As someone who has both mild ra arthritis and osteoarthritis I can recommend highly pool therapy.

You don't even need to take a class. Pools are very near you in high schools or middle schools and most are inexpensive.

Although I am not a swimmer, I do use a a device around my waist that keeps me above water and I can bicycle and walk in deep warm water without affecting my joints.

I also participate in a thrice weekly class at a nearby rehab place the emphasizes exercise that is good for your body, especially your knees.

I figure an ounce of prevention at 65 may save me from knee or hip surgery in the future, and it also helps your balance.

The worst thing is doing no exercise at all.

I really don't understand pain treatment.
You can't excercise pain, swelling, grinding
of bone on bone away. You can't excercise.
Nothing over the counter works.
Some idiot in government said you can't
perscribe pain medication because you can get
addicted. I'd like to see some of these idiots
have enough pain to see what a life of pain
does to a person.

and no one in government tells me what I can prescribe. My twenty years of experience shows that the risk for addiction from narcotic medications is high. Patients who become addicted will do nearly anything to get them including lie, doctor or pharmacy-shop, travel great distances, pay out-of-pocket instead of using insurance to avoid leaving a paper trail, etc.

Our clinics have caught MANY such patients through a database maintained by the Department of Professional Licensing, which tracks all controlled substances in the state of Utah. We have had many addicted patients who have obtained more than 25,000 pain pills over a five year period (which is 13 pills per day continuously!). We report them to the narcotic task force and they are placed in treatment or prosecuted, depending on if the pills are used or diverted.

Prescription abuse is a HUGE problem affecting MANY lives. Narcotics are powerfully addictive. It is incumbent on every prescriber to monitor usage to protect patients from addiction, not some bureaucrat who is trying to make people with pain suffer.

Successfully treated addicts have returned to THANK me for turning them in and turning their lives around.