Joint inflammation is usually a cause of great inconvenience and oftentimes can be debilitating. Any type of swelling in your joints can activate the nerves in your joints which causes you to feel joint pain.
When you feel that dull ache, burning sensation, or the soreness in any of your joints, it could literally paralyze you. It’s like you’re an airplane that suddenly lost a wing or a car without a tire. It’s the worst feeling because you won’t be able to do the things you are used to doing. Any tiny movement in that specific joint or even the general area will cause tremendous pain.
We would usually hear older people experience joint inflammation or joint pain. However, younger people are no exception. Anyone can experience joint inflammation or joint pain.
There is such a thing as juvenile or pediatric arthritis which affects children under 16. This autoimmune disease causes swelling in the soft tissues lining the joints.
Causes of Joint Inflammation and Joint Pain
When we talk about joint pain, the first thing that comes to mind is arthritis or gout. However, according to WebMD, there are other conditions that could trigger pain in our joints. And these are not connected with arthritis at all. Sprains, strains, and other injuries directly affect our joints and trigger joint inflammation. These often lead to joint pain.
Did you know that you can actually cause yourself to experience joint inflammation or joint pain? Achy hips, knees, necks, and shoulder can be triggered by our current lifestyle. And these are very common occurrences that affect many of us.
Most of us sit too much. We sit in the car, we sit at our desks, we sit while watching TV, we sit when we eat, we just love sitting. These might seem very simple, but this sedentary lifestyle contributes to achy joints.
For one, our lack of movement causes weight gain. According to Harvard Medical School, there are two ways that weight increases the risk of joint pain:
“First, excess weight puts additional stress on weight-bearing joints (the knee, for example). Second, inflammatory factors associated with weight gain might contribute to trouble in other joints (for example, the hands).”
Now, if you are already experiencing chronic pain, you will likely experience what is called the Disuse Syndrome. According to Spine-Health.com, this is caused by physical activity and is fostered by a sedentary lifestyle.
3 Natural Joint Pain Treatments That You Can Apply
1. Diet
The biggest solution for joint inflammation and joint pain is through proper eating habits. Our diet plays an important role when it comes to our joints because what we eat has a huge impact on our joints.
Here’s what the A.Vogel website says:
“When we eat highly processed, artificial foods that aren’t natural and found in nature it comes as no surprise that our body recognizes these foods as foreign too.”
Our diet also helps us maintain a healthy weight. The Association of UK Dietitians believes it is a very important factor in having healthy joints.
“Not only does being obese or overweight increase the strain on joints but excess fat causes inflammation which can exacerbate symptoms. There is strong evidence that losing weight can reduce pain and improve physical function and mobility,” it says.
You can also reach out and talk to us at the Delta Discovery Center. We can recommend a plan that will help relieve some of your pain and discomfort.
2. Movement
Our movements also play a big role in keeping our joints healthy and ward off joint inflammation or joint pain. Spine-Health.com appropriately used the “use it or lose it” adage to stress the importance of movement.
This is basically the principle behind the disuse syndrome. An article on this topic says that physical inactivity will lead to the deterioration of bodily functions including the movement of your joints.
Therefore, if we want to maintain the normal function of our joints, we have to move in a way that counteracts all that sitting we do.
One thing that could help you get more movement into your routine is our Mindful Movement Class at the Center. This is designed to reverse the ill effects of sitting so much.
Our previous chiropractor, before we moved here to Hilton Head, had a little phrase that he used regularly, “Motion is lotion.”
So if people asked him, “Should I move to help improve this pain?” Whatever achy condition they had, he would respond, “Motion is lotion.”
So, movement is good. There are obvious lead times when too much motion can be a bad thing, but this is not the case in our class.
Our Mindful Movement class is designed to do some really deep stretching and a little bit of static strength building. Beyond that, it is helps to to deal with stress by developing your meditation skills. This is critically important for relaxation. In fact, just healing, in general, helps to offset the ill effects of stress and all types in our life.
3. Acupuncture
Acupuncture has been proven to be tremendously beneficial joint pain treatment or any sort of joint pain. If you understand the way acupuncture works, it’s working with the energy system in the body. For us that have been schooled in Western ways of dealing with health conditions, it is really odd that we could use a point on our leg to deal with pain in our back. There are all sorts of interesting combinations that oriental medicine uses to relieve pain.
According to WebMD, acupuncture may actually “curb pain by boosting the amount of natural pain killers your body makes which are called endorphins.”
Depending on where the pain is, there’s going to be a point somewhere in your body that would help to send more healing energy to that area that helps to drain out that inflammation.
Inflammation is actually what is causing the pain. You have to get to the root cause of the inflammation and relieve inflammation out of there if you want to have any sort of lasting relief.
