How To Manage Arthritis Pain

How To Manage Arthritis Pain

Arthritis can be incredibly disruptive to your life and it can be hard to learn how to live with it, but it’s important to remember that you can manage your symptoms through a variety of different techniques and practices, so if you are suffering, just remember that you don’t have to go it alone. There is a lot of help available out there.

You can help reduce the risk of developing some kinds of arthritis by following a healthy lifestyle, one with lots of regular exercise and a well-balanced diet. This can also help ease your symptoms if you do already suffer with arthritis.

If you’re overweight or obese, you can put a lot of extra pressure on your joints and this will increase your symptoms. Focus on getting a regular amount of exercise each week, as well as eating healthily with lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, and avoiding processed food, and getting the right amount of sleep each night (between seven and nine hours for an adult).

Because arthritis can cause pain, inflammation, swelling and stiffness in your joints, osteopathic treatments can also prove very effective in treating the symptoms of the condition. Through gentle manipulation and manual techniques to your joints, muscles and ligaments, osteopathy is able to reduce the pain you’re feeling and improve your mobility.

Your osteopath will also be able to give you lots of good advice on diet and what you should and shouldn’t be eating, as well as giving you exercises to do at home to help you.

Exercise is, in fact, one of the best ways of easing your symptoms – as long as it’s low impact. High-impact training like running may well prove to be too much for your body, so perhaps focus on something like swimming or brisk walking, which will put less pressure on your joints.

You are likely to find that once you start exercising more regularly, you’ll see improvements in your joint mobility, will feel less stiff and feel less pain and fatigue, as a result.

Exercising in cold weather can be difficult enough, but it can be even harder for those with arthritis – but, again, there are strategies you can employ to make it easier on yourself. 

For example, joint pain and stiffness is often worse first thing in the morning, which can mean an early workout is harder. Instead, what about going for a walk or heading to the gym in the afternoon, which will give your joints time to warm up.

Make sure you cover up your extremities when you’re out and about, as well, and drink plenty of water to keep yourself well hydrated, especially if you’re doing more strenuous exercise.

For help with osteopathy in Camberley, get in touch with OsteoVision today.