Arthritis Pain Relief-(Avoiding THIS Will Make it Worse!)

Arthritis is something that many of the older adults I work with deal with. Arthritis, unfortunately is very unpredictable and often hard to manage. Even worse news, is that many of the individuals I work with don’t realize that they are doing things specifically to make your arthritis worse. Arthritis, as a broad definition, is the inflammation of one or many joints in your body. Because of this, it would make sense to try to decrease the overall inflammation throughout your body. The video above, and the risk of the article, detail a few ways that you can manage arthritis pain, and hopefully improve the your outcomes in arthritis pain relief. If you skip ANY of these things, they may be the reason your arthritis pain never improves.

Arthritis Pain Relief Tactics

Move Your Joints

One of the most common and fatal errors when addressing arthritis pain relief, is the fact that individuals simply don’t move their joints enough. If you aren’t moving your joints enough, fluid and nutrients does not get into the joints. When this happens, the connective tissue weakens, leading to less strength and more pain. So although it does not feel good immediately, avoiding moving your joints entirely will make your arthritis much worse down the road.

Doing Too Much

On the opposite end of the spectrum, some individuals take moving their joints to the extreme. If you are feeling good on a day, make sure you don’t push too hard on your body and joints as this will cause MORE inflammation, leading to increased arthritis pain. This is where trial and error will come into play, and where you will need to see how much activity causes a flare up and try to work just below that threshhold.

Not Taking Medication

If you are taking medication for your arthritis pain, it is crucial to be taking this consistently. If you do not do this, you are begging for your pain to come back. It is understandable that some days your pain might not be as bad, so you would consider not taking it. Doing this turns a proactive course of management into a reactive bandaid fix for yourself. The best way to manage your arthritis pain, and get lasting relief is to be consistent with your medications that help with the pain and inflammation.

Eating High-Inflammatory Foods

You are what you eat. This goes especially hand in hand with high inflammatory foods. If you are eating foods that are fried, high in sugar and saturated fat, or highly processed, these are all greatly increasing the overall inflammation in your body. Eating foods like fruits and vegetables, lean meats, and many other options will help to decrease inflammation and help with your arthritis pain relief.

Sleep

Neglecting sleep is a bad thing to do in regards to numerous health aspects. Not getting enough sleep also affects your arthritis as well. Since sleep helps to decrease inflammation, not focusing on sleep is a mistake. If you are not getting at least 7-9 hours of sleep every night, you need to be making this a priority. And remember that just because you are in bed, doesn’t mean you are sleeping. 7-9 hours in bed, might only lead to 6-8 hours of actual sleep. This is because we toss and turn, use the restroom, and wake up multiple times throughout the night unconsciously.

Arthritis pain relief becomes much easier to achieve when trying to manage your inflammation. These are just a few of many ways you can do that. If you are interested in starting a low-impact exercise program to help manage your arthritis pain, we created two great guides below. Good luck on your pain management!