Imagine my spirits rising when I saw on the news on Friday that NICE have announced that Exercise is good for joints with wear-and-tear arthritis!
Me and my fellow fitness teachers have been shouting this for years, and at last we have the support of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).
The NICE guidelines are that physical exercise should be the main treatment, not painkillers. The charity Arthritis Action said it hoped the guidelines would reassure people with osteoarthritis that exercise is a good intervention.
This should give people more confidence to get their body moving and although it can feel scary when the body is in pain, starting with gentle movement and muscle strengthening exercises will help.
This is precisely why Pilates is so good, it can be done gently, weight bearing improves muscle strength and keeps bones healthy, and it helps with posture and balance which are crucial to specific conditions such as arthritis.
NICE do recommend that anti-inflammatories can help, rather than pain killers that can become addictive, and can be used in a gel form to rub into the joints, not necessarily tablets. The benefits of taking anti-inflammatories is that they help to keep the body moving, and once you move more this helps reduce the pain.
Osteoarthritis is very common — about 7.4 million people in England over the age of 45 have it. So if this is you, if you have recently been diagnosed with osteoarthritis it doesn’t mean it's the end. I was diagnosed with it in my knees when I was 40, I thought it was the end of my physically active life … it wasn’t. Exercise is key to my mobility and my lifestyle.
If you have been diagnosed and you are feeling worried about it, don’t stay silent, contact me and we can have a chat and maybe book a 1-1 so that we can look at what exercises are going to be right for you and what will help you.
