Maintaining Good Joint Health for Better Mobility

Elbows, knees, ankles, fingers, shoulders, and wrists. If it’s a part of your body and has the ability to bend, then there is a joint inside. That’s not just a spot where a pair of bones come together with the ability for one to move off at an angle from the other. There’s more than that to joints in the human body, and many people will either have never heard of synovial fluid or don’t know what function it serves in keeping elbows, knees, ankles, and the rest of those joints soft, fluid, and flexible. Movement is important to people of all ages, and for that reason joint health needs to be a priority.

Good joint health is something that – like so many aspects of the vitality of the human body – is one of the blessings of youth. As you age, you’ll almost certainly develop some level of pain or immobility in one or more of your joints. In worst case scenarios you may develop arthritis in them. However, maintaining good joint health is entirely possible by following specific health guidelines. Let’s look at them here, as well as discuss recommended joint health supplements briefly too.

Causes of Joint Health Degeneration

A person’s joint health can degenerate for any number of reasons. The most common one as it relates to hip, knee, and ankle pain is being overweight. This is fairly self-explanatory, as the excess weight and the realities of gravity put excessive pressure on these weight-bearing joints in the body. The next most common cause of joint stiffness and immobility is the person getting insufficient physical exercise, or none at all.

Joints will swell and become stiffer with age, but aerobic exercise – anything that gets your heart rate up – actually works to reduce swelling in joints all over the body and not just in ones being used as part of that physical exercise. Remaining in a seated or prone position for extended periods of time can also lead to poor joint health. First and foremost among those positions is being seated at a desk for hours and hours – something that’s a description of how many people spend the entirety of their working day.

Poor muscular structure can also lead to bad joints. Particularly if the person engages in repetitive motion tasks while having insufficient musculature to support the joints involved in the motions. Poor posture can also be a cause of chronic joint pain.

Symptoms Resulting from Poor Joint Health or Arthritis

Joint pain results when the synovium – the cartilage that sits between the bones in a joint – becomes weakened or torn for any one of the reasons listed above. The synovium is surrounded by synovial fluid, which keeps the synovium lubricated so that is can ‘cushion’ the contact between the bones. As we age, our body produces synovial fluid less effectively and that puts the synovium at greater risk as it’s not a well lubricated as it was when the body was younger. When this is paired with any factor that places specific wear and tear on the joint then poor joint health symptoms will surface, and the individual may eventually develop arthritis.

Symptoms include:

• Localized pain in the area of the joint, which can vary from more of an ache to sharp, intense pain
• Immobility, and specifically an inability to flex the joint to maximum bend without incurring severe pain
• Stiffness in the joint, meaning it can be flexed but even doing so without pain is difficult and the joint responds unwillingly to nerve impulses prompting it to move

Maintaining Good Joint Health

The three best things you can do to ensure your joints are in the best shape they can be are maintain a health body weight, stay physically active as you grow older, and make smarter diet choices to avoid foods that promote joint inflammation and degeneration. These should be where a person puts their primary focus, and then consider taking joint health supplements to augment the benefits of these choices.

Determining a healthy body weight is best served by going by your BMI (body mass index) rather than any acquired understanding of how many pounds or kilograms you think you should be carrying around. You can determine your ideal body mass index number with this online BMI calculator tool, and use it as a general guideline about the weight that will promote better joint health (and overall health).

Increasing the frequency with which you exercise, and exercising more vigorously, is recommended as well. There’s a direct correlation between getting your heart rate up and reduced joint swelling. For that reason high-intensity exercising is best, but you can also gain benefits from low-intensity exercises like swimming or even brisk walking. If exercising this often or this intensely is problematic for you then you can do the next best thing – get up and get moving as often as you can, and be sure to change positions frequently. The last part of that is especially advisable if you sit down at work all day.

You can also eat your way to less joint pain and stiffness. The most common approach is to increase your level of calcium intake by eating more dairy, broccoli, kale, figs, and fortified foods like soy or almond milk. If you can’t eat any of these or find them unappetizing then a standard calcium supplement can provide the same benefits. Vitamin D is also essential for good joint health and avoiding arthritis because it’s needed for optimal absorption of calcium.

Recommended Joint Health Supplements

You won’t find any published article online that doesn’t recommend glucosamine sulfate supplements as the number-one supplement for reducing joint pain and arthritis symptoms. Glucosamine is a naturally-produced substance in the body formed from glucose and glutamine, an amino acid. Glucosamine sulfate is an OTC product that you don’t need a prescription to purchase, and it does provide temporary relief of joint pain.

Chondroitin sulfate is another one that’s all natural, OTC, and proven effective. It enhances the shock-absorbing properties of collagen and prevents further breakdown of collagen.

Commonly prescribed prescription medications for joint pain and arthritis include Mobic (Meloxicam), Celebrex (Celecoxib), and Arava (Leflunomide). For patients with severe pain in their joints or advanced arthritis or osteoarthritis it is quite common for physicians to recommend one of the natural OTC products listed above be taken with one of these prescription meds for maximum improvement of their joint health.