Six Tips for Mitigating the Effects of Joint Pain
Dealing with chronic joint pain can really dampen your day, and on a bigger scale, your life. Whether it’s your back, knees, hips, or shoulders, the pain slowly creeps in until it has affected you day-to-day in colossal ways.
At Elevate Chiropractic in Boone, NC, I hear it all the time from prospective patients:
“My low back pain is preventing me from playing with my kids after work.”
“I just can’t go out and run like I used to because of my knee.”
“My health goals are hindered from my hip pain when I’m working out.”
There’s always an accompanying “AND” statement when folks are in pain. Below, I list out some of the most impactful ways to manage your pain both at home and with the help of a rehab professional.
1) Increase Your Sleep Duration and Quality
About a third of the American population does not meet the recommended sleep guidelines of seven hours per night minimum. And this doesn’t just mean that you’re horizontal for more than seven hours, scrolling through your phone or watching TV, it means actually sleeping.
Why People Struggle to Fall and Stay Asleep
While increasing your sleep can be tough, the results are tremendous when it comes to recovery, mood, and energy levels throughout the day. A chronic issue like joint pain will demand more from your body as the natural healing process runs its course.
This may not look perfect for everyone – kids, odd work hours, and travel are just a few factors that can make meeting guidelines tough. But even small increases of thirty minutes to an hour more each night (or through a midday nap) add up across the course of a week and month.
2) Manage Your Daily Stress Levels
Think of pain like a “check engine” light; it’s how your body communicates to your brain that something isn’t quite right. This signal is an additional stressor on top of what you’re experiencing in your everyday life. Mental and emotional stress tend to act as a magnifier of that physical stress, or pain, that you are experiencing.
Everyone’s situation is different, and stress can be from many different sources: social, physical, emotional, financial, and more. The ability to turn these signals down is certainly a skill, but it can help put your body into a calmer state that promotes healing, rather than fighting it.
Our body’s “battery” only has so much life and will allocate energy to tackle all the stress we face. Reducing energy to one type of stress will allow more energy to flow toward healing your pain point.
3) Adjust, Not Omit, Your Daily Activity or Workout Routine.
The biggest mistake I see people make when their joint pain flares up is ceasing all movement entirely. Yes, rest absolutely has its place, but total rest can often make the situation worse. Easy, recoverable activities can help your circulation, reduce muscle stiffness, and keep the surrounding muscles strong.
How To Modify Your Workout Routine for
The key to this is to find the level of movement that does not aggravate your symptoms. Pick ranges of motion that are pain-free; this can mean modifying a full-depth squat to a partial depth, stretches to very mild discomfort, or running at a slower pace than normal. Each case is individual, and this is where the help of a professional can really elevate the modifications you make. Movement is medicine!
4) Make Strength Your Friend
When most people think of the weight room in a gym, they envision jacked bodybuilders slinging barbells all around. That’s certainly present, but what you often don’t think of are the adults looking to improve their quality of life across their entire span.
Increasing the strength of your muscles can offload the demands placed on your joints themselves - the bones, tendons, and ligaments. Often, folks with knee pain lack strength in their quads and hips, for example. Building up the neighboring muscles is a great way to mitigate joint pain.
At Elevate Chiropractic, we spend a significant amount of time teaching patients how to properly load movements so their joints stop taking the brunt of the force and allow the muscles to do their jobs.
5) Win The Warm-Up
No, I do not mean to do the warm-up as fast as you can. In fact, many people would benefit from spending just a few more minutes before their main workout to really ensure their body is prepared for the upcoming activities.
Properly prepping your body will increase blood flow, increase body temperature, and “grease the groove” for your joints.
The R.A.M.P. Method for Warming Up
I like to use the R.A.M.P method:
Raise your heart rate and core body temperature (cyclical movement like jogging, biking, or rowing for 3-5 minutes)
Activate pertinent muscle groups (using low-intensity movements that mimic your workout)
Mobilize necessary joints (using dynamic stretches and mobility drills)
Potentiate the nervous system (gradually increase your exercise intensity)
6) Address The Underlying Cause, Not Just The Symptoms
It’s so easy to think that joint pain must be from an issue in the joint itself and many treatment options only treat that site. We wish it were that easy, but oftentimes there are deeper issues at hand for why your low back pain, knee pain, or shoulder pain won’t go away.
You feel like you’re doing everything right: cortisone injections at the location, localized adjustments, using braces to offload the joint, and so on. Unfortunately, treating pain as one problem, one solution, will leave you feeling underwhelmed with your “treatment.”
7) Take The First Step With A Professional
My best patients have told me, “I wish I started working with you sooner,” knowing that they could have gotten to a pain-free point in their lives months or even years sooner. That’s more gym sessions, more playtime, more outdoor activities, more “yes” rather than “not now.”
Schedule a Discovery Visit at Elevate Chiropractic
At Elevate, we first and foremost take the time to get really clear on why you’re still dealing with pain, even after trying fixes on your own, conventional chiropractic care, or traditional physical therapy. Knowing the cause lets us uniquely and effectively tailor the solution to you, so you can get back to doing all the things you love most.
If you’re ready to move without fear, chase the young ones around the yard, and pursue your athletic endeavors, you can book a free discovery visit.
We’ll help you understand what’s causing your pain, what’s been missing from your past treatment, and do what it takes to get you back to moving confidently again.