180416 Exercising your arthritic knees

180416 Exercising your arthritic knees

There are more than 100 different rheumatic diseases and conditions the most prevalent being osteoarthritis. The symptoms of the various rheumatic diseases include aching, pain, stiffness, and swelling in or around the involved joints.

Take a look at the following chart and see if you can detect the common thread in each disease.

Do you notice the trend? These four mentioned diseases, for the most part, result directly from a lack of exercise and poor eating habits. Both are changeable habits. Getting more to the point, some, if not all, of these painful conditions may be lessened with exercise, but it takes a change in your habits to start moving in the right direction.

Making the change in habits

Exercise and arthritis would seem to be a poor combination, however it turns out that the best thing you can do for your arthritic joints is to exercise them. The key here is to match the right exercise to your condition and to find your limits so you don’t overdo it but still do enough to benefit from the session.

Starting out with your exercise program

If you have not been consistently exercising because of your arthritis, it is a wise idea to discuss it with your physician. The two of you can then come up with mutually agreed-upon guidelines that will help you exercise in a safe manner and within healthy limits for your joint conditioning.

The first thing that comes many people’s minds when it comes exercising is jogging. However, if you have arthritic ankles, knees, or hips jogging is more than likely not going to be an exercise of choice for the simple reason is that it hurts. There are a variety of substitutions that can be made such as riding a stationary bicycle, using an elliptical trainer, and perhaps, depending on the treadmill, a treadmill. Water aerobics is also an option.

The right exercise or exercises will gradually help strengthen and thereby stabilize the joint. The stronger the ligaments, muscles, and tendons are surrounding the joint, the more stable this joint is going to be, which means less joint laxity and less pain with movement.

The most basic recommendation for choosing exercises is finding those that are low intensity and repetitive. These types of exercises do not overly stress the joint; they reduce the force placed across the joint and help preserve the integrity of the joint without causing pain during the movement.