Any health conscious person wants to avoid surgery right? If you’re anything like me you want to live a long healthy life with as little time in hospital as possible and chances are that you want your body to stay young and functional.
Those are pretty good goals to have; after all any surgery is a risk and even doctors make mistakes – negligent or otherwise. So staying off the table is always best if possible. Unfortunately, where joints are concerned, it is not unheard of for people to need surgery because of their high activity levels. So what’s a fitness conscious person to do?
Here are a few ways that you can keep your body young and either prevent or at least delay going under the knife:
Wear A Knee Support
You might not think these things make a lot of difference but many athletes swear by them. The theory is that by keeping your knee warm it promotes blood flow which accelerates your body’s ability to heal itself.
But if you’re not convinced, there is actually some medical evidence that these do make a difference, so it’s certainly worth a relatively small investment to try it out.
Avoid Inflammatory Foods
Many knee problems are remedied by using steroid injections to reduce inflammation, but if you want a natural and healthier alternative, stop eating junk food and anything that is highly processed.
Many processed foods contain chemicals which cause inflammation as well as all manner of other health problems and often by cutting out unhealthy food and eating only natural whole foods you can reduce this effect and help or even eliminate joint problems.
Stay Slim
This one should be a no-brainer really and anyone who cares about their health probably wants to stay slim anyway. But if you are at risk of knee or joint problems, there are few better ways to improve your life than by losing weight.
Imagine if you had to constantly carry around 6 kilograms, how much extra strain would that put on your knees? Well if you are 14lbs overweight, that is exactly what you are doing.
Stay Active
Exercise has all sorts of benefits and just walking regularly can help an awful lot. You don’t have to engage in high impact sports, but just move around as much as you can.
Using your joints will stimulate them to lubricate themselves and can actually make joint pain all but disappear. On top of that, exercise will make your muscles stronger which means that the muscles support the join and keep it aligned better.
Eat Healthily
All of the vitamins and oils are important, get plenty of calcium to keep your bones strong; this will prevent breakages and cracks. Oils and natural, healthy fats will help to keep your joints healthy too by keeping them lubricated.
You also need lots of vitamin A because it reduces inflammation and vitamin D is essential to rebuild cartilage – so that’s another reason to get outside and be active.
Watch Your Alignment
A very common reason for knee pain is alignment issues, unfortunately small issues are rarely caught before they have caused a few years’ worth of damage. Look out for alignment problems, particularly in your knee and hips and fix them.
Bad alignment is often caused by imbalances in muscle strength and flexibility, so if you find your knee is out of alignment, get advice on stretches and muscle building exercises to bring your join back into equilibrium.
In more severe cases your doctor may also be able to give you a knee brace to bring your knee back into alignment, these work best when used in conjunction with appropriate exercises of course.
Talk To Your Doctor
Finally of course, if you feel any symptoms of joint problems, talk to your doctor. Joint problems often begin when you are relatively young and your doctor will be able to help you assess whether you have an issues which need remedying.
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License: Creative Commons image source- License: Creative Commons image source
About The Author
This guest post was written by Dominic from Axiclaim. Axiclaim are a group of solicitors who specialise in medical claims and surgery complications.
