Any folks out there active riders with RA (rheumatoid arthritis)?
 

A friend is interested in riding casually but has RA thats in remission, impacting knees and wrists. I have no idea what implications are on riding so I thought id poke around here and see if any of you fine folk have firsthand experience with it. They take meds (Humira if i recall, or maybe it was another one).

Thanks for any real world experience you can share.

Bumping this one back up...

Appreciate any info you can share, here or PM.

Thanks.

My wife has pretty bad RA and continues to ride. If you have specific questions, feel free to ask.

The main impacts on riding are...
She's very sensitive to fit overall. Between hand/wrist pain, and aches elsewhere, regular fits seem to help keep her comfy for longer rides.

Hand and wrist pain has her predominantly using electric shiftings and hydraulic brakes. Her road bike is still caliper brake, with the softest pads I could find. If it's damp, she takes the gravel bike with hydro discs.

Clipping in/out can be problematic - cleat position and tension needs to be dialed. We already moved to flats on her mountain bike, and I won't be surprised if her gravel bike gets swapped in the next few years.

Medication - I don't know the side-effects for Humira, wife is on something else. Check for things like bleeding, bruising, heart rhythm, anything else that would impact health/safety during sport (best to ask rheumatologist or pharmacist).

My wife's rheumatologist wants her exercising as much as she can reasonably tolerate. But overdoing it can be bad, and general fatigue can be worse, so take it slow and steady. Wife also does strength training, mostly lighter weights - working with a trainer who can adapt workout as different joints flare up helps.

Thank you very much, hugely appreciated. Esp. the part of consequences of overdoing it and taking things easy at first.

Yeah, I really can't emphasize that enough. RA can come with chronic fatigue, so it's a real balancing act to keep regular exercise without digging hole. For most of us, a hard week of riding just needs a solid day or two off, maybe an extra nap. For my wife, it can mean starting a flare-up (at worst) or needing a weekend off (and I mean really off - skipping some errands, sleeping in, etc).

I have RA (have had it for close to 20 years now). One of my knees and one wrist have permanent damage from the RA such that it limits their range of motion, but not enough to stop me from doing most of what I want to do (rock climbing is mostly a no for me).

That said, I believe riding has been extremely beneficial to my RA as it is a low impact way to stay fit and keep my joints moving. My late father in law, a doctor, always said "motion is lotion" and while I am not a doctor, that made sense to me.

Obviously keeping my body strong and weight off also is hugely beneficial too.

One other cycling related observation, I had to switch from shimano to SRAM because the lever throw on shimano shifters was just too uncomfortable for my wrists hands. Also I learned I needed a really flat ramp bars to hoods to accommodate limited range of motion in my wrist. Also had to adjust saddle height to deal with limited range of motion in one knee.

I have undifferentiated connective tissue disease which can either manifest itself in RA or Lupus. I get flareups, and depending on the severity or duration, might impact activity. Sunday afternoon through Tuesday of this week was a flareup. Everything hurt with severe pain in my elbows and hands, with lesser pain in my lower legs. Then Wednesday, everything was fine. I take Hydroxylchloriquine twice a day as an anti-inflammatory, and other than a flareup, I don't take any pain meds. I will sometimes have an indica edible before bed, especially during and a few days after a flare up.

I'm building up a road bike with AXS, and if that works out, I may do the same with my MTB because the sweep of the shifter hurts on bad days. I'm getting better at figuring out the signs of an impending flareup, but the bottom line is there's nothing I can do about it, but I'm betting on science. I will spend the summer training for a 100 mile mtb race in September and hope a flareup doesn't spoil it.