Arthritis, Exercise and Yoga

by Nina

Hey, I heard this really nice little piece on arthritis and exercise on NPR that I wanted to share with you. Fortunately, NPR has both the audio and a transcript of the piece on their web site (see here). What I liked so much about this particular piece was how simple and clear it was about why it is important to continue to exercise when you have arthritis (even though most people don't) because exercising, while it cannot reverse arthritis, is the only way to prevent the arthritis from getting worse. Here's why:

1. Arthritis breaks down your cartilage, the natural shock absorbers in your joints. As a result, blood doesn't circulate as freely and doesn't deliver adequate nutrition to your cartilage. Exercise massages the joints, improving the blood supply to the joints, providing your cartilage with more nutrition.

2. The stronger the muscles are around the joint, the more protection your body can provide for the joint. Your muscles take up the weight and pressure, instead of the joint itself.

The end of the piece even mentions yoga as a good way to improve the strength of the muscles around your joints! (That's refreshing because most people are under the misconception that yoga is only about stretching.) But yoga is also a good way to massage your joints to get the blood flowing because in a well-rounded practice you move your joints in every direction. Just think of all the directions in which your hip joints move in the various standing poses. And your knee joints are bent or straight, turning out to the side or even turning in slightly (such as in Eagle pose). Your shoulder joints really get a workout, too, as you hold your arms overhead, out to the side, behind your back, or across your body (again, as in Eagle pose).

For strength building, it's easy to think of standing poses (especially those with bent knees) and balancing poses that strengthen the muscles around the knees and hips. But what about your shoulder joints? Downward-Facing Dog and Plank pose spring immediately to mind because you are bearing weight on your arms as they extend forward. But there are also other poses that you can use to strengthen your shoulder joints in which you bear weight on your arms reaching sideways (such as Vashistasana, sometimes called Sideways Plan pose) or behind you (such as the backbend Purvottanasana, sometimes called Upward Plank pose). Here's Esther doing Purvottanasana:

That looks like it does a good job strengthening the hip joints, too! Yeah, it can definitely be a challenge to practice with pain in your joints or to practice modified versions of poses you used to be able to do without props (I know because I have mild arthritis in one of my hip joints), but enjoying more mobility in your daily life and possibly avoiding joint replacement surgery, well, that's a pretty big payoff.