Life revolves around our eating habits. A proper diet and physical exercise helps to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Though many people are aware of this, they still lack understanding it and are unable to motivate themselves in actually doing it.
This condition becomes a bit severe in the case of patients suffering from Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). It is an autoimmune disease in which the body attacks its own joint tissue. Exercise is one of the beneficial treatments for this disease but it also can cause pain, joint damage, and other cardiovascular dysfunctions and thus also associates fear with itself.
Maura Iverson, the head of the Physical Therapy department at Northeastern University discussed the relation between RA and physical exercise. The disease and activities correlate and also distinguish among very active and inactive patients. In conducting research, one observes that people who have an increased percentage of the disease are less motivated to do the exercises.
Among many factors, social support is an important factor as an active patient will stay active and will encourage other inactive patients to exercise. Patients with RA who exercised regularly called it their drug. They took it as a positive outlook and not a form of medication.
It also lends a sense of independence and autonomy where the patients who do not exercise are not physically independent as compared to the ones who do. It is important and necessary to enter a state of mind that warns and describes to us the importance of exercise and also pushes us to follow it. One also witnesses the improvement of physical and mental health.
Iverson again states that this state of mind will be achieved only when one surrounds themselves with people they love and like and also the ones who constantly encourage them to be fit, fine, and healthy.
Akshara Palshetkar