As we move through our lives, osteoarthritis waits in the wings like a foreshadowing of old age. Constant use causes wear and tear on our joints, and we may eventually develop arthritis if we don’t take steps to prevent it.
As we move through our lives, osteoarthritis waits in the wings like a foreshadowing of old age. Constant use causes wear and tear on our joints, and we may eventually develop arthritis if we don’t take steps to prevent it. Here are 10 things you can do to keep your joints healthy and active:
Maintain a Healthy Weight
Our joints carry us around for life. We take them for granted and don’t worry about their health until something happens and they start to complain. To be proactive and kind, ease the burden your joints have to bear by maintaining a healthy weight for your body structure. You don’t have to hit your ideal weight, either; one pound of weight loss equals four pounds of pressure removed from your weight-bearing joints. So losing 10 pounds takes 40 pounds of pressure off of your knees, hips, ankles, and feet. This, as Martha would say, is a good thing.
Eat Well
One way to maintain a healthy weight is to eat well, but your waist isn’t the only beneficiary from good eating habits. Getting adequate supplies of calcium, vitamins A, C, D3, and K, plus the B vitamins, as well as magnesium and potassium, is a sure way to keep your joints fluid and flexible.
Exercise
Unfortunately, the only way to keep joints moving is to use them in inappropriate ways. Besides the movements of everyday life, appropriate exercise will keep your joints limber. This one ties in to eating well and losing weight; however, if you exercise joints without proper nourishment and without easing the weight-bearing load, you’ll just injure them and invite osteoarthritis to the party decades before it’s time. Don’t feel you have to do high-impact exercise to get any benefits, either; Yoga and Tai Chi have been around for millennia, and they work your body in low-impact ways. You get mind and body health benefits from either form of exercise, without jarring your joints.
Control Your Stress
This may seem like an odd thing to do, but constant stress keeps your body in a constant state of inflammation. Not only that, but stress also tightens the musculoskeletal system, leaving your muscles, tendons, and ligaments in spasm. Learning how to control your stress leaves your body in a better place; this includes all of your major systems, not just your muscles, bones, and joints.
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Use Braces
When we’re young, we tend to get involved in sports, including contact sports. There’s nothing wrong with sports, but you need to think about your joints and muscles before you get out on the field, court, or floor. Wearing braces on your knees can help prevent ACL and MCL injuries caused by sudden stops, sharp turns, and getting tackled from the side when your feet are firmly planted in the turf. Ankle braces can help prevent sprains from missteps while playing tennis, baseball, volleyball, or field hockey. A college or professional football player wouldn’t think of taking the field without his pads. Be kind to your joints and give them some support.
Maintain Your Sports Gear
Worn-out, old or torn gear can cause an injury in a heartbeat; sometimes it can kill you. A rock climber never goes out to climb without checking his gear, and if his rope is worn or his pitons are bent, he replaces them before he bets his life on them. The same is true of football, baseball, golf or tennis; worn gear can lead to torn muscles and injured joints. Keep your gear in pristine order – your life, not to mention your joints, may depend on it.
Good Posture
When we were kids, we all heard our mothers say to sit up straight, and not slump or slouch. Turns out, Mom was right; good posture is good for your joints. Proper alignment of your skeletal system keeps your joints from wearing unevenly or unnaturally. It spreads the load over the whole system, so the joints wear evenly. Think of it as keeping your car in alignment. You know what uneven wear does to your tires; translate this image to your joints, and you’ll get the picture.
Wear Proper Shoes
You wouldn’t think about playing baseball without cleats or golfing without golf shoes. Why? Because these shoes are necessary for proper playing without injury. Do you ever think about the shoes you wear on a daily basis? Proper support and fit in your work shoes is just as important as the proper athletic shoe. You’re on your feet, what, 16 hours a day? Pounding the floors, the sidewalks, the stairs for this long of a period in non-supportive shoes is begging for trouble. Aching knees during the workweek may actually mean you need new shoes. Don’t be fooled by the shoes’ appearance, either; a shoe can lose support long before it wears out. If this happens, get a pair of orthotics or inserts to take up the slack.
Get Enough Sleep
Getting a good night’s sleep is a pipedream for many of us in today’s society; we work long hours, come home and work some more there, and usually wind up in bed around midnight, with a 6 o’clock alarm waiting to jolt us out of bed in the morning. This is not a good thing; we need seven to nine hours of sleep a night in order for our bodies to rest and repair themselves. We stress our bodies continuously and then don’t give them the chance to make repairs. This is a recipe for disaster in the making. Your joints need sleep, too; they’ve been carrying you around for 16 to 18 hours, and they need the chance to rest. So, learn to leave a few things undone if you have to, but get enough sleep.
Supplements
Most of us think about supplements when we’re battling osteoarthritis, not before; it may be a good idea to be proactive about adding joint pain supplements to your daily regimen, though. Glucosamine helps repair cartilage and replenish synovial fluid; it would be a good idea to try this before the cartilage is worn away and the fluid is mostly dry.
Cartilage keeps the bones in your joints from grinding against one another, and the synovial fluid keeps both the inside of the joint and the cartilage lubricated for smooth movements. It makes sense to help keep the cartilage and fluid at proper levels, rather than trying to rebuild them from almost nothing. Talk to a reputable health food store when you shop for supplements; a reputable store carries brands they trust and ones with quality products.
Supplements purchased from drug stores, big-box retailers, and supermarkets are mass-produced, and what’s in the product is not necessarily what’s on the label. A supplement from a health food store is far more likely to be what it says it is; it may cost more, but the difference in quality is well worth it.
If you’re young and healthy, or even getting on in years, keep these 10 things in mind as you go through life; it pays to be proactive, and an arthritis-free future may well be your reward.
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