Are aching knees, shoulders, hips slowing you down?
How about low back pain or arthritic fingers?
Did you know?
Joint pain sidelines millions of Americans each year. In fact, 8 out of 10 of us suffer from low back pain, and more than 40 million people are afflicted with some form of arthritis!
Basically, a lot of people are suffering… but so many of them don’t have to be!
At The Transformation Club, we help a lot of people with joint pain. Because of our approach to exercise, we do really well with people who’ve struggled to workout in other facilities – not to take a shot at them in any way; they’re better suited than we are for other needs.
Besides choosing the right exercises to avoid pain and choosing the right exercises to build strength, there are some other simple lifestyle changes that will have a dramatic effect on both joint pain and joint performance, making life much more enjoyable.
Here are our 4 best tips to combat joint pain at any age:
Nutrition
Nutrition plays a HUGE role in joint pain. Simply put, if you have joint pain, avoid inflammatory foods. Gluten and sugar are the two biggest culprits – they wreak havoc on your joints.
Limit or avoid processed foods, refined sugars, and gluten for joint health. At the same time, add in foods like fatty cold-water fish like salmon and mackerel. They’re good sources of omega-3 fatty acids, which help keep joints healthy and reduce inflammation.
Gluten has become the easy one for me. FYI, pasta, cereal, and bread were pretty much staples in my diet for the ¾ of my life, but once I realized how they weren’t serving me I made the effort to eliminate them. Fortunately, today there are actually great tasting gluten-free alternatives!
Sugar, on the other hand, is something I have to really pay attention to. Being a sugarholic, it’s pretty easy to fall down that slippery slope…especially now that there are so many gluten-free (sugar-filled) treats available.
Weight Management
We’re not talking about weight loss for vanity sake.
“Weight plays an important role in joint stress, so when people are very overweight, it puts stress on their joints, especially their weight-bearing joints, like the knees and the hips,” says Eric Matteson, MD, chair of the rheumatology division at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Every pound of excess weight exerts about 4 pounds of extra pressure on the knees. So, a person who is 10 pounds overweight has 40 pounds of extra pressure on his knees.
That’s why people who are overweight are at greater risk of developing arthritis in the first place. And once a person has arthritis, “the additional weight causes even more problems on already damaged joints,” says Dr. Matteson.
But it’s not just the extra weight on joints that’s causing damage. The fat itself is active tissue that creates and releases chemicals, many of which promote inflammation.
“These chemicals can influence the development of OA [osteoarthritis],” explains Jeffrey N. Katz, MD, a professor of medicine and orthopedic surgery at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Proper exercise will strengthen the muscles and ligaments around your joints, alleviating the load they bear. Just be sure you’re performing the right types and amount of exercise for your body. More is NOT better.
Given the extra pressure on the knees, we do NOT recommend using running as a weight-loss strategy. That pressure number more than DOUBLES when you run!
Start with low impact cardio and lots of weight training. We have a few bodyweight workouts here on the blog you can check out to get you started.
Posture
A quick, but important tip.
Poor posture puts a lot of strain on your joints. Pay attention to how you sit, stand, and walk.
Supplements
Use high-quality supplements that actually work.
I’ve personally seen tremendous results myself and for so many of my clients with the right supplement program, and believe me, I’ve tried a lot of different products out there. For anyone with joint pain, I recommend Eniva’s Joint Health Pack. It’s simply the best.
In fact, my success with Flex (one of the products in the pack) was the reason why I looked further into Eniva and started using more of their products and got to know the owners and the company better. It was an absolute game-changer for me!
You can order your Joint Health Pack here for delivery.
You can also purchase Flex ES separately here.
Alright, there you have it. Four tips to combat joint pain – and maybe even eliminate it! If you have joint pain, give these tips a go for 90 days and let us know how they worked out for you!
Have Faith & Take Action!
Justin
Snow Day Workouts
