Small Changes in Lifestyle Are Effective in the Battle Against Arthritis Pain

Arthritis is one of the most prevalent chronic health problems and the nation’s leading cause of disability among Americans over age 15, according to the Arthritis Foundation. In 2006, nearly 1 in 5 adults were diagnosed with this disease, and half of those Americans with arthritis don’t think anything can be done to help them.
While arthritis isn’t usually cured, there are many small changes you can make in lifestyle to improve your condition and make you feel better. Here are a range of suggestions from the Arthritis Foundation, the AARP, and SureFire Health:

Begin with the diet that you eat. Ensure that it is rich in all the necessary nutrients and vitamins as recommended by your doctor. Eat more protein to maintain your muscle mass, and foods such as fish that are high in omega-3s to assist with the body’s inflammatory response.

In conjunction with a healthy diet, take a dietary supplement that contains Glucosamine and Chondroitin. This pairing of natural ingredients helps improve joint mobility and maintains cartilage synthesis in those with arthritis. According to the Arthritis Foundation, Osteoarthritis (OA) may respond to some alternative or complementary therapies such as Glucosamine and Chondroitin Sulfate.

Glucosamine is an amino sugar that appears to play a role in the formation and repair of cartilage. Chondroitin sulfate is part of a protein that gives cartilage elasticity. The Arthritis Foundation reports that studies show that people with mild-to-moderate OA who took these supplements reported pain relief similar to those achieved with NSAIDs.

Maintain your recommended weight or lose weight if you are overweight. This can lessen your pain by reducing stress on your affected joints. Weight loss specifically helps ease pressure on weight-bearing joints such as the hips, knees, back and feet.

Participate in regular, moderate exercise. Staying active offers a whole host of benefits to people with arthritis. Mainly, exercise reduces joint pain and stiffness, builds strong muscle around the joints, and increases flexibility and endurance. But it also helps promote overall health and fitness by giving you more energy, helping you sleep better, controlling your weight, decreasing depression, and giving you more self-esteem.

Walking is a great way to get exercise. Approximately half of the 165 million American adults (18 years of age and older) claim they exercise regularly, and the number who walk for exercise is increasing every year.
Walking is the only exercise in which the rate of participation does not decline in the middle and later yearn. In a national survey, the highest percentage of regular walkers (39.4%) for any group was found among men 65 years of age and older.
Unlike tennis, running, skiing, and other activities that have gained great popularity fairly recently, walking has been widely practiced as a recreational and fitness activity throughout recorded history.

People walk for many reasons: for pleasure ... to rid themselves of tensions ... to find solitude ... or to get from one place to another. Nearly everyone who walks regularly does so at least in part because of a conviction that it is good exercise. Often dismissed in the past as being "too easy" to be taken seriously, walking recently has gained new respect as a means of improving physical fitness.

Studies show that, when done briskly on a regular. schedule, it can improve the body's ability to consume oxygen during exertion, lower the resting heart rate, reduce blood pressure, and increase the efficiency of the heart and lungs.

Check with your doctor or a physical therapist to determine the exercises best suited to help you battle arthritis.