Motion Approved: How Exercise Provides Arthritic Relief

Arthritis can certainly take its toll on your emotional wellbeing and day-to-day life, but the real blow is dealt to your fitness levels. With stiff and achy joints, just getting out of bed in the morning can be a real challenge, let alone doing some exercise. Surely, it’s just better for your joint wellness to throw in the towel, right? Wrong. Certified Personal Trainer Jen Mueller argues that arthritic problems actually give you a reason to get up and get moving. According to Mueller, ‘Exercise reduces joint pain and stiffness and increases flexibility, muscle strength, cardiac fitness, and endurance. It also helps with weight reduction and contributes to an improved sense of wellbeing.’ But how do you start a programme that helps – rather than hurts – your arthritic pain?

 

There are three types of exercise that best deal with arthritis, so your programme needs to include a balance of the following:

 

• Range-of-motion exercises. Movements such as stretching help your joints to move normally, relieve stiffness, and maintain or increase your flexibility. You should include range-of-motion exercises at least every other day.


• Strengthening exercises. In order to keep or increase your muscle strength, and support and protect your joints, you need to perform strengthening exercises such as weight training, resistance exercises, nautilus and body weight exercises. Unless you have severe pain or swelling in your joints, you should include strengthening exercises every other day.


• Aerobic or Endurance exercises. Bicycle riding, walking, swimming and using cardio gym machines helps to improve your heart health, control your weight, enhance your body’s overall functioning and relieve pressure on and inflammation in your joints. Include 20 – 30 minutes of aerobic exercises three times per week unless you have severe pain or swelling in your joints.

 

So, how do you begin? Mueller recommends, ‘Begin with easy, range-of-motion exercises and low-impact aerobics. As you become more comfortable with a low-level program, it is possible to progress to more advanced exercises. For example, you might start with water exercise (easiest on the joints) and progress to walking and/or biking or sports. Check with your doctor to learn which sports and exercises would be safe for you to try.’ However, when you are exercising, there are certain things you need to remember in order to workout safely and effectively:

 

1. Move daily: To prevent stiffness and loss of joint movement, you should move your joints daily. ‘Exercises should be done on a regular basis,’ says Mueller. ‘You should try to do them on good days and bad days, although you may have to modify the programme if you are having more pain than usual.’

 

2. Go gently: Mueller asserts, ‘An inflamed joint should only be moved gently through its range of motion. It is important to listen to your body and not overdo it. If an exercise hurts, stop! Pain (other than normal arthritis discomfort) is your body’s way of telling you something is wrong. If you get tired, rest! Wait a few minutes, then continue when you are ready.’ Most experts will agree that if your pain persists for more than one hour after exercise, you are doing too much.

 

3. Start right: ‘Always begin a session with some slow warm-up exercises to reduce stress on the joints,’ Mueller advises. ‘You should attempt to achieve a full range of motion by moving until you feel a slight stretch. Do not force the motion, going only as far as you feel comfortable.’  Remember to move at your own pace, and perform each exercise in a slow and steady motion.

Categories: Arthritis, Daily Exercise, exercise, exercises, joints, motion, motion exercises, muscle strength, Pain, severe pain, strengthening exercises

5 of the Best Products that Actually Help You Lose Weight

While one’s weight is regulated by hundreds of systems within the human body, there are a few key concepts when it comes to weight loss. This includes improved metabolism, reducing appetite in a healthy manner, increasing energy, and increasing the burning of calories. While losing weight naturally is often a slow and hard process, there are many products that advertise that they can help people to lose weight in an instant with no work. The problem is that many of these products do not work or they can have extreme side effects that can destroy your overall health. Here are five of the most popular and effective products that have been put at the forefront of weight loss, and that actually work.

 

 

1. Fruit-Based Cleanses

 

A detox or cleanse is typically seen as one of the first steps to weight loss in order to remove the huge amounts of lingering toxins that can fill up in the body. A cleanse typically utilizes fresh fruits, vegetables, juices, and a hand full of other supplements in order to allow the body’s chemical balance and metabolism to “reset” and start weight loss on the right foot.

 

 

2. Vitamin D

 

Vitamin D is a powerful tool when it comes to weight loss for two reasons. First, it allows cells to become more sensitive to insulin, which will in turn affect how many calories are absorbed and needed throughout the day. It may also have affect on leptin levels, which is a hormone that triggers the brain to stop eating. Vitamin D supplements are easy to find in any grocery or drug store.

 

3. Protein Meal Replacements

 

Protein is often seen as a supplement that is needed for increased muscle strength, but it has a dramatic effect on one’s metabolism. Protein-based meal replacement products from NaturesSunshine.com will improve bone and muscle strength while curbing one’s appetite for long periods. Protein will also help to keep your energized throughout the day, unlike carbohydrates while will be burnt quickly and leave you without energy a short time after they are processed.

 

 

4. Calcium

 

While an abundance of dairy products can result in weight gain, calcium supplements remain an excellent option for shedding pounds. Calcium that is stored in fat cells reduces the amount of fat that is stored in these cells and improves the body’s ability to break down fat as it is consumed.

 

 

5. Green Tea Extract

 

Green tea has long been one of the most popular health foods in the world due to ingredients such as antioxidants, but the extract is now being used as a powerful weight loss tool. The leading ingredients in green tea extract are theanine, caffeine, and catechins, and these have each been show in some studies to cut down on belly fats, reduce LDL in the body, and improve one’s circulation and metabolism.

 

 

By focusing on natural products and supplements, anyone can be sure that they are losing weight in a healthy manner. In addition to being extremely effective, this may also help to keep the weight off permanently without dramatic fluctuations.

Categories: green tea, healthy manner, Lose, Lose weight, Losing Weight, muscle strength, nbsp, nbsp nbsp, products, tea extract, weight, Weight Loss

Why Professional and Amateur Athletes Love Plyometrics

While zumba and bokwa have become as commonplace as jogging and cycling, there’s one fitness trend that’s still exciting wellness experts and fanatics across the country, and can work wonders for your wellbeing; plyometrics. Also known as jump training, this training technique can increase your muscular power and explosiveness. Don’t believe me? Ask the Olympians! Plyometrics was originally developed for Olympic athletes, and now it has become a popular workout routine for people of all ages, including children and teens.

 

Plyometrics are dynamic resistance exercises that rapidly stretch your muscle (which is known as the eccentric phase) and then rapidly shortens it (or the concentric phase). For example, you undergo hopping and jumping exercises in order to subject your quadriceps to a stretch-shortening cycle that can strengthen these muscles, and then go on to an increase vertical jump so that you reduce the force of impact on your joints. The great thing about plyometric exercises is that they use similar motions to those seen in sports such as skiing, tennis, football, basketball, volleyball, and boxing. These means that professional and amateur adult athletes use plyometric training to up their performance in the game.

 

However, plyometric training is for everyone. According to the American College of Sports Medicine, even children and adolescents can benefit from a properly designed and supervised plyometric routine. What are these benefits, you ask? Back in the 1970s, plyometric training was first popularised by state sports trainers in the former East Germany, who based the training technique on scientific evidence showing the power of stretch-shortening cycles on the muscle. These cycles prompt your muscles’ stretch of “myotactic” reflex, and this, in turn, enhances the power of your muscular contraction.

 

Still, while plyometric training is vastly beneficial to your muscles and athletic performance, that is not to say that the training technique is without its risks. Some of the risks associated with plyometric training include an increased risk of injury, especially if you take up plyometrics without the adequate strength you need to begin with. This means that, before you even consider starting a plyometric training programme, you need to consult a sports medicine doctor or therapist. These medical health professionals can assess your strength and fitness level to determine whether or not you’re ready for plyometric training.

 

You’re also probably not a good candidate for plyometric training if you have joint or bone problems, but even if you’re a seasoned athlete at the pinnacle of your physical wellness, you still need to bear in mind that any training routine that uses explosive movement to build strength is, in itself, associated with an increased risk of injury. In fact, the reported injuries associated with plyometrics programmes of depth jumping have, within the sports science community, stirred considerable debate over the technique’s safety. Some wellness experts have even gone so far as to compare plyometrics to the now-discredited technique of high-impact aerobics, which increases your risk of injury to your lower-body joints such as your knees and ankles.

 

That said, plyometric training is usually safe and effective as long as you begin and continue in the proper way. As we’ve already covered, you need to make sure you’ve received adequate screening from a sports medicine doctor or therapist and, once you get the all-clear, you then need to select a qualified coach or trainer who can slowly-but-surely introduce you to more difficult exercises. Your instructor will need to match the exercises to your age and fitness level and teach you the proper landing techniques before gradually advancing you to the more difficult stages.

Categories: Explosive Movements, fitness level, increased risk, medicine doctor, muscle strength, plyometric training, Plyometrics, sports medicine, stretch shortening, training