Natural Remedies for Arthritis ManagementNatural Remedies for Arthritis Management

Arthritis is a chronic sickness of the joints and muscles. It causes joint pains, limits the ability to move and inflammation. There is no cure and the available treatments currently address pain only (and temporarily) but not the root causes (mainly because they remain mostly unknown). While analgesics and painkillers really do alleviate pain, they have multiple side effects that do not make the patient’s life any easier either. Fortunately taking pills is not the only way to improve your condition if you are an arthritis patient. Dealing with arthritis through natural resources and practices usually needs quite a bit of discipline. On the other hand, it’s cheap, it works, it promotes general health besides improving arthritis and it has no side effects at all. It’s very well worth a try.

So let’s have a look at some of the natural ways in which you can make your arthritis management better.

Eat right.

Inflammation is a major element in arthritis and your diet is a major element that can promote or prevent inflammatory processes. Therefore it’s critical for any arthritis patient to eat a healthy well-balanced diet. The first priority is to reduce significantly (if possible get completely rid of) processed foods and refined carbohydrates (sugars, white flour). Yes, they’re tasty. They also promote inflammation very strongly. Reducing this kind of foods in your diet also helps your body to detoxify and to work correctly. It’s also very important to eat as many fruits and vegetables as you possibly can. These are foods full of important micronutrients and fiber, but most of them are also low in calories so increasing your vegetable intake makes it so much easier to lose weight and become easily sated. If you will be eating wheat or any other grain, make sure it’s integral. Avoid dairy, drink almond milk or rice milk instead. Last but not least, mind your weight. A heavier body puts additional stress on the joints thus creating more pain.

Exercise Frequently.

Exercise strengthens your joints and muscles so it’s critical in arthritis. You should always exercise but you need to be careful and smart about this. Sports or physical activities that are too repetitive or that create too much tension in your body (in your joints, especially) will not help you but make everything worse. You need to choose soft exercises that will give you the benefits you need without making your current problems worse (pain could get worse or you could be injured). Two great examples are playing Tai Chi or just having a thirty-minute walk daily. Please do exercise, just don’t overdo it.

Wear the right clothes.

Arthritis gets worse with cold, it increases pain. You can’t always get away from cold weather but, if you know you’ll have to be exposed to it, then you should make sure to wear the correct kind of clothes and shoes that will keep you warm all the time. Your shoes should not just be warm but also comfortable. Keep in mind that your feet’s joints will suffer even more if they have to take in extra stress from shoes that are too tight. Forget about high heels, especially if you will need to walk more than just a few steps. Uncomfortable shoes are not just about your feet, they create extra pressure (and pain) for your knees. This is not a trivial thing: wearing flat shoes is one of the most practical and cheap ways to improve arthritis because they don’t just relieve unnecessary pressure from your feet and knees but also allow you to take long walks and exercise.

Epsom Salt Soak

Epsom salt is a magnesium-rich natural mineral. It’s actually essentially magnesium sulphate. It’s been used as a natural analgesic for a very long time and it’s a safe and available natural remedy for arthritis patients who are sick and tired of the pain but also of the pill’s costs and side effects.

So while it is very clear that conventional painkillers do help arthritis patients with their pain, they do that at the cost of forcing them to deal with side-effects (some of which can be very serious). But this doesn’t have to be a problem. There are other resources available for arthritis patients, natural ones that are utterly free from side-effects. They are very cheap, safe, and they promote every patient’s overall health, not just issues related to joint pain. You should at the very least, consider them.