How does exercise help fight rheumatoid arthritis?

How does exercise help fight rheumatoid arthritis?

Jerry Pryde, MD, MPH, CIME (Clinical Chief, Department of Rehabilitation, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center) gives expert video advice on: How are weight problems connected to diabetes? and more...

Rheumatoid arthritis is an immunological pathology that attacks the joints in the body. There are specific joints that are more at risk, but many joints of the body can be affected by R Rheumatoid arthritis A. It ultimately, over time, begins to degrade the tissues within a joint, and so the problems that people have with Rheumatoid arthritis is the pain within the joint and the limited range of motion. When the joints in your body become so limited by the pain and the loss of range motion then, of course, your physical activities really begin to suffer. And as you use the joints less and less because of the pain and the lack of range of motion, then they become even stiffer. It's a vicious cycle, so the goal of treatment is to stop that that spiral down cycle by trying to maintain some range of motion and trying to treat the pain and keeping the strength in the muscles that surround that joint. So that an exercise program needs to be designed very specifically for each individual with Rheumatoid arthritis. I would design a program differently from patient to patient depending on what joints are affected in that patient. But there is one thing that's always true in an exercise for somebody with Rheumatoid arthritis, and that is that it has to be exercise that is not impacting upon the joint.