By Previnex®
Rebuilding your joint health after degeneration, or even everyday wear and tear—and maintaining that joint health—is important! Whether it’s through exercise, diet, joint health supplements (or a combo of all three), rebuilding and regenerating your joint health is possible. So, whether you are looking for relief from knee pain or find that exercising with a physical therapist once a week is not cutting it, let’s look at how you can rebuild your joint health naturally, maintain that joint health, and even improve it.
Can I Regenerate My Joints Naturally?
The short answer is yes! The best way to regenerate your joints and improve joint health naturally is through your lifestyle.
Exercise and Physical Activity
When it comes to rebuilding your joint health, focusing on low-impact exercises is key. This will help to strengthen the muscles around the joints, which prevent injury and keep pressure off the joint. Exercises like swimming, biking, and walking are great low-impact options. Another option for building muscle and strengthening cartilage is strength training—resistance training or weightlifting. This can help ease pain, restore muscle strength, and improve function in those with knee osteoarthritis. Other physical activity options are yoga and pilates. Research shows that yoga improves strength, flexibility, and functional mobility, and Pilates focuses on core strength, stability, and flexibility.
Impact of Maintaining a Healthy Weight
Your weight does have a direct impact on your joint health. If you are overweight or obese, your body weight puts undue pressure and stress on your joints. Inflammation is one of the most severe causes of and contributors to arthritis, and fat constantly releases inflammation-causing proteins. This impacts all of your joints. Research shows that if you're overweight, losing just 10% of your body weight can cut arthritis pain in half, and losing 20% can cut arthritis pain by 25% or more. Doing some of the low-impact exercises we shared can help your body get to and maintain a healthy weight, taking some of the pressure off those joints!
Joint Repair: Can Damaged Joints Be Repaired?
Many people wonder if it is possible to regrow cartilage or repair cartilage in the body. Damaged joints can be repaired through surgery, physical therapy, medication, and even other natural remedies.
Non-Surgical Treatment Options
If you want to repair damaged joints but want to avoid surgery, there are a few options. The first and most recommended is physical therapy. Attending regular physical therapy can help you find exercises to strengthen the muscles around your joints, resulting in increased flexibility and decreased pain. The overall goal of physical therapy is to reduce pain and improve function and quality of life. Another option is occupational therapy, which can help you find new ways to do normal tasks without putting excess stress on your joints. A third non-surgical option is transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS), which sends low-voltage electrical currents through the joint to relieve pain. However, this is a short-term option. Other options you may consider are acupuncture, heat therapy, and cold therapy.
Medical Treatment Options
There are some medical treatment options (both surgical and non-surgical) available to repair damaged joints, such as injections and bone realignment. Injections may consist of cortisone injections, which may help relieve pain for a few weeks, but the medication can actually worsen joint damage over time. The other injection option is lubrication injections, which are hyaluronic acid that provides cushioning around your knee, given that hyaluronic acid is similar to the fluid already found in your cartilage. Bone realignment takes place if osteoarthritis has damaged one part of the joint more than the other.
Can Joint Health be Improved?
Through lifestyle, diet, and supplementation, your joint health can absolutely be improved! If you’re not looking to do surgery or medication, you may be wondering how to improve joint health naturally, what the best foods for cartilage growth are, and even supplements to rebuild cartilage.
Nutritional Guidelines for Joint Health and Healthy Cartilage
Ultimately, you want to ensure you’re eating anti-inflammatory, vitamin-rich foods such as broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, lean proteins, low-fat dairy, healthy fats (avocadoes, olive oil), and fatty fish. You also want to stay away from added sugar as much as you can, especially those found in candy, soda, ice cream, and even barbeque sauce and ketchup. Added sugar is one of the leading causes of inflammation. In fact, in one study, 63% of participants had an increased risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis from drinking just one sugar-sweetened soda per day. Additionally, you want to avoid overly processed or fried foods, as they tend to have more salt, fat, sugar, and harmful chemicals.
Effective Supplements for Improving Joint Health
When it comes to joint health supplements, you want to focus on whole ingredients or supplement blends that are focused on joint-healthy ingredients. Some vitamins and ingredients to look for are glucosamine and chondroitin, NEM®, curcumin, Vitamin D, Vitamin B12, Boswellin®, MSM (methylsulfonylmethane), and Omega-3 fatty acids. One joint health supplement that contains ingredients that are clinically proven to help decrease pain, reduce inflammation, improve flexibility, and prevent cartilage breakdown is Joint Health PLUS®. It combines NEM® and Boswellin® to create a powerful, clinically effective joint health supplement.
Is It Possible to Regrow Joint Cartilage?
It is possible to regrow joint cartilage that has degenerated, most commonly through surgical intervention.
Current Scientific Research on Cartilage Regeneration
Cartilage repair is a sophisticated process that has recently been investigated. There are multiple approaches currently reported to aid in cartilage repair, such as cell-based therapies, biologics, and physical therapies. There is also microfracture surgery, which occurs by drilling holes and making small fractures in the bone beneath the damaged cartilage to then promote new cartilage growth. Studies on this method have found that it can lead to enhanced knee function and pain, as well as an increase in the amount of cartilage in the knee. Another surgical method is osteochondral grafting, which is when healthy cartilage and bone are transplanted from one region of the body to an injured one. Cellular therapies involve using stem cells to promote new cartilage growth and have shown promise in treating cartilage damage and repair.
Lifestyle Choices that Support Cartilage Health
The best thing you can do to support and maintain joint and cartilage health is exercise regularly (using low-impact exercises, strength training, physical therapy, etc), eat a well-balanced diet containing anti-inflammatory foods and beverages, and take high-quality joint health supplements.
Conclusion
Whether you’re dealing with severe joint degeneration or a milder case, there is likely a treatment that will work for you to repair and maintain your joint health. One supplement we highly recommend is Joint Health PLUS®. It’s chock-full of good ingredients, most notably NEM® and Boswellin®. Boswellin® is a clinically proven anti-inflammatory and pain reliever. NEM® is clinically proven to reduce joint pain and stiffness, improve flexibility in as little as 7 days, and even protect your cartilage from breaking down while you’re working out. Not to mention, NEM® is proven to be 5x more effective than glucosamine and chondroitin by themselves or together. So support your joints by grabbing yourself a bottle of Joint Health PLUS® today!
