Preserving Your Joints

Whether it be sports injuries or wear and tear, our knees, hips, and other joints encounter significant stress in an active lifestyle. This may lead to problems like osteoarthritis — a painful joint disease that can make daily activities and your favorite sports difficult.

How to Care for Yourself

Joints are an important part of your body, and joint pain can dramatically impact your overall quality of life. You can help preserve your joints with the following tips:

Eat a healthy diet. Healthy eating helps maintain a healthy weight. Extra pounds can cause more wear and tear on joints.

Stay active. Exercise protects joints by strengthening the muscles that support them.

Choose low-impact activities if you have arthritis. Instead of running, try swimming, walking, or snowshoeing.

Get enough rest. Sleep helps restore energy and decrease swelling and pain. And alternating strenuous activities with rest puts less stress on sensitive joints.

Manage pain. Use over-the-counter or prescription medications to control pain and inflammation. You can also explore nonsurgical pain management treatment, such as injections of anti-inflammatory corticosteroids or healthy lubricants directly
into painful joints.

Take part in physical therapy or performance training. This may help increase your mobility and build muscle, improving your ability to perform everyday activities.

Use assistive devices. A brace, splint, cane, or other devices may help ease joint stress and pain.

When to See Your Doctor

In the best of circumstances, these self-management strategies may be enough to improve function and control pain. But if you have any of the following signs, speak with your health care provider:

• Your joint pain continues while resting, either day or night.
• Your joint pain makes it hard for you to do everyday activities like getting out of a chair, going up stairs, or walking more than a short distance.
• You’ve tried different noninvasive treatments, including pain medications, but they’re not controlling your joint pain.

Your provider may refer you to an orthopedic surgeon for an exam, which should help determine what treatment may be right for you.

As an active life takes its toll, you may be a good candidate for joint replacement surgery, a technique to elongate the life of your joints and get you moving again.

Dr. Robert Rupp is a board-certified orthopedic surgeon with Tahoe Orthopedics & Sports Medicine and certified operator of the Mako SmartRobotics™ surgical system. For more information on joint replacement, visit BartonHealth.org or call 530.543.5554.