EP 106: Spring Joint Pain

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This is the one that's the market of the show. This is a black game. So you can make some money. Safe and same health care decisions. So as they say, relax and enjoy the show.

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Well, spring is finally almost here, and I'm here to get you to realize that you probably haven't been moving as well as you should have during the winter months. Hello everyone, this is Dr. Jeff Leber from Camp Hill Family Chiropractic, and the weather is warming up. People are getting outside again, starting yard work, walking more, golfing, running, and trying to get active after a long winter. But it's also important for you to know that this is also the time of year when a lot of people start noticing more joint pain. I've been talking the last few episodes about this change of seasons. And I just want to add a few more tidbits to this podcast. You know, people are coming into my office and they're saying, My knees are killing me, my back is stiff when I get up, my shoulders started hurting after doing the yard work. So today we're going to talk about why joint pain often shows up in the spring. And just add on to some of the things we talked about in our previous podcast. Things that you can do to keep your body moving and feeling good. Let's just be honest and realistic. We just went through a thing called the winter effect. During the winter months, most people move less. Now, sure, maybe you went to the gym, maybe you went to the pool, maybe you were active, but we generally sit more. We generally exercise less and we're inside more. We're not getting any vitamin D. And even if you're someone who tries to stay active, winter still tends to reduce your overall movement. And as mentioned before, when joints don't move on a regular basis, several things start to happen. Your muscles tighten, your joints stiffen, your circulation decreases, and your connective tissue loses flexibility. So the end result is when spring arrives and activity suddenly increases because it's nice outside. You're excited to get out and move. The body isn't ready, the body isn't fully prepared. And that's when pain starts to appear. We talked about in a previous episode about being the weekend warrior, right? You're just excited to get out and do things after a long week of work, and you just want to make the best of your weekend because it's nice outside. But your tendons, your joints, your muscles are asked to handle loads that they haven't seen in months. And then we end up with some of these problems in our joints. Another factor that we didn't mention before is the weather changes. One reason is the barometric pressure. When the pressure drops, it can allow tissues around your joints to expand slightly. If a joint is already irritated or maybe it's inflamed, this can increase pressure inside the joint and make it feel more painful. That's why some people, including myself, I can tell you when the weather's coming. I can tell you when it's about to rain. I can tell you when it's about to snow. I feel the pressure in my joints, especially my knee. That I've had two knee surgeries when I was 15, when I was 32, and that was over 32 years ago. I'm going to share with you in just a little bit what I've been doing just to improve my knee at the age of 64. We don't want to have what's called chronic inflammation, stuff that's with you all the time. This is why arthritis grows, right? Swelling of the joint. And there's things, as we talked about before, that add to it: your diet, your stress, your sleep quality, hydration, alcohol, lack of movement. If inflammation is already present in your body, right? Let's just stop right there. Let's just assume that there's already, which I'm sure there is, inflammation already present in your body, and you haven't been moving, your joints can become more sensitive when all of a sudden you want to go out and play pickleball, or all of a sudden you want to go out and get that garden going. That's why we need to support your body with balanced movement and taking breaks. Just don't go at things at 300%. We need to focus on in a podcast we talked about before, anti-inflammatory nutrition, proper joint mechanics. All these things make a big difference. Another thing that we're doing in our office is called soft wave therapy. This is tissue regeneration therapy and has made a huge, huge difference in my life. So much that I bought a machine so I can share this with my patients so they can have life-changing body movement that they haven't been able to have for years because of past injuries, past surgeries. And when you have an acute injury, red blood cells go into that joint and it starts to heal the tissue in a natural way. There's no injections, there's no electricity, it's just acoustic shock waves that go into your body. And we're going to talk about this a little bit more in another podcast. But if you're interested in soft wave therapy, call our office and we can do a discovery day with you. It's very inexpensive to try out to see if it works for you. And it's just life-changing. I really want you to think about it. So, with all these things we've been talking about over the last couple weeks, the goal is to help the body heal and function properly and as naturally as we can. With not healing from the outside in, we need to restore this joint mobility. It can happen. We need to improve your circulation, it can happen. We need to reduce inflammation by doing a lot of things, mainly reducing the inflammatory foods and maybe the overdoing the activity. And of course, we can restore the body's natural healing ability and we can actually speed it up with something like soft wave therapy. So the bottom line is when the body is moving well and it's healing properly, people can get back to doing the things that they enjoy. And that's really what spring should be about. Getting outside and enjoying life again. So, in closing, if you are experiencing joint pain as you become more active this spring, don't ignore it. Often small problems can turn into bigger ones if they aren't already addressed. If you have questions about joint health or want to learn more about how to help your body heal in a natural way with things like chiropractic and soft wave therapy, and just to help you recover quicker, we're always here to help. Once again, I'm Dr. Jeff Ludwig from Camp Hill Family Chiropractic, where we make wellness simple. And really, our goal is to help people move better, heal better, and live healthier lives. Thanks for listening, and I encourage you to share this with a friend or family member. And as always, as we begin this week, I encourage you all to be well and be blessed.