Arthritis

I've had arthritis since I was a teen. Start off with low-impact things. Walking. Swimming. Yoga is great for arthritis. These things will loosen you up and make you feel like you can do more. Getting more active has made great improvements in my arthritis management.

For a lot of people (me included), arthritis stiffens you up. The less you move, the less you feel like you can, and it becomes a vicious cycle. But if you get moving, it can feel like you've lubricated all the working parts - it becomes easier the more you do.

Good Luck!

Aqua fit would probably help you as it is low impact. Also try the rowing machine at the gym. Lots if movement and muscle use without impact.

Cheers, h.

AllonsYtotheTardis wrote: »

I've had arthritis since I was a teen. Start off with low-impact things. Walking. Swimming. Yoga is great for arthritis. These things will loosen you up and make you feel like you can do more. Getting more active has made great improvements in my arthritis management.

For a lot of people (me included), arthritis stiffens you up. The less you move, the less you feel like you can, and it becomes a vicious cycle. But if you get moving, it can feel like you've lubricated all the working parts - it becomes easier the more you do.

Good Luck!

Great advice! I have a form of arthritis that comes and goes in multi-year cycles. Thankfully, I'm in remission right now and have been for several years but I keep waiting for it to return....

While I have it I've definitely found that low impact exercise, done consistently, is the key for me to feel better and get around easier. My joints move more freely when I'm using them gently almost every day. Sitting around for several days in a row and I start to have a more difficult time moving again.

I have severe arthritis in my right ankle from a motorcycle injury years ago and besides everyone's advice on keeping moving...When things get too painful (usually in the colder months) I go see my acupuncturist to keep the chi flowing. Works really, really well for me.

@kirsty_1992 I have had the form called Ankylosing Spondylitis for 40 years. It has fused me from head to tail so I have limited upper body movement. It is in most all joints in my body and I had both hips replaced in 1991.

While the chiropractor, massage and acupuncture with a lot of fish oil all helped to a degree for years for some reason last year things went south fast and I was needing help to even get up out of a chair, into and out of a car, etc and the doctors wanted me to start Enbrel injections for pain management but after reading about cancer and other possible side effects I went looking for other non Rx meds options.

I had heard coconut oil was good to take. I had heard cutting out most all sugars and grains helped reduce the pain of some. The first of Oct 2014 I did all of the above and in 30 days my subjective pain levels fell from 7-8 to 2-3 on a 1-10 scale. Six months later my 40 years of having IBS was cured and has not returned plus I have lost another 30 pounds on a very Low Carb High Fat eating lifestyle over the past year.

I had tried taking large amounts of coconut oil the two months prior so I do not think it alone was a key factor for the pain management effect but when cutting my carbs to <50 grams a day I needed a lots of calories from fat to make up for the carb calories now missing from my diet so I stuck with the coconut oil. I have to keep protein in the medium range to stay in what is called nutritional ketosis means one mainly is living on fats/ketones vs. carbs/glucose.

What worked for me may be wrong for another so Google real research on different diets that you may be interested in. Dieting medical advice from web forums can be risky at best and deadly at worst.

Even before my pain levels dropped I was forcing myself to walk a quarter mile a day. After the pain levels dropped I kept it up plus some range of motion stuff each morning. At 64 now I am in better shape than at 44 and so I naturally move more. Being down 50 pounds makes it easier to get off and on the tractor and operate the old backhoe around the place.

My post is more about arthritis pain manage success. I think doing much exercising with highly painful joints will make one worse off down the road. I wish I had known about pain manage by diet when this all started 40 years ago and would have acted on that knowledge I did not know so I could not act.

We are all different and I do not claim others should cut out sugars and grains. I do strongly suggest everyone with arthritis to use search engines and find real research that is out there and start wading through and try approaches of interest to you.

Best of success in learning how to move with the least pain possible.

I also have JRA, stick to ow impact. NO RUNNING! swim, elliptical, light weights. Its SO important to stay in shape because any excess weight can really hurt our joints