Rheumy Wellness
Moving Joints to Decrease Pain and Promoting Mental Wellness with Aquatic Exercise.
What is Rheumy Wellness?
Rheumy Wellness is a leisure education and leisure planning resource outlining the benefits of aquatic exercise and providing the locations of Aquafit available in the communities surrounding Edmonton.​
Succulent.
Note. Source: (Wix, n.d.).
Who is Rheumy Wellness for?
​Rheumy Wellness was created for females with Rheumatoid Arthritis between the ages of eighteen to eighty. ​​
Women Laughing.
Note. Source: (Wix, n.d.).
Why Was Rheumy Wellness Created?
​Rheumy Wellness was created by Megan Wright, a therapeutic recreation student with Rheumatoid Arthritis. Megan used Aquafit in her recovery and saw the inherent value in creating a resource and tool for others to do the same. There are few disease-specific online physical activity resources for clients with RA (Ester et al., 2025). Of the resources that exist the focus is on why physical activity is important and not actionable tools and resources to become physically active (Ester et al., 2025).​​
"When I was diagnosed with severe RA, I was unable to walk, perform activities of daily living, and I was not able to be physically active. My pain and stiffness increased, and my mental health significantly declined even though I was an active participant in my treatment. I remember being so frustrated about the pain and wanting to move more, but not really knowing how or what to do. I feared increasing the pain and there were no tools or resources to help me get started. I knew a leisure resource and tool was needed for this client population based on this personal experience. This value was further supported when I found research that showed me that a lack of tools and resources was not limited to me, but to all female clients with RA"
​
-Megan Wright
How was Rheumy Wellness Created?
Rheumy Wellness was created from evidence-based research. All content located within Rheumy Wellness is associated to current relevant research associated to Rheumatoid Arthritis, and all references for content is available on the references page. The original idea was supported by an article written by Perez-Sousa et al. (2023). This article concludes that aquatic exercise led to improvements to physical fitness, pain, and depression for women with Rheumatoid Arthritis and physical interventions should focus on movements that lower the perception of pain or movements that have no pain such as movement in aquatic exercise (Perez-Sousa et al., 2023). This supports the use of Aquafit for women with RA and is the basis of the information for the leisure education resource. The need for this resource and the associated Aquafit locator tool is supported by research by Ester et al. (2025) that was endorsed by Alberta Rheumatology (2025).
Mac Mouse.
Note. Source: (Wix, n.d.).