Home Articles Ways To Take Care Of Your Joints And To Ease Pain

Ways To Take Care Of Your Joints And To Ease Pain

Joint pain is very common. The onset of arthritis is the main reason for joint pain or it could be due to an injury. Taking care of your joints is easy and it will help relieve the pain considerably, too.

Move your joints

The most common refrain among people with joint pain is that they cannot do any exercise or physical activity because it increases the pain in the joints. They fear additional damage to their joints.

However, moving the joints will, in fact, relieve pain and the stiffness in the joints will go away. The muscles around the joints will also get strengthened; this is very important because the muscles will reduce pain and support your joint too.

Ideally, a person with joint pain should not sit in one place for more than 15 minutes; he or she should move their joints by getting up and walking a little. These small movements of the joints are very beneficial. The website Mind Your Head York has a lot of information regarding joints and maintaining them.

Maintain your weight

Your doctor will advise you regarding your ideal weight and if you maintain your ideal body weight you will find that most joint problems will ease. In fact, if you lose 10 pounds you will reduce your arthritis by nearly 50 percent. Our joints can withstand only a particular load and if you are heavy then naturally your joints will give away.

Exercise your joints

Yes, you read that right. Exercise will help your joints and over time you will feel the difference. By exercise, we mean low impact exercises that do not put a lot of load on any of the joints. Easy to do exercises with more repetitions is ideal. If you can take up swimming it is an even better option because it has been proved that it can really help people with joint pain.

A good diet

A good diet is important to reduce joint pain. It has been found that diet can increase inflammation in many patients. So make sure that you do not include foods that increase the joint pain. Try to use foods that relieve or do not exacerbate the existing pain. In fact, some diets are known to be anti-inflammatory like the Mediterranean diet; you can incorporate such diets into your regimen.

Include supplements

Vitamin D and calcium are known to help people with joint pain. Include foods that are rich in calcium in your diet. You should also try to walk in the morning sun so that your body gets its required vitamin D. Lower amounts of vitamin D and calcium can cause your bones to weaken further making your joints pain.

Stop smoking

If you are a smoker, then you need to stop smoking for the health of your bones. Smoking tends to increase fracture risk, studies have also found that it increases the risk of osteoporosis, so why take a chance with something that is anyway harmful. If you want to improve not just the health of your joints but your overall health, you need to put a stop to smoking.

Stretch your joints and muscles

Stretching helps your joints and muscles to recover fast. However, never ever do stretching without warming up as it can cause more problems. Always walk for 10 minutes or so, so that the blood starts flowing properly and your body starts warming up. Once you have warmed up you can do the stretching exercises which will be very beneficial.

Do not carry heavy items

Many of us feel that we can carry heavy loads from the car to the house or from the garage to the house. We think that the few steps we carry these loads will not harm us. However, heavy loads can have a debilitating effect on your joints. You may feel it is just 10 steps but it is 10 steps too many for your joints.

Call somebody for help and lift the loads. If you need to carry heavy bags, always do so by hanging it from the shoulders as the shoulder muscles will bear the weight. If you can carry a backpack it is even better as the weight will be spread throughout the back and your joints will thank you for it.