Frenchman Alexandre Müller, recent winner of the ATP 250 tournament in Hong Kong, suffers from an incurable disease which is particularly debilitating on the tennis courts. This is Crohn’s disease. This disease is an attack on the digestive tract which is part of chronic inflammatory bowel diseases. Most of the time, it causes inflammation and thickening of the wall, as well as ulcers and, sometimes, cracks and perforations. The symptoms are varied and very disabling with abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, weight loss.
Problem for Alexandre Müller and all people affected by this disease: it triggers unpredictable attacks whose frequency and severity vary depending on the patient. Unfortunately, although certain treatments exist, they do not completely cure the disease, but simply provide relief from daily life.
“I’m always looking for little tips that can help me, but it’s a disease that is not easy to manage every day with high-level sport,” recognized the Frenchman. “Even if there are training sessions that I cannot do or matches that I lose because of this illness, I try to keep only the positive.
In total, in France, there are around 300,000 patients suffering from this chronic inflammatory bowel disease. A few months ago, researchers published a study in cell, evoking a new type of treatment against one of the proteins produced by the body (interferon lambda) which would prevent wounds in the intestine from closing.