How to Maintain Healthy Joints

An illustration of a human joint from Gray's Anatomy

If you have never experienced chronic joint pain, then you may not necessarily understand just how devastating it can be in someone's life. Painful, always-inflamed joints can be a truly debilitating thing to deal with. That's why it's so important for people to do what they can to maintain healthy joints before a problem arises. Here's a list of things you can do to make sure that your joints remain healthy, flexible and limber into old age.

Instructions

1. Maintain a healthy weight. Overweight and obese individuals put themselves at a vastly increased risk of developing joint problems early in life. Essentially, the more weight and impact you put on the connective tissues in your joints, the faster they'll wear out and fail to function properly. Maintain a healthy body weight and you'll definitely help your joints to stay healthy.

2. Skip the high-impact workouts. While it is true that it's crucially important, in order to maintain good health, to get plenty of aerobic exercise, you should try to make as much of that exercise as you're able low-impact in nature. Once again, the less wear-and-tear that you put your joints through, the longer they'll last.

3. Ice your joints after exercise. If you do any kind of high-impact exercise, ice the affected joints for 15-20 minutes afterwards to help alleviate the swelling and minimize the negative impact that the activity will have on the long-term durability of your joints.

4. Eat a healthy diet. While this may seem self-evident, many people fail to see the connection between eating properly and their joint health. Maintaining healthy joints requires that you eat right and get all of the minerals, nutrients, and vitamins that you need. Calcium, lean protein and omega-3 fatty acids are all particularly important for good joint health.

5. Lift weights. You should implement a strength training program into your exercise routine to help keep your muscles in good enough shape that they can, in turn, help you to maintain and support your healthy joints.

Tips & Warnings

• Good low-impact exercises for your joints include swimming, bicycling, and elliptical training machines.

• Many people swear by the supplements called glucosamine and chondroitin, which are often sold in supplemental form together in one pill as a means of supporting and maintaining proper joint health. Those who have risk factors for developing joint problems or arthritis might be well-advised to take a glucosamine-chondroitin supplement regimen as a safeguard.

• Don't lift excessively heavy weights when you're weight training. This will actually have a deleterious effect on your overall joint health and can cause catastrophic joint failure in extreme cases.