RALiving - Learn how to measure your quality of life

Addressing the ways RA affects you is important. Now you can measure your quality of life in 8 general ways. These areas come from a scientific survey that helps determine how any patient with an illness is doing in these 8 key areas.

Focusing on these 8 areas could help you identify changes you might want to make or things you might want to talk to your healthcare professional about. The decisions you make together could better help you reach your goals, such as improving your RA symptoms along with your quality of life.

After all, even though pain, stiffness and fatigue are some of the common RA symptoms, the disease can have an even greater effect on the patient.

Many people don't even think about the stress that comes from dealing with the pain or the limitations that RA places on your everyday schedule. But this can have just as great an impact on your day-to-day living as your physical RA symptoms do.

The following lists 8 areas and briefly explains how they show you the impact of RA.


1 Physical activities		The ability to do/not do different types of activities in a typical day (from walking to vacuuming to climbing stairs)
2 Daily limitations		The amount of time limited for work or other activities (as a result of your physical health)
3 Pain		How much pain you've been feeling (from none to very severe) and how much it interferes with your daily activities
4 Overall health		Your perception of how your own physical health compares to that of other people
5 Energy		The level of energy (or tiredness) you have from day to day
6 Social functioning		Is RA getting in the way of socializing (getting together with family, friends, neighbors, or other groups)?
7 Emotional limitations		The impact your emotional well-being is having on your daily activities
8 Emotional well-being		Has RA affected your overall emotional well-being?

Next:	Take the 8 Ways Quiz
Back:	Key facts about RA