Many with rheumatoid arthritis are inactive, despite benefits of exercise
Regular exercise can be beneficial to people with rheumatoid arthritis, but a study finds that two out of five people with the disease may not be active at all.
The study, released Thursday in the journal Arthritis Care & Research, looked at how much physical activity was done over seven days by 176 adults age 23 to 86 who had rheumatoid arthritis. Instead of having the study participants report their activity, researchers had them wear accelerometers for a week, small devices that are fairly good measurements of physical activity and give a fuller picture of daily movement compared to pedometers.
That picture wasn’t too pretty--about 42% of the participants were deemed inactive, not doing any 10-minute stints of moderate to vigorous exercise during those seven days. The average amount of light activity done was 478 minutes per day, and the average amount of moderate to vigorous activity was 19 minutes per day.
Another component to the study was finding out why people weren’t exercising. The main obstacles, they discovered, were lack of strong motivation to be physically active and not strongly believing that exercise has benefits.
Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease that causes inflammation of the joints, sometimes resulting in limited movement and disability. Decades ago physicians recommended rest and medication, but more recent studies have shown that regular exercise can not only increase flexibility and movement, but reduce pain as well.
“Physical inactivity among [rheumatoid arthritis] patients is a public health concern,” said lead author Jungwha Lee in a news release. Lee, an assistant professor in the department of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, added, “Our results suggest that public health initiatives need to address the lack of motivation to exercise and promote the benefits of physical activity to reduce the prevalence of inactivity in those with [rheumatoid arthritis.]”
