Why Exercise Can Be So Draining for People With Rheumatoid Arthritis - The New York Times

Even a gentle session of leg lifts set off an exaggerated nervous system reaction in older women with rheumatoid arthritis.

In a groundbreaking new experiment involving older women and exercise, researchers found that even a gentle session of leg lifts set off an exaggerated nervous system reaction in those with rheumatoid arthritis.

But in recent years, researchers discovered that people with rheumatoid arthritis tend to have unusually twitchy sympathetic nervous systems.

Few of those earlier studies, though, looked at exercise, which also raises blood pressure and heart rates and changes nervous system reactions.

Turning to patients at the university’s rheumatology clinic, they recruited 33 older women with rheumatoid arthritis and another 10 older women without the condition, to serve as controls.

These reactions were most marked among the rheumatoid arthritis patients with the highest levels of inflammatory activity in their blood before the exercise, the researchers found.

Taken as a whole, the findings indicate that physical activity can be extra difficult for people with rheumatoid arthritis, because their nervous systems may overreact to relatively minor changes inside the muscles.

Of course, this study focused on older women with rheumatoid arthritis and a single session of very light resistance training.