Study Reveals Most Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients Don't Exercise Enough

A common misconception surrounding rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is that it makes patients unable to perform most if not all physical activities including exercise. This is not the case, and in fact many medical professionals believe that not getting enough exercise will make the disease and its symptoms even worse.

A recent study looks at RA patients and their activity levels, and compares them with recommended activity levels set for RA patients by other medical professionals in the field.

In this article, we will look at the study and see why it’s important for RA patients. We will then go over a few tips to help RA patients exercise safely and efficiently. Lastly, we will go over some exercise regimen ideas that can be used by RA patients of any age.

The study

Researchers at the Arthritis College of Rheumatology used a longitudinal RA registry at a large tertiary care hospital to study 573 different patients with RA. The ages of the patients varied but the mean of all the patients was 61 years old, and all of the patients had been afflicted with RA for an average of approximately 19 years.

All of the patients had attended at least one annual registry visit and had to provide full physical activity data using a comprehensive questionnaire. The researchers looked at baseline and annual measures, including demographics, family and personal medical history, self-efficacy in disease management, quality of life, patient/physician assessments, physical function and self-reported physical activity. After these stats were recorded, researchers attempted to find the correlation between disease activity and minutes of vigorous physical activity using a logistic repeated-measures model.

We won't get into the specific statistical analyses made by the researchers, but they essentially found that most RA patients do not meet the recommended guidelines of 150 minutes of moderate activity or 75 minutes of vigorous physical activity per week. They also found a correlation between patients with more active RA and a failure to meet the recommended guidelines. This research presents a real problem for many RA patients, which is the fact that they don't get nearly enough exercise.

Why should RA patients exercise?

Everyone is told about the importance of exercise in living a healthy lifestyle. For RA patients, however, the perceived downsides to exercising may outweigh the potential benefits (that they know of). These downsides often include things like aggravated muscles, joint pain, being more prone to injuries, and overexertion. In reality, exercise for RA patients often has the opposite effect on most patients. They end up having stronger muscles, more relaxed and loose joints (meaning less pain), are less prone to injuries, and are less likely to lose their energy after any physical activity. Exercising for RA also has a lot of mental benefits for RA patients as it can be used to release dopamine to fight depression and can also calm and relax patients a suffering from anxiety. A proper exercise regimen also significantly lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease, which RA patients are already at a higher risk of developing due to their condition.

Read on to learn more about exercise ideas for RA patients and how they can best approach getting more movement into their lives.