What You Must Do To Prevent Joint Damage When Losing Weight
Monday, March 8th, 2010If you want to lose weight as efficiently as possible, you have to exercise. There is no way around this-research has shown that combining diet and exercise is the best way to lose weight.
But there is a catch, however. Exercising the wrong way can silently destroy your joints and surrounding connective tissue. This can happen even if you don’t feel a single ounce of pain.
Thus, here is how to prevent damage to your connective tissue when losing weight:
1. Stretch your muscle fibers: In addition to lifting weights, make sure you stretch out your muscle fibers so that you don’t end up with any imbalances down the road. Doing so will keep you healthy as can be for a long life full of exercise.
2. Eat joint friendly foods: There are certain nutrients that your body uses to regenerate cartilage and connective tissue. You can get these nutrients from leafy greens and seafood. Or, you could supplement your diet with calcium and vitamin D.
3. Supplement with shells: Doing so will protect your joint spaces and potentially regenerate your damaged cartilage. The main catch here, however, is that this effect takes a long time. And this makes sense since cartilage wears out over long periods of time.
4. Work from the standing position: The simple act of working from the standing position can take a lot of stress off of your lower back. And the good news is that many companies are offering standing desks for pennies on the dollar. As an added bonus, you will burn more calories.
5. Reduce smoking, and if possible, eliminate it: Interestingly, smoking makes your bones brittle. And brittle skeletal systems are more likely to break with minimal stresses. Even worse, you could develop hair fractures which are the most under-diagnosed type of fracture.
Keeping your bones, joints and muscles healthy is very important if you want to be able to keep on exercising well into your later years. And the good news is that most injuries are preventable with the right approach.
Author Katherine Crawford, a Harvard exercise physiologist and former arm fat sufferer, instructs women on how to lose loose arm fat rapidly. Discover how to get sexy arms by visiting her blog about how to get rid of flabby arms rapidly right now!