Arthritis: prevention is the best medicine

Preventing arthritis is a matter of taking care of yourself and being mindful of what you do with your body. With these key tips, you'll help reduce your risk of arthritis and maximize your chance of a healthy lifestyle.

Preventing arthritis is the best treatment option by far.

Adopting a healthy lifestyle from an early age can go a long way towards escaping the pain and suffering of arthritic joints throughout the body.

• If young people would heed the advice they read, they may keep their healthy body for a longer period.
• A healthy lifestyle that prevents arthritis can be achieved with careful planning and by adhering to three simple principles.
• Maintaining an active lifestyle, eating properly, and avoiding injury throughout life could be the answer to keeping arthritis at bay well into later years.

Exercise reinforces joints and protects them by strengthening the surrounding muscles.

• There are any number of activities that can be fun as well as healthful, such as simply walking or jogging. Other examples are horseback riding, biking or cross country skiing.
• Choose those activities that are enjoyable. Beginning and continuing an active lifestyle that includes stretching and strength-building activities at a young age may help to postpone arthritis by keeping joints limber.

To help avoid arthritic conditions there are many things that can be done.

• Just three of those include taking care when lifting and carrying objects, warming up and cooling down before and after strenuous activities, and drinking plenty of water.

When it comes to food, it takes perseverance and commitment to eat more healthfully.

• While eating cannot totally prevent arthritis, by limiting high fats and calories it may reduce the severity of pain if it does occur. According to the Arthritis Foundation, limiting foods high in sodium, saturated fats and sugar can be part of healthy eating.
• Consuming more anti-inflammatory foods such as healthy meats like fish and chicken, fruits, vegetables, grains, and choosing fats and low-fat dairy products wisely can help to build healthier bones and joints.
• Try spicing up foods with curry and ginger, which have anti-inflammatory properties.
• Shopping the perimeter of the food markets will probably keep the healthiest non-processed and non-refined food items in the shopping basket as opposed to less healthy ones.

Another way to avoid arthritis in later years is to reduce injuries to bones and joints.

• Injuries can often irritate joints and cause inflammation, which can then lead to swollen joints and arthritis pain.
• Learning proper lifting and bending habits and exercising care when walking on slippery surfaces can further attempt to ward off injuries.