If you have lived a good life, and are over the age of 40, the chances are that you have some aches and pains in your joints. Our joints take a lot of wear and tear with our day to day habits. Our American lifestyle can wreak havoc on our joints, aging, inactivity, standard American diet, living under constant low-levels of stress, and poor posture, to name a few. Did you know our diet plays a considerable role in joint health? Eating processed foods can cause a lot of inflammation in our joints, leaving us with joint pain and discomfort. Does this diet sound familiar? Joint health is an essential part of aging so that you can continue to enjoy your day to day activities. You can do multiple things to improve your joint health to decrease pain and improve motion.
Dietary changes:
Let’s start with dietary changes. We leave the nutritional work to our good friends at Rochester Lifestyle Medicine. They are a medical staff that will work one on one with you to make changes to your lifestyle (www.rochesterlifestylemedicine.com). Incorporate veggies throughout your day to start. Adding vegetables to your day increases your daily nutrients, and decreases your empty calories. Veggies are full of fiber and essential nutrients that help your body to heal and improve your immunity. There are multiple things you can remove from your diet to reduce inflammation.
These things are:
Dairy
Gluten
Sugar
Red Meat
These things should be eliminated from your diet, or significantly decreased. Eliminating dairy from your diet seems to frighten some people. "What about my bone health?" Dairy is not the only way to get your calcium! You can get plenty of calcium through your vegetable intake. The greener the better!
Pain reduction treatments
Pain reduction clinics are another great way to decrease your joint pain while holding off a potential surgery. The pain reduction clinic may suggest shots, medications, or non-surgical procedures buy your time. While most of these are great at relieving pain unless you change your lifestyle when these medications and procedures wear off, you are right back to where you started. If you couple pain reduction procedures with appropriate exercise, you have a much higher rate of success.
Surgery
If your joints are beyond repair, you may be looking toward a knee or hip replacement. According to Consumer Reports, knee and hip replacements are now the third and fourth most common surgeries in U.S. hospitals. If you are looking to receive a joint replacement, you may be faced with complications:
BMI over 40
Negative attitude
Smoking (lung infections, wound healing)
Prehab and Physical Therapy
Prehab is a wonderful way to decrease your BMI and improve your joint strength pre-surgery. Prehab is strengthening and balancing your muscles through an exercise to prepare your joint for surgery. Studies do show that you have a significant improvement in recovery time, pain reduction, and successful surgery using Prehab exercises. Depending on your level of discomfort, aquatic exercise is a great start to build muscle and improve your joint stability. Working out in the water helps decrease the strain on your joints by reducing your weight. You can exercise more with reduced pain. This is a win, win! Looking for a physical therapy team? Genesee Valley Physical Therapy is a great place to start! (www.gvpt.me)
Wellness 360 Online Programs
Wellness 360 offers a great online program that offers prehab exercises taught by a physical therapist. You can be assured you are getting the exercise, the modifications for comfort, and the physical therapy knowledge all in one program! Wellness 360 can support most of your joint needs. It’s like one-stop shopping. We offer the prehab classes to strengthen your joints. We partner with great places to suit your dietary and lifestyle needs to improve your health and decrease your weight. We also offer a mindful meditation class that will reduce your anxieties about your upcoming surgery. So together we:
Improve your Strength
Support your healthy lifestyle
Promote a positive attitude
Support your weight loss
Offer water treatment
Improve your joint stability
Improve your joints functional motion
Improve your balance
Decrease your surgical recovery time
Check us out at www.wellness360fitness.com and start your 2-week free trial today!
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