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The Ultimate Arthritis Diet
Learn which foods from the Mediterranean diet can help fight inflammation caused by arthritis.
One of the most common questions people with arthritis ask is, Is there a special arthritis diet? While theres no miracle diet for arthritis, many foods can help fight inflammation and improve joint pain and other symptoms.
For starters, a diet rich in whole foods, including fruits, vegetables, fish, nuts and beans, but low processed foods and saturated fat, is not only great for overall health, but can also help manage disease activity. If this advice sounds familiar, its because these are the principles of the Mediterranean diet, which is frequently touted for its anti-inflammatory and disease-fighting powers.
Where To Buy Lab Grade Products
There are a lot of extremely inferior products on the market. Still worse, many of the cheap herbal supplements found in Amazon.com and on the shelves of local drugstores are not inspected by third party regulators with FDA oversight. The majority are selling weakly concentrated ingredients, and there is growing concern that many products are testing in the danger zone for toxic chemicals and fillers.
Below are two companies that weve tested and found to produce lab grade turmeric and boswellia serrata. Their cost is higher due to the quality of ingredients and their strict self-imposed testing standards. Still, the cost is small compared to prices of pharmaceuticals.
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Fight Back Against Arthritis
So what can you do? The good news is that there are risk factors for osteoarthritis that women can target for arthritis prevention. Start with these important steps.
Do Activities The Right Way
Whether it’s swinging a golf club, playing the piano, or running the 100-yard dash, there’s a correct style to follow. Bad technique is a common cause of overuse injury. Even a small error in form can cause problems. Trainers, coaches, teachers, and physical therapists can help make sure you’re doing things in a way that’s less likely to cause injury.
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How To Prevent Arthritis Naturally
We talk a lot on here about living with arthritic pain, we share and recommend solutions in the hope that we can get the better of this chronic disease. What about people who want to know how to prevent arthritis naturally?
I have put together some key points here in the hope that they may help people stave off and prevent arthritis naturally.
Home Remedies For Arthritis But Only One Works
Arthritis is a common disease affecting millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands of new cases are identified each year in the United States.
When you are suffering from arthritis, it quickly becomes clear that its not just joints that are affected. RA can also cause severe fatigue, fevers, weight loss, anemia, in addition to causing additional problems throughout the major organs . Sufferers often experience dry mouth, dry eyes, shortness of breath, damaged nerves, malaise, and small skin lumps, just to name a few.
So, how do you get relief? If you would prefer not to take prescription medications nor undergo surgery, there are several natural home remedies that have some reported rates of success in treating symptoms of RA. Want to know whats so great about these methods, in addition to getting some relief from your symptoms? The products used in these natural remedies are very easy to find. The following seven treatments are the most common homeopathic remedies. Bear in mind that response to these remedies will be different for each individual as the disease presents and progresses differently in each individual. Make sure to discuss with your doctor any home remedies that you are considering as they may interact with your body and prescription medications in ways that you did not realize.
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Get Up And Do Arthritis Prevention Exercise
Its chilly outside? Walk around your house. Does your bike have a flat tire? Run around your neighborhood. The gym is closed? Workout at home. Dont make excuses not to exercise even for at least 15 minutes. Play with your kids , pop in a pilates DVD or clean your whole house. These arthritis prevention activities can give your body the much-needed exercise that you need on a daily basis.
Arthritis Risk Factors And Symptoms
Risk factors for arthritis include aging, genetics, obesity, trauma to the joint and abnormal anatomy. There are also secondary symptoms that occur after developing arthritis. For example, after developing lower-body arthritis, people typically become more sedentary. After developing upper-body arthritis, people commonly refrain from using the affected limb or appendage.
In both cases, this lack of use can lead to reduced muscle development. Once chronic arthritis sets in, it can lead to severe pain and loss of function of the joint.
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Taking Precautions To Prevent Injury Or Trauma
Arthritis, mainly of the spine, can occur due to injury. An injured joint will be more susceptible to arthritis than an uninjured one. Without a doubt, avoiding injury is essential. If you are into sports, always ensure that you put on protective gear. As you lift objects, use your hips and knees and not your back. As you carry things, keep them close to your body so as not to strain the wrists.
Choose Your Shoes Carefully
Women make up two-thirds of people with knee osteoarthritis. High heels, which put more stress on the front and back of the knee, are part of the problem. Even a low inch-and-a-half heel can increase the pressure. Light, low-heeled, flexible shoes seem to be the best to help prevent osteoarthritis. Take time to get used to them.
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What Is Rheumatoid Arthritis
Rheumatoid Arthritis is an autoimmune and inflammatory condition. This causes your immune system to incorrectly attack healthy cells in the body which may then lead to inflammation, pain and/or swelling in the affected body parts. RA usually affects the knee, hand and wrist joints. It may also affect other body tissues and cause complications in crucial organs such as the heart, eyes and lungs.
How To Prevent Arthritis Naturally With Diet And Exercise
Medical Perspectives | Lifestyle & Wellness
Did you know that in 2010, 22.7% of adults reported physician-diagnosed arthritis? And that arthritis has a slightly higher prevalence in women than in men ? The high number of arthritis cases may have you wondering how to avoid this chronic illness.
Read on to learn how arthritis affects your body and what you can do to treat or prevent arthritis naturally.
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Why Is Exercise Important To Prevent Arthritis
Regular exercise is one of the most important strategies to try to prevent arthritis. Exercise can help keep your weight down, which reduces stress on your joints. The Johns Hopkins Arthritis Center reports being only ten pounds overweight increases the force on the knee by 30- 60 pounds with each step.
Exercise also strengthens the muscles around joints, helping to reduce wear on the muscles and joints. Regular physical activity also stretches our tendons and ligaments to maintain flexibility. Cartilage is like a rubbery cushion in a joint, and it gets lubricated when we move that joint. Regular exercise keeps components of our joints lubricated and flexible, helping to reduce pain.
Your exercise routine can include the following low-impact aerobic activities:
- Walking
- Shadowboxing
- Rowing
All of these activities can boost your heart rate while avoiding the stress on your joints caused by high-impact exercises that involve running and jumping.
Alleviate Pain With These Simple Treatments
Arthritis in the fingers can be quite uncomfortable, causing symptoms such as joint pain, swelling, and stiffness. These symptoms make hand motions like grasping and pinching difficult and can interfere with a persons ability to perform everyday tasks.
Osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis are the two types of arthritis that most commonly affect the finger joints. Depending on which type of arthritis affects your finger joints, you may experience additional symptoms.
Numerous remedies can help ease the discomfort from arthritis of the fingers, from hand exercises to help strengthen your fingers to over-the-counter and prescription pain medications and surgical treatments. This article explores these remedies after explaining the symptoms of arthritis.
Verywell / Theresa Chiechi
Symptoms caused by arthritis of the fingers include:
- Joint pain
- Stiffness, especially in the morning
- Swelling
- Tenderness
In OA, joint pain is caused by the breakdown of cartilage, the tissue that cushions the joints. The three most common sites where osteoarthritis happens in the hand include:
- The trapeziometacarpal or basilar joint, or the base of the thumb
- The distal interphalangeal joint, or the joint closest to the fingertip
- The proximal interphalangeal joint, or the middle joint of a finger
People with RA tend to have prolonged periods of morning stiffness compared with people with OA.
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Why Choose Desert Care Network
Desert Care Network is a healthcare leader for arthritis pain management and total hip and knee replacements in Palm Springs and Coachella Valley. Desert Regional Medical has received specialty certification from the Joint Commission for its program in Hip Replacement and Knee Replacement. But more than being recognized for its commitment to compassionate care and excellence, we are proud of how we genuinely care about our patients.
Youre not meant to live in pain. Were here for you. Call to start get started.
Stop Eating An Unhealthy Diet
What’s your diet got to do with arthritis? Eating well and maintaining your ideal weight is especially important if you’ve got arthritis. Excess pounds can put lots of stress on weight-bearing joints, which is likely to make arthritis pain worse. Even moderate weight gain can stress joints that are already burdened by arthritis.
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How To Treat Arthritis
Treating arthritis requires each patient to be fully invested in their our own care. While we do offer traditional treatments, such as anti-inflammatory medications, injections and surgery, they are not the only way to increase joint mobility, reduce pain and promote faster healing.
Managing your arthritis focuses primarily on exercise, physical therapy as well as proper diet and nutrition to achieve and maintain a healthy body weight. Muscles are a very important component of stability and structure around joints and can often slow the degenerative changes of arthritis if maintained with exercise and physical therapy.
Its best to avoid high-impact exercise like running or repetitive jumping if it makes your joint pain worse, although those activities wont necessarily worsen arthritis. We recommend cycling, swimming or the elliptical trainer as a low-impact alternative.
Additionally, maintaining a healthy weight, even a 5- to 10-pound weight loss can have a tremendous impact on reducing joint pain.
When it comes to managing pain, gentle stretching, yoga and tai chi may also improve flexibility and reduce stiffness and pain. Options for pain include acetaminophen or an anti-inflammatory pain reliever such as ibuprofen, but there isnt enough evidence to support taking supplements, such as glucosamine, to treat arthritis. There is some evidence that following an anti-inflammatory diet may reduce symptoms of arthritis.
Tips For Preventing Arthritis
There is no known cure for arthritis. In fact, most treatments for arthritis are aimed at early recognition and prevention. Genetics can increase your likelihood for developing arthritis, as can a strong family history of the disease. Women are also more prone to arthritis than men.
You may try to prevent arthritis and still develop the disease. However, you can take actions to reduce your risk:
- Maintain a healthy weight. This can help to fight off OA.
- Dont smoke, or quit smoking. This may reduce your chance of developing RA.
- Try to avoid injury when playing sports or participating in recreational activities.
- If your job requires a lot of pushing, pulling, or lifting of heavy objects, take precautions to avoid injury to your joints.
- If your job calls for a lot of typing, practice good posture. If necessary, get a special keyboard, wrist cushion, or pad.
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Does Arthritis Affect Women More Often Than Men
Arthritis does affect women more frequently than men. More than 46 million Americans are living with arthritis, and 61 percent of them are women. That means about 28 million women are affected by arthritis in the United States.
Rheumatoid Arthritis affects more women than men in the United States. Johns Hopkins Arthritis Center says RA is two to three more times prevalent in women compared to men. Researchers believe hormonal differences between women and men may explain part of the reason.
The good news is there are some steps women can take to try to prevent osteoarthritis. They include:
- Lose weight to reduce pressure being put on knee and hip joints
- Do low-impact exercises to avoid wearing down the cartilage in joints
- Leave high heels in the closet to avoid the pressure they put on ankle joints
- When lifting objects, lift with your legs instead of your back to relieve stress on joints
- Maintain adequate levels of Vitamin D to slow the progression of arthritis
- Stay hydrated to keep cartilage lubricated and functioning smoothly
What Causes Arthritis
Its difficult to determine one single cause for arthritis. This is partly because there are so many different types of arthritis, and partly because in any given type of arthritis, there are multiple factors at play. There are, however, some commonalities and general trends across the spectrum.
- Immune System DysfunctionProblems with the immune system can be a cause of some types of arthritis, such as rheumatoid arthritis or systematic lupus erythematosus.
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What Is Arthritis
A lot of information about arthritis has been published over the years. It can be hard to distinguish fact from fiction.
Arthritis isnt a single disease. The term arthritis is used to refer to joint inflammation or joint disease. There are 100 different types of arthritis, all with different manifestations and symptoms.
Arthritis in your hands affects your wrists and joints in your fingers. You may notice:
- swelling
- stiffness
- limited range of motion
You may regularly experience these symptoms, or it may be days or even weeks before you have a flare-up. Over time you might experience chronic pain, and performing simple activities may prove difficult.
Why Do I Have Ra
What is causing your joint pain? RA is an autoimmune disorder. Autoimmune disorders result from your immune system mistaking your normal cells for foreign cells and attacking/destroying them. When your immune system attacks the lining of the membrane surrounding your joints , inflammation occurs. The constant inflammation of the synovium thickens the membrane lining and wears away the cartilage and bone in your joints, causing the physical pain you experience.
The tricky thing about RA is that doctors are still unsure of what the underlying cause is. While genetics seem to be a contributing factor, the baffling mystery is that the majority of people suffering from RA have no family history of it.
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Avoid High Impact Exercise
Avoid exercises such as running, plyometrics, and contact sports. Instead, try biking, walking, swimming, or low impact options on exercise videos to protect your joints. Sticking to low impact exercises can also help you prevent major injuries such as a ligament tear, which can contribute to arthritis.
Work On Managing Your Weight
Preventing osteoarthritis or reducing its severity is often linked to reducing stress on the joints .
If youâre overweight, you may be placing unnecessary stress on the joints. Overloading the knees and hips is not just hard on the bones but also on the soft tissues that support those joints.
The knees and hips often bear weight while going through a wide range of motion. So, by reducing the amount of weight that these joints must bear, you also reduce the strain put on them, limiting the likelihood of injury.
Instead of focusing solely on weight loss, consider finding a healthy combination of weight loss and exercise. This could help to limit arthritic pain and improve overall function in overweight adults.
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