The standard weight training program can help in treating rheumatoid arthritis, revealed researchers through a new study. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a disease which affects joints and more sever thing that is less known to people is it also sternly reduces muscle mass and strength. This happens even among sufferers whose ailment is coped well.
Patients with the condition are frequently provided gentle home exercises to practice that prevent their joints from stiffening and becoming painful. Exercise with high intensity can play a significant role besides medication. To test the effect of weight training program research team from Arthritis Research UK carried out a study over twenty-eight participants.
They divide the participants into two groups, one group was asked to do standard weight training for twenty-four weeks while other did less exhausting regular home exercise program. It was found that group doing weigh training program had improved physical function by twenty to thirty percent and their strength had also improved up to one hundred and twenty percent.
They also found that strenuous exercise raised the levels of insulin like growth factor (1GH-1) and insulin like binding protein. These two encourage the development of muscles, bones and cartilages. Muscle loss was the main involvement to the disability linked with the ailment due to which walking, carrying, lifting, climbing stairs are blighted, said study author Dr Andrew Lemmey.
He added that if you can reinstate muscle then strength and functional capacity will also be reinstated. The sufferers who were mainly women in their fifty had the ailment for up to a decade, had reacted well. The developments in function were so important that subsequent training these patients with established RA (rheumatoid arthritis) were performing better than healthy individuals of the same age and sex.