The motion is the lotion.
Among physical therapists, this is a familiar saying, referring to the healing power of movement. The therapeutic benefits of motion, or physical activity, are especially powerful for people living with rheumatoid arthritis. While joint pain and swelling can make any movement excruciating, becoming sedentary can lead to even more challenging health issues than the disease itself.
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Common Fitness Obstacles for People With Rheumatoid Arthritis
“A lot of patients are reluctant to [try] movement,” says Brittany Ferri, an occupational therapist who works with people with RA. “There’s a big fear component. They’re afraid they may lose what little motion they do have and injure themselves. If that happens, they’ll lose independence," explains Ferri, who is the founder of Simplicity of Health, a fitness consultancy company. But, she says, there’s lots of evidence to show that exercise is good for those with RA, because movement helps decrease the inflammation that comes with rheumatoid arthritis.
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Activity Trackers May Help You Move, and Prove How Exercise Helps You
No doubt you’ve heard (and heard and heard) from your own healthcare providers about the value of exercise. Therapists, healthcare professionals, and patient advocates are continually looking for ways to help keep people with arthritis active and engaged in regular physical activity.
"While it may be very difficult to exercise with chronic pain and stiffness from RA, patients who stay active, incorporating exercise into their routine, often experience improvements in quality of life, functionality, and reduced fatigue and pain,” says Shilpa Venkatachalam, PhD, MPH, director of patient-centered research for the Global Healthy Living Foundation. “If one of the many fitness apps or trackers available help patients to stay motivated and engaged with activity, then they are a good tool.”
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Activity Trackers Really Work, Research Shows
Data suggests that these apps and wearable fitness trackers can indeed help boost your workout, especially if you’re using devices with goal-setting features. An analysis published in December 2020 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine explored 28 studies involving 7,454 people. Results showed that using popular digital physical-activity trackers was linked to users moving an extra 1,850 steps per day compared with those who didn’t use the tools (that's nearly a mile more).
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Tracking, in General, Is a Smart Strategy for People With RA
Today, more and more apps are compatible, giving patients the ability to share information with other trackers. Dr. Venkatachalam, who lives with RA, also recommends that arthritis patients track their overall disease to better understand how daily activities impact their disease management. “The ArthritisPower app can track a person's pain tolerance, fatigue, or experience of other symptoms. In the app, you can even note the initiation of a new fitness regime,” she says, noting that the combined information from several apps is incredibly useful to doctors and patients when discussing how to manage arthritis over the long-term. (Venkatachalam is a co–principal investigator of the ArthritisPower Patient-Powered Research Network, an initiative from CreakyJoints, an advocacy and education organization for people with arthritis.)
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Easy-to-Use Trackers to Help You Get Started
We consulted the experts above, along with CreakyJoints members and individuals living with arthritis, about the activity trackers they say can help people with RA exercise despite symptoms. If staying more active is a new goal, the following apps can help motivate you, monitor your progress, and provide usual information to your doctors and therapists about what is working best to help you manage your RA symptoms.
Wokamon
Stepz
Your friends may have expensive activity trackers, but the Stepz app is a free, simple way to count your daily steps, flights climbed, mileage covered, and calories burned. The app uses your cell phone’s sensors to do all the measuring for you. The app can create a default goal of 10,000 steps for the day, or it can set an automatic goal based on a slightly higher level than your weekly average number of steps.
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Pacer
This free app tracks your walks, runs, and cycling rides and provides you with your number of steps, calories burned, mileage, and activity time. It also displays routes that have been crowdsourced by its users around the world to give you new ideas for activities and to help you connect with other members of walking communities, such as EverWalk, distance swimmer Diana Nyad's group that organizes walks around the country.
5 Minute Yoga
If a whole yoga class seems too daunting, try this excuse-proof free app. Every day, you’ll get a new sequence, a photo that shows the pose and a description of how to do it. Then, a countdown clock will let you know how long to hold the pose or position. After five new poses, you’re done!
Sworkit
Google Fit
In addition to counting your steps, Google Fit has a few motivating tools, such as awarding you “Heart Points” for each minute of slightly more intense activity, like walking your dog at a quicker pace. It also keeps track of your movement time and helps you set weekly target goals.
Apple Health
For those with iPhones, Apple Health is a free app that acts as a centralized hub for your health data. It keeps track of your steps per day, flights of stairs climbed, and mileage covered. You can also link it to other apps, such as Lose It! and MyFitnessPal, to keep tabs on your nutrition goals.
Editor’s Note: Lose It! is owned by the Everyday Health Group.