Lifestyle
With the guidance of your doctor and other healthcare professionals, you can make lifestyle changes that will help you manage your RA:
- Physical activity to maintain strength
- Healthy eating to achieve and maintain a healthy weight
- Develop relaxation and coping skills to maintain a positive outlook
- Helps protect joints by strengthening the muscles around them. Strong muscles and tissues help support joints that have been weakened and damaged by RA.
- Physical activity recommended by your doctor, physiotherapist, or occupational therapist can help reduce pain and tiredness. It also helps you move around and generally makes you feel better.
Being overweight puts an extra burden on your joints (back, hips, knees, ankles, and feet).
If you are overweight, a balanced diet may help you achieve and maintain a healthy weight. Also, healthy eating contributes to giving you energy for your daily activities.
Relaxation can help reduce pain and help you cope. Try:
- Deep breathing exercises
- Listening to music
- Relaxation tapes
Goals
The Canadian Rheumatology Association (CRA) Guidelines recommend that the main target for treatment of RA should be clinical remission.
When remission is not possible, other goals of RA treatment are:
- Slowing down or stopping damage
- Preventing disability
- Improving quality of life
MEASURES OF RA
Your healthcare team will use different tools and methods to evaluate you and to monitor the effects of treatment on your RA:
- Examination of:
- Joints for swelling, redness and warmth
- Reflexes
- Muscle strength
- X-rays to help track the progression of RA in your joints over time
- Blood work (to look for inflammation in the blood)
- Erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR)
- C-reactive protein (CRP) mg/L