Hello, you guys. And welcome to this week’s Wellness Wednesday. Today, I wanted to talk to you guys about arthritis. One of the … or one of the most common things that I hear in regards to arthritis is that, oh, it’s just happening because I’m getting older or it’s just because I’ve been a runner for a long time or I’m whatever the case may be. It’s just because I’m old or getting older. But the fact of the matter is, is that’s not always the case, at least not when we’re talking about osteoarthritis, which is what we typically think of when we’re talking about arthritis. The reason I preface that is because there are conditions, such as inflammatory arthritis, like a rheumatoid or psoriatic arthritis, and those are a completely separate entity because those are looking at more of like an autoimmune dysfunction, that sort of thing.
But getting back to an osteoarthritis or arthritis that we typically think of, like I said, most people think of it as the joints, the body’s just getting older. And yeah, absolutely. We’re always aging. The joints are always aging. But, why then would the knee get arthritis but the elbow not? The bones are the same age, but only one area is getting arthritis. The reason is that our bodies tend to develop this as a way to compensate or deal with the repetitive, constant stresses placed on the joints for an extended period of time without being either identified or treated properly.
So when our body deals with stress, it deals with it in two really kind of most basic ways. The first is by tightening up the muscles. We can kind of think of this as like if you trip. And even if you don’t fall, what do you feel? Is you feel everything just really tighten up in your body. And that’s kind of the first step of your body dealing with physical stress.
The second way is if that’s not working in tightening up the stabilizer muscles that are attaching to these joints, if that’s not doing enough, then your body starts laying down calcium all around those joint structures or all around those bones, and that’s what we know as arthritis. Or that’s what we think of as osteoarthritis. So when we think about that, it’s only really going to be forming in those areas that have that constant, repetitive stress for an extended period of time. So, we tend to see it occur in people as they get older, because there’s more time for it to develop, but it’s not like, “Oh, well, when I get older, I’ll get arthritis. Everyone in my family has arthritis. I’m going to get arthritis.” It’s not a guarantee. Family predisposition can occur, but it’s not always just a guarantee.
If we’re taking those stresses off of the joints or we’re managing the stresses on those joints, we can actually do a lot to help prevent the reason that the body lays that down in the first place. That’s something to be thinking about. So making sure that we’re keeping the joints moving freely so they’re not grinding against each other, they’re not getting that constant rubbing, that can be a huge factor as well. Making sure that you’re keeping yourself hydrated also massively important because all of the cartilage that lays on top of the bones as they connect or as they rub against each other, that’s … Majority of it’s water, actually.
So when we take our supplements to actually help with that, like our chondroitin sulfates, hyaluronic acid, or those supplements that we would find in a joint complex, that’s just part of the puzzle, and so the other part is going to make sure that you’re keeping your water intake up. I know a lot of people will take those joint complex supplements to help either mitigate the effects of arthritis or mitigate the onset or progression of arthritis, which is great, but you got to make sure that you’re taking the rest of that as well.
So again, when it comes to arthritis, like I said, people often think that it’s just an age thing, but it’s not always just an age thing. We can have young people develop it because they have this constant, repetitive stress that’s on their body for way too long, especially after an injury. And it’s just never caught, never looked at, never cared for. Or we can see it with people as they get older. Again, not as intense of the stress, but just going on for a longer period of time. The big thing is listening to your body. Make sure you’re always getting it checked out, checking in on it, and making sure you’re taking care of it. That got a little long-winded there. I got a little excited about it. But if you have questions, let me know. Hope that was some good information. Bye, guys.