Protecting Your Joints with Therapy and Exercise

You’ve probably heard how exercise can benefit your heart, mind, and overall well-being, but do you know what it can do for your joints? As a team of medical experts at Crescent City Orthopedics, we highly recommend exercise and therapy for your joint health — to help them stay strong and flexible and help you overcome fatigue and hold your pain at bay.

As important as exercise is for your health, only about one-third of all people in the United States do it.

If you suffer from joint pain or arthritis, we find that exercise and therapy are crucial for protecting the health of your joints so they can function well throughout your life.

The importance of exercise and therapy for your joints

You might be concerned that exercise and therapy can hurt or injure your joints, but that’s not true. When you follow a routine program of treatment, you can actually improve your health and fitness — especially when done right.

The benefits of exercise and therapy include:

• Strengthening the muscles around your joints
• Improving your balance
• Helping you keep your weight within a healthy range
• Energizing you
• Helping you sleep well
• Enhancing your quality of life

Though you might associate exercise with pain and stiffness, you can suffer from those things when you don’t move your body.

Why exercise and therapy work

Exercise helps strengthen the muscles that surround your joints. They can then serve as a protective force that supports your bones. When you don’t exercise your muscles, you leave your joints exposed to stress that can cause pain and lead to other complications and health issues.

What type of exercises work best

Changing up your routine workouts provides the best protection. You want to balance strength training and aerobics while keeping your weight within a healthy range.

Exercises that work best include:

• Stretching (before and after aerobic or strength training exercises)
• Flexibility training (to engage all joints and prepare them for more intense exercises)
• Low-impact activity for cardiovascular (water aerobics, bicycling, or walking)
• Cross-training (cycles through different exercises at each workout)
• Weight training (for building muscles and keeping them strong to protect your joints)

Once you find exercises you like, stick with them but keep doing them on a rotational basis. It’s also a good idea to have a personal trainer to ensure you’re performing your exercises correctly, especially when using weights.

To learn more about the benefits of exercise and therapy to support your joint health, reach out to our team for an evaluation at one of our offices in Metairie, Chalmette, or Covington, Louisiana, today.