The Right Exercise to Relieve Arthritis

Achy muscles and joints don’t exactly inspire movement, but moving can provide relief within minutes and may reduce pain in the future. According to physical therapist Esau Baqi, DPT, Inpatient Rehabilitation Services, Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, exercise helps maintain strength, range of motion, and flexibility for the joints that are affected, and also for those that are not affected.

“Physical activity can stave off some of the repercussions that do occur with osteoarthritis or any other type of arthritis,” says Baqi. “With exercise you maintain your mobility, and overall that helps you get ahead of the disease process.”

A well-conditioned body also is better equipped to handle painful acute episodes when you can’t move around as much. But, it’s vital to move correctly to prevent damage.

The Essence of Mind-Body Benefits

Good biomechanics is extremely important for everyone, but especially for people with arthritis. This means paying close attention to how your bones are aligned and whether or not you are “sinking” into joints, rather than using muscles to hold your posture. To avoid injury, it’s crucial to use the right muscles to support and move bones. Yoga has been shown to be especially helpful to those with osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis because it offers a trifecta of useful techniques: mindfulness, breathing, and proper alignment. With mindfulness, practitioners are asked to pay close attention to how their bodies feel and are taught what to do to make positions more comfortable with correct alignment. Breathing is used to both relax and support physical effort. Many classes begin and end with breathing exercises: first to slow down the mind, then to prepare for and execute a movement, and at the end to witness how differently the body and mind feel after class. Concentrating on breathing also reduces anxiety, which is a very useful skill during times disease flair-ups.

Yoga is mostly a series of held positions sometimes linked together in a flow sequence. To avoid injury, how to do each position correctly should be a part of every yoga class. A highly skilled instructor can help you better understand how to do this, especially if you are a beginner. For example, one common postural cue is to align your knee over your ankle during lunge positions (see above example). If it’s too far forward, such as beyond your foot, the knee joint is compromised as the degree of bend is in excess of 90 degrees. That position can overload the joint.

In general, Baqi advises people with arthritis to avoid end ranges on movements. “Listen to your body’s pain threshold,” he says. “The goal is to make sure every joint has normal range of motion, but the disease process can limit that. Back off if it hurts because that’s your limit.”

Works with RA Drug Treatment

According to a recent study published in Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, eight weeks of intensive yoga practice significantly decreased the severity of physical and psychological symptoms in patients with active rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a debilitating chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease. The study was a mind-body intervention randomized trial (with parallel active and control groups) and was designed to analyze the effects of practicing 120 minutes of yoga, five days a week for eight weeks on 72 RA patients. Both the test and control groups were simultaneously undergoing routine drug therapies (disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs, DMARDs). In the yoga group, marked improvements were seen in the levels of certain inflammatory biomarkers (measurable indicators of a disease state) and in functional status. According to the researchers, these outcomes demonstrate yoga’s preventive and rehabilitative potential for achieving optimal health in people with RA.

Increasing Circulation Speeds Relief

Cardiovascular activities (aerobics) are those which accelerate blood flow—delivering needed oxygen and nutrients throughout the body. Water-based exercise classes and swimming are wonderful aerobic choices, as they decrease impact on joints, but any activity that raises the heart rate is fine. Baqi advocates for walking for its cardiovascular, mobility, and balance benefits. “If you’re walking, all systems are functioning pretty well,” he says. Of course, it’s important to move briskly to increase the heart rate and to do so for at least 30 minutes five times per week, according to National Institutes of Health exercise guidelines. Doing any exercise without good form, including walking, can make matters worse. A physical therapist (PT)can assess your walk (and other exercise movements) to ensure you’re not compensating in way that can hurt your joints. Of course, people with arthritis often experience discomfort, especially at the start of an exercise session. Baqi says pain is relative and needs to be understood in the context of your arthritis. “Don’t be afraid of pain,” he says. “It’s part of the disease process. A PT can help you better assess how much pain should be tolerated and when rest is best.”

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