Foot pain affects nearly one in five people throughout their lifetime. It can be associated with increased age, female gender, obesity, and pain in other body regions, and has a significant negative impact on health-related quality of life. Painful feet can lead to an overall decrease in general activity, which can create joint stiffness, muscle weakness, and increased risk of injuries.
Joint pain can seem like it comes on at random, with no specific injury, but Joint pain doesn’t begin for no reason. The body doesn’t initiate inflammation without a cause, whether it’s a systemic illness such as lupus, or joint changes like a meniscus tear or muscle sprain. Truthfully, we just don’t pay attention to our bodies well enough (in my opinion). We cast off a stiff neck to sleeping in a bad position, or low back pain to picking something up awkwardly. Understanding your joints, muscles and the pains we get when we are active (or not active)is instrumental in knowing what your body needs when we are in pain. Knowing if our joints need to move and stretch, or rest and recover is an integral part in our joint health now and in the future. Admitting to ourselves that we aren’t always the best to our bodies goes a long way in understanding our joints, our body’s response to activity, food, smoking and inactivity.
Osteoporosis is a progressive loss of bone density that occurs mainly as we age but also can be due to many systemic or disease processes within our bodies. Most reach peak bone density by 30 years old, where the body’s ability to replace bone cells equals the body’s depletion (breakdown) of bone cells. After age 30, bone remodeling continues, but you lose slightly more bone mass than you gain. Once the cycle is uneven long enough or bone depletes to a certain level, osteopenia can be diagnosed.
When you were told you had arthritis – did you instinctively think – “I’m going to be in pain forever.”
You’re not alone. A lot of people feel this way.
In truth, many times the pain you feel isn’t because of arthritis, it’s because the muscles around the joints are weak and aren’t able to adequately absorb physical stress during activity.
Your inactivity could be making you weak! Causing more joint stress and increasing pressure on the joints! Your lack of challenging your body is making you weak and painful.