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Sailing into your later years with healthy joints

Apr 16, 2012, 8 a.m.

As you get older, joint health is one of the most important things to be considering on a daily basis. Your health, in general, is more important than it's ever been, but joint pain relief can actually be just a few simple steps away. Here are five tips to keeping your joints in shape as they age.

Keep on Moving

Moving consistently throughout the day can be an enormous help in keeping your joints healthy in your senior years. For instance, when you're sitting around watching TV or working on the computer, take a moment now and then to get up and stretch, touch your toes, or just switch sitting positions now and then.

Protect Your Joints

Arthritis can be compounded by injury and general soreness to your joints, but you need to stay active or the problem will get even worse. Here's a solution: Wear kneepads and braces when doing serious physical activity.

Stay at a Healthy Weight

One of the worst things you can do to your knees and your ankles is be severely overweight. The heavier you are, the more damage you're doing to your joints. Staying a comfortable weight will make things easier on your joints. Building muscle does add more weight, but building it around your joints will help to put less pressure on the bones themselves.

Warm Up Before Stretching

Believe it or not, stretching cold muscles can actually cause more harm than good. When exercising, do a little light warm up before you stretch. This sounds counter intuitive to everything we know about exercising, but believe it or not, it actually works.

Use Low Impact Exercise to Stay Strong

Many seniors give up running in favor of light walks and elliptical machine exercise. These low-impact and no-impact workouts help you to stay in shape without having to beat your feet against the pavement.

Take care of your joints, and they'll take care of you.

Content Provided by Spot55.com

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