Monthly Archives: September 2013
How to Avoid Knee Pain when Getting Back Into Your Old Activities
It is surprising that even athletes can be unaware of the effect that weight has on their joints. Muscles get a lot of attention and bones probably are next in many people’s awareness. Joints, though, are equally important. In fact, without having your joints in good shape, you will not be able to build muscle, support strong bones or maintain your weight easily.
One new chiropractic client discovered the truth about joint pain. Deborah had kept up a running routine for years. For various personal reasons, she had to lay off this routine for several months. When she started to run again, she noticed that her joints ached more than she remembered. Her knees in particular were really hurting her.
She went to see a chiropractor. In the office, she got relief from the pain but she also learned a lot about why joints need special care.
How Deborah learned about an overlooked treatment to help her knee pain…
The chiropractor explained to Deborah, “The blood flow to your muscles is incredible. When you begin to exercise, blood flow to your muscles increases considerably. Even your bones receive a lot of blood. Your joints, though, are another matter. The tendons, ligaments and joint capsules of your body do not get a lot of blood during circulation.”
This is why you hear about athletes being out for so long when they damage a ligament. A strained muscle can heal quickly if circulation is good because the blood brings needed nutrients to heal damage. Joints need more time to recover.
However, joints are also sensitive to the change of weight gain. Deborah had put on some weight while she was away from running. When she started exercising again, her joints were not ready to support the new weight. Between runs, her knees were hurting and were not allowed enough time to heal because the damage was more significant.
Fortunately, Deborah was able to get the advice and treatment from her chiropractor that she needed to heal quickly. With body adjustments that focused particularly on her knees, ankles and hips, but also helped her whole body move better, she was able to keep running and prevent further injuries.
Deborah also received sound advice on how to drop some of her extra weight without pushing herself in running which was hurting her knees.
It’s important to know that regular chiropractic treatments do not just keep your body in alignment and feeling good; your joints gain integrity from these treatments. They will be able to resist wear and tear better and you will suffer joint pain less often.
Deborah also discovered other reasons to visit the chiropractor regularly. She found that treatments relieved stress and gave her an unexpected emotional clarity. Basically, the support of these treatments enhanced the results that she had always sought in athletic workouts. Her overall health was actually better now that she was incorporating chiropractic treatment into her life.
One of our clients also found relief from joint pain with our treatment. Her daughter was suffering from a painful sports injury. She says:
“Dr. Nicole recently treated my daughter for a sports related knee injury. She did her magic and also recommended follow up at home treatments. Dr. Nicole’s treatment really helped. She knows a lot about sports related problems and not just back issues!” –Sue H
At the first sign of knee, hip or ankle pain, many athletes seek out a medical doctor. Best practice is to let the MD help you with disease if it’s present, because that is their real specialty. We on the other hand can begin healing body injuries and pain in a natural and effective way, very quickly.
Your joints need help moving smoothly so they feel good even if you’ve treated them the best you can. We help you in our office with easy and effective treatments that you can often feel right away. Contact us on our website.
Fast and Easy Weight Loss Tips for Happy Joints
Athletes have a compelling interest in keeping their weight down. They engage in athletics for a lot of reasons and some people do so specifically to lose weight. However, weight actually matters to all athletes, no matter why they run, swim or play sports.
Virtually every sport relies on the health of your joints. Most of those sports also force you to use your weight-bearing joints, such as your ankle, knees and hips. Since joints to do not receive the copious supply of blood that muscles receive, they need longer to recover from exercise.
The recovery time is lengthened, though, when you’re active and are carrying too much weight for your body frame. You end up bringing down so much force that you can damage your joints significantly.
That is why it is so helpful for athletes and active people to know about the most recent research in fast weight loss. The sooner you drop access weight, the sooner that you can exercise without feeling joint pain or worrying about your joint health.
Here are 3 Fast Weight Loss Tips for Happy Joints
Most people learn about the food groups and some vague ways that they help people stay healthy when they are in school. Athletes should have much more in-depth knowledge about nutrition. For instance, each food does not stand alone. Some of them help you to digest other foods. Additionally, new research about different nutrients is teaching the health community more about the way that these substances interact with your metabolism.
Increase your Dairy Intake
Calcium intake, it turns out, is much more important for weight loss than people thought. In fact, many people avoid dairy due to the fat and try to supplement their calcium in other ways. New research by Korean scientists has revealed an unsuspected link, though, between calcium intake and obesity.
In the study, the patients which suffered from obesity had a number of lifestyle factors in common. None shocked researchers so much as their low dairy intake. The heaviest people were drinking less than one cup of milk or its equivalent per day.
The results are still being pondered but some people suggest that calcium levels in your body have a direct impact on weight loss. Moreover, natural sources of calcium seem to have a greater impact on this result than calcium supplements.
Eat Lots More Fruits and Vegetables
You don’t have to pay attention in school for very long to understand that fruits and vegetables are important, foundational parts of the food pyramid. You have probably heard about fiber and all the vitamins and minerals in these plants. However, these nutrients are needed for more than just one reason.
Take the Vitamin C in oranges and other citrus fruit, for example. A lot of people know that they need vitamin C but they do not know why. It is important for maintaining the health of your skin and joints but it also works at a much more fundamental level. Without Vitamin C, your body cannot use the iron that you eat to make red blood cells and do other things. So the iron that you got from eating meat may only be useful if you eat an orange.
Eating a balanced diet, then, is not just good advice for athletes and non-athletes. It is the key to weight loss and long-term joint health.
Often, even with the benefits of weight loss, your joints need help moving smoothly so they feel good. We help clients relieve foot, knee and hip pain so they can move comfortably all day long. Check out our free report on how to prevent a foot, ankle or knee injury: “10 Questions to Know if You are Heading towards a Foot, Ankle or Knee Injury…And How to Prevent it“.
