Lifestyle and home remedies (3)
- Exercising with arthritis: Improve your joint pain and stiffness
- Rheumatoid arthritis pain: Tips for protecting your joints
- Arthritis pain: Do's and don'ts
Treatments and drugs (2)
- Prednisone and other corticosteroids: Balance the risks and benefits
- Arthritis pain relief: Creams and gels for aching joints
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Exercising with arthritis: Improve your joint pain and stiffness
Tips to protect your joints
Start slowly to ease your joints into exercise if you haven't been active for a while. If you push yourself too hard, you can overwork your muscles. This aggravates your joint pain.
Consider these tips as you get started:
- Apply heat to the joints you'll be working before you exercise. Heat can relax your joints and muscles and relieve any pain you have before you begin. Heat treatments — warm towels, hot packs or a shower — should be warm, not painfully hot, and should be applied for about 20 minutes.
- Move your joints gently at first to warm up. You might begin with range-of-motion exercises for five to 10 minutes before you move on to strengthening or aerobic exercises.
- Exercise with slow and easy movements. If you start noticing pain, take a break. Sharp pain and pain that is stronger than your usual joint pain might indicate something is wrong. Slow down if you notice inflammation or redness in your joints.
- Ice your joints after exercising. This can reduce swelling and pain. Use a cold pack on your joints for 10 to 15 minutes.
Trust your instincts and don't exert more energy than you think your joints can handle. Take it easy and slowly increase both the amount of time and intensity of your workout.
Don't overdo it
You might notice some pain after you exercise if you haven't been active for a while. In general, if your pain lasts longer than an hour after you exercise, you were probably exercising too strenuously. Talk to your doctor about what pain is normal and what pain is a sign of something more serious.
Tell your doctor if your exercise causes:
- Persistent fatigue or increased weakness
- Reduced range of motion in your joints
- Joint swelling
- Continuing pain
If you have rheumatoid arthritis, whether you should exercise during general or local flares is up to you and your doctor. Consider working through your joint flares by doing only range-of-motion exercises, just to keep your body moving.
Exercise programs for people with arthritis
Check with your doctor about exercise programs in your area for people with arthritis. Hospitals and clinics sometimes offer special programs, as do local health clubs.
The Arthritis Foundation conducts exercise programs for people with arthritis in many parts of the United States. Programs include aquatic exercise classes and walking groups. Contact your local branch for more information.
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