5 Tips for Arthritis Relief and Better Mobility

Don’t Let Arthritis Seize You Up – These Tips Will Give You More Mobility as well as Arthritis Relief

Arthritis – yeuch. It’s debilitating and painful.

I’ve written about it before – here’s a good overview of who is most at risk of arthritis, its causes and also its complications, tests you can have to see if you’ve got it, and natural remedies.

Those natural remedies focus on what you can eat for arthritis relief.

But this article focuses on the external things you can do to help relieve the pain and even improve the mobility of arthritic joints. 

Of course, all of these options are eco-friendly and won’t harm the environment.

Hot and Cold Therapy

Hot and cold therapy is great for arthritis relief. It’s easy and cheap, and you can do it home (hooray!).

Heating pads and ice packs are easy to have on hand and don’t cost a lot of money.

• You can try alternating hot and cold therapy to the affected joints to decrease pain.
• On some days, cold therapy works best for arthritis relief.
• On other days you may find that a heating pad is better.

Having both on hand is the best way to ensure that this therapy is effective at increasing your mobility and decreasing your pain.

Some people get the most arthritis pain relief using both heat and cold.

• Heat therapy sometimes works best earlier in the day because it relaxes the muscles around the joints.
• Cold therapy at the end of the day can minimize inflammation from daily activities.

Hydrotherapy

Hydrotherapy is another way to get arthritis relief. Web M.D. recommends hydrotherapy as a form of exercise for those with arthritis. Hydrotherapy is exercise in a pool that is warmer than a traditional swimming pool.

If you suffer from arthritis, exercise is really, really important. But when your joints are sore, exercise is not enjoyable.

The big advantage of hydrotherapy is that it increases cardiovascular fitness and lets you exercise to a greater degree of intensity than you could on land.

You get all of the benefits of regular exercise without the impact on your joints, plus you’ll increase your mobility and range of motion when you exercise regularly.

Unless you have your own heated pool, you won’t be able to do hydrotherapy at home, but it is considered to be a form of physical therapy, so you may find that your medical insurance covers it.

(And of course, sharing a pool with other people makes it a shared resource and therefore more green and ecofriendly).

Keep Moving

When you suffer from arthritis, it’s natural to keep your sore joints tightened up in order to alleviate pain. But this shortens the ligaments and muscles around the affected joint – and long-term, this will actually increase the pain.

Instead, try to do some range of motion exercises, as recommended by The Cleveland Clinic.  Also called stretching or flexibility exercises, range of motion exercises condition your joints by gently straightening and bending the joints in a controlled manner as far as they comfortably go.

If you do other forms of exercise, use range of motion exercises as an important warm-up before exercising. Yoga and tai chi can also be useful for this.

Throughout the day, you need to move, flex, and use the joints that hurt. You should get up and move around at least once an hour.  (Bathroom trips count too).

It doesn’t matter what your fitness level is. Even slowly walking around the living room using a walker or going back and forth in the hallway a few times is a good joint workout.

Lose Weight

One of the issues with arthritis is that as it becomes more difficult to be fully mobile, many sufferers gain weight through inactivity. Excess weight increases pressure and damage to the joints, which increases the pain – and reduces mobility even more. It’s a vicious circle.

Healthy eating helps not just with weight loss but also with getting more beneficial nutrients into your body to help fight inflammation.

Omega-3

Eating fish rich in omega-3 like salmon, sardines, herring, and tuna can reduce inflammation levels in the body, which helps decrease arthritis pain.

It’s always better to get nutrients from fresh food, but if you’re going to take omega-3 supplements instead, chat to your doctor first in case there are negative interactions with any of their prescriptions.

Massage

If you enjoy a massage, you’ll be delighted to know that the Arthritis Foundation recommends massage as one of the most beneficial treatments for mobility in arthritis patients.

Specifically, it recommends deep tissue massage or Swedish massage – although the former may be too painful if your joints are very sore.

Apparently though, any form of massage when done regularly is good for arthritis relief.

Summary

Although there is no cure for arthritis, hot and cold therapy, hydrotherapy, range of motion exercise, losing weight, getting more omega-3 and massage are all good ways to manage your symptoms and slow the progression of the disease.

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Do you use any of these natural treatments for arthritis relief? Let me know in the comments below.

This article was originally published in 2017, and has been edited and updated in March 2023.

Warm regards,

Related:

• Everything you need to know about rheumatoid arthritis is here!