How To Keep Your Joints Healthy So You Can Move About Better

Unhealthy joints will ground you

Joints connect our bones. And along with our bones, muscles, cartilage, tendons, and ligaments, joints make up the musculoskeletal system. This system gives your body its structure and provides stability to the skeleton.

Our joints are crucial to helping us move our body parts around with comfort. For example, you needed some joints to help you click on this piece, and scrolling to the bottom of this article will require you to call some joints into action.

Given the crucial role joints play, we must protect them and keep them healthy. Here are three ways to do just that.

Keep your weight in check

An unhealthy weight gain isn’t only a source of concern for your friends and family. Nor does it only spell trouble for your heart and liver. It also puts a lot of strain on some joints.

According to researchers by Harvard Health, here’s how excess weight affects the joints.

“First, excess weight puts additional stress on weight-bearing joints (the knee, for example). Second, inflammatory factors associated with weight gain might contribute to trouble in other joints (for example, the hands).”

They shed more light on the point.

“When you walk across level ground, the force on your knees is the equivalent of 1½ times your body weight. That means a 200-pound man will put 300 pounds of pressure on his knees with each step.”

Keeping off the extra pounds works wonders.

Of course, apart from cutting the calories, you also need to exercise to help lose the weight. But here’s a dose of caution where your joints are concerned.

Exercise the right way

All exercise is not created equally. Some will help your joints, and others will hurt your joints. Or at least increase the risk of experiencing pain and discomfort.

That’s why you need to be careful which ones to embrace and which other ones to shun. Where possible, try to minimize the types that could hurt the joints.

Most of these include high-impact activities like jumping, skipping, and skateboarding. And we can’t overlook many physical contact sports like soccer, basketball, and wrestling.

These exercises are not inherently evil at face value. But while they could serve as exercises with immense health benefits overall — like great cardiovascular conditioning — they’re also a high-risk exercise for the joints.

They put stress on the joints, especially the load-bearing ones like knees, hips, and ankles. That’s where the low-impact, joint-friendly ones come in.

According to the Mayo Clinic, examples of low-impact exercises that are easier on your joints include walking, bicycling, swimming, and using an elliptical machine.

These activities could give you some benefits of their high-impact colleagues, even if it takes longer.

But remember that with exercise, as with many other life scenarios, sometimes, slow and steady wins the race. “Go slowly. Exercise with slow and easy movements,” the Mayo Clinic advises.

Embrace the best posture at all times

A good posture holds a significant key to giving your joints some joy. Whether you’re sitting, walking, or even sleeping, you need to embrace a good posture, the best possible one out there.

Note experts at the Barrington Orthopedic Specialists, “Keeping your body aligned in the proper posture can reduce muscle fatigue and strain and help keep your joints healthy and lubricated.”

By the same token, “Improper posture places stress on your joints and can cause them to wear away.”

Of course, when there’s no immediate pain or discomfort because of poor posture, people don’t care. But by the time the pain comes along, things may have gone a little too far. Prevention is always better.

Since a sedentary lifestyle is catching on fast these days, the Cleveland Clinic offers the following suggestions for good posture while sitting.

• Sit up with your back straight and your shoulders back. Your buttocks should touch the back of your chair.
• Distribute your body weight evenly on both hips.
• Bend your knees at a right angle. Keep your knees even with or slightly higher than your hips. (Use a footrest or stool if necessary.) Do not cross your legs.
• Keep your feet flat on the floor.

Some seats easily sag the second your backside makes contact. They’ll usually cause a lot of discomfort if you sit in them for long. Your spine could also be affected. The same goes for our beds.

On sleeping posture, here are some more suggestions.

• Select a firm mattress and box spring set that does not sag.
• You may want to avoid sleeping on your stomach, especially on a saggy mattress.

Some of these little things go a long way when it comes to the health of your joints.

Our joints move millions of times in a lifetime, and with these movements come wear and tear. Also, aging could take a toll on the smooth functioning of those joints. Those factors may be outside your control.

What is in your control is the little you can do to help prolong the lifespan of these joints.

Of course, some of these tips may be hard to practice for people with mobility issues or some severe health conditions. But for many everyday folks, we need to keep our joints healthier. And these are only a few of many ways.

Whatever the questions you might have about the fitness of our body, one answer overrides all: healthier is always better.

I have a small favor to ask. If you found what you just read helpful, can you buy me a cup of coffee here to support my work? No worries if you can’t at this time. You can grab my free writing guide here or become a Medium member through my link.