An Active Joint is a Healthy Joint.
Naturally, joint motion increases flexibility and strength and lubricates joints. But exercises just check all the boxes and it not only help maintain joint health in the long term, but it will also help reduce symptoms like pain and inflammation almost immediately due to the production of natural painkillers called endorphins.
Flexibility and range of motion are keys to joint health. You may not realize it but staying in motion helps keep your tendons and ligaments strong, which are essential for mobility. Stretching your muscles and joint tissue will help you retain joint function.
Joint Pain Benefits from Exercise
- Synovial Fluid Lubricates the Joint
- Blood Flow Increases
- Chance of Self-Repairing Joints
- Muscle is Built
- Reduces Pain and Stiffness
- Cellular Waste is Removed
6 Benefits
Synovial Fluid Lubricates the Joint
When a joint moves, the fluid sloshes around, giving the cartilage a healthy dose of oxygen and other vital substances. As an added bonus, regular exercise encourages the body to produce extra synovial fluid. The synovial fluid acts like oil in an engine, allowing your bones to move past one another more smoothly, which can delay or prevent arthritis at the joint.
Blood Flow Increases
Exercises help blood circulation as it increases blood flow, gets the heart pumping blood around your body faster and helps flush the blood through your arteries. As a result, the synovial membrane is exposed to a steady supply of nourishing oxygen and nutrients.
Chance of Self-Repairing Joints
Scientists aren’t entirely clear about how genes play a role in joint repair, but research shows that joint movement activates genes associated with rebuilding cartilage. Overdoing exercise can have the opposite effect, though, so listen to your body.
Muscle is Built
When you exercises, the body repairs damaged fibers by fusing them, which increases the mass and size of the muscles. Certain hormones, including testosterone, human growth hormone, and insulin growth factor, also play a role in muscle growth and repair, making the muscle stronger which can support your joint better.
Reduces Pain and Stiffness
Exercise is crucial for people with arthritis. It increases strength and flexibility, reduces joint pain, and helps combat fatigue. Of course, when stiff and painful joints are already bogging you down, the thought of walking around the block or swimming a few laps might seem overwhelming. Joint exercises do not necessarily mean athletic activities. Even range of motion exercises can ease your pain and help you maintain a healthy joint. When arthritis threatens to immobilize you, exercise keeps you moving.
Cellular Waste is Removed
A study published online shows that exercise accelerates the cell’s ability to remove its own waste. This process cells use to clean themselves in their usual growth, development and maintenance is autophagy, or “self-eating.”
Basically, exercise allows the cells to speed up the process that keeps them from becoming storehouses for cellular junk and recycling cellular parts, making our cells more efficient!
Regular exercises have enormous health benefits, as we saw above. Most importantly, it will reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, and premature death. And if that’s not enough for you, consider the many studies that link physical activity to protection against diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, osteoporosis and fractures, depression, insomnia, dementia, colon cancer, breast cancer, and possibly prostate cancer.
Despite all these benefits, only about a third of American adults get the exercise they need. Excuses like lack of time are the most common, and the belief that exercise is too hard is a close second. But since moderate exercise that can be built into daily life is all it takes to promote health, neither excuse is very convincing. Warming up and cooling down will help protect your heart and your joints. Stretching exercises, good shoes, and good technique will reduce your musculoskeletal injury risk. With these simple precautions and a dose of common sense, exercise will be safe.
Carolina Regional Orthopaedics
Carolina Regional Orthopaedics provides the most effective, modern, and innovative techniques in both Orthopedic Surgery and Pain Management using proven methodologies in both the surgical and non-surgical treatment of all conditions affecting the Learn more about the orthopedic specialists at CRO. spine, upper extremities, and lower extremities. We specialize in hand and wrist surgery, joint replacements, sports medicine, trauma care, pediatric orthopedics, pain management, wound care, physical therapy, and imaging services.
