The Importance of Exercise in Arthritis

Arthritis patients are less physically active.  This is simply because of the factors involved with the disease.  Many arthritis patients are under the misconception that exercise will cause further damage to their joints.  However, this is not so, as exercising regularly helps to strengthen the muscles and to protect the joints.  Appropriate exercise helps to ease pain, keep you mobile and to help control weight.  Your chances of developing chronic diseases are increased when you are not physically active.  Over half the adults living with heart disease or diabetes also have arthritis.  Experts have revealed that lack of information on how to exercise properly, fear of worsening symptoms or damaging joints, fear of pain and pain prevent people living with arthritis from being physically active.

The good news

Over 40 million persons live with arthritis and the good news for these 40 million people is that a regiment of moderate exercise can improve mobility and reduce pain.  For those living with arthritis physical activities such as swimming, bicycling and walking have shown to improve physical function, reduce pain, and improve the quality of life.  The risk of developing Osteoarthritis is reduced when weight control and injury prevention measures are taken.  Weight loss and control is also helpful to reduce symptoms of patients that are suffering with knee Osteoarthritis.

The following tips will help you to understand how to effectively and safely enhance your physical activity in arthritis:

Rest: When our bodies rest or sleep, they are restoring energy.  Balancing rest with exercise is effective to help reduce arthritis symptoms.  Balance exercise with rest and pace yourself. However, it is important to remember, that too much rest can make your joints stiff. 

Activity: Keep yourself active.  Stronger muscles help to reduce fatigue.  Good activities for arthritic patients include exercises and swimming in a heated pool. 

Gentleness: Be gentle in your daily life.  Start slow and gradually build doing a little more each day.  Avoid contact sports and other high impact activities. 

Convenience: When you are in the least amount of pain, tired or stiff, exercise.  And, exercise during the time that your medication is most effective. 

Variety:  Motion exercises should be done at least once a day.  When waking in the morning exercising first will help to ease the stiffness felt upon rising.  Exercising prior to bedtime will help stop the stiffness from developing during your sleep.  Only do a range of movement exercises when you experience a flare up.  

People with arthritis can manage chronic conditions such as obesity, heart disease and diabetes by finding help to overcome the barriers that often limit their physical activity. 

To effectively manage chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and obesity, people with arthritis need help finding ways to over­come arthritis-specific barriers to physical activity. Using natural anti-arthritis herbal supplements may significantly reduce swelling, stiffness and tenderness of the affected joints and provides the much-needed muscular boost to carry on healthy physical activity in people with arthritis. 

Some Useless Facts

Some facts to thrill your neighbors with... (Or maybe not...):

• If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.
• If you toot consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.
• The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps blood, that it could squirt blood 30 feet.
• Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour
• Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.
• On average people fear spiders more than they do death.
• The strongest muscle in the body is the TONGUE.
• It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
• You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.
• Americans on the average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.
• Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
• Did you know that you are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider?
• Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do
• In ancient Egypt, Priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.
• A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
• The ant can lift 50 times its own weight, can pull 30 times its own weight and always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.
• Polar bears are left handed.
• The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds; that makes the catfish rank #1 for the animal having the most taste buds
• The flea can jump 350 times its body length, that is like a human jumping the length of a football field.
• A cockroach will live nine days without it's head, before it starves to death.
• Butterflies taste with their feet.
• Elephants are the only animals that can't jump. (Thankfully)
• A cat's urine glows under a black light.
• An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
• Starfishes haven't got brains

 There you are, use it, don't use it!