You know how important a healthy lifestyle is in helping you preserve your overall health and wellness. It’s incredibly important to take care of your body, maintain a healthy weight, and eat right. Diet and exercise can help you combat a number of health issues and can even stop some problems before they start. However, certain forms of exercise can wreak havoc on your joints and be just as problematic as not exercising at all.
Joint health is particularly difficult to maintain, especially if you lead an active lifestyle. From injuries to arthritis, you could run into a multitude of issues over time. Some of these issues can be incredibly difficult to fix and even require long-term prescription pain medication or entire joint replacements. Luckily there various low-impact exercises that can help you maintain join flexibility without running the risk of injury.
Maintaining a Healthy Lifestyle
In life, you only get one body, so it’s crucial you do your best to care for the one you have. Think of your joints as delicate points on the body that help you to accomplish your strongest tasks. Most joints are made up of bone, cartilage, and a network of muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Putting undue pressure or strain on your joints can cause damage to any or all of its parts. For example, the average adult’s knee joint is under approximately 4 pounds of extra pressure for every 1 pound of extra weight carried on the body.
Just as carrying extra weight can damage your joints, putting too much strain on your joints while exercising can cause deterioration. That’s why it’s crucial that you either maintain a balance between high and low-impact exercises or stick to low-impact entirely.
Low-Impact Exercise Options
Whether you’re already feeling the effects of joint degradation or you want to prevent future pain and discomfort, low-impact exercises are a great option. There’s also no need to worry about getting bored since there’s such a wide variety of activities that you can engage in over many settings.
The following are the most accessible low-impact exercises to help you maintain your joint health:
- Swimming – swimming is an excellent exercise to strengthen muscles while supporting your joints
- Yoga – practicing yoga can help you maintain balance, build strength in your joints, and help you relax
- Pilates – slightly more intense than yoga, pilates uses focused moves to target muscle groups without placing undue pressure on your joints
- Elliptical Machine – for a little cardio, hop on an elliptical machine the next time you visit your gym
- Stationary Bikes – with a wide variety of gym and home options, a stationary bike can be a great way to burn calories without hurting your joints
- Walking – nothing beats getting outside or hitting the track at your local gym to burn calories and keep your joints loose and protected
By varying your low-impact exercises, you can prevent boredom or slipping into a rut with your routine to make sure you stay on track and focused. Committing yourself to a fitness routine can help you stay in shape and protect your body for years to come.
For more information about joint health and low-impact exercises, contact the experts at Peak Integrated Healthcare today.
