Warrior Strong Wellness wants to provide you with the best collagen protein and ashwagandha supplements to add to your exercise routine. But before we get to that, we want to discuss some of the benefits of walking, especially for joint health and pain relief.
- How can walking improve arthritis pain?
- How can I walk more for exercise if I’m in pain?
- How can supplements help?
We will address the answers to these questions in our article.
Evidence that Walking Improves Joint Pain
Osteoarthritis and knee pain can both leave a person wanting to sit out their daily walk. However, there is mounting evidence that exercise can actually improve joint health and reduce pain levels. First of all, exercise releases feel-good hormones in the brain that can make it easier to deal with pain. It also improves circulation, so your body can heal better on its own. But there are even more ways that walking can help with joint pain. Here are three of the big ones.
#1. Exercise Strengthens Your Leg Muscles
One good way to reduce joint pain is to take the strain off of your joints. When you build your leg muscles through daily walking, your joints don’t have to work as hard – the muscles are carrying the primary load.
#2. Daily Exercise Can Help with Weight Control
Joint pain can compound itself because pain makes you want to stop moving. Being sedentary, in turn, allows joints to stiffen and may result in weight gain. Now, weaker joints have to support more weight. It’s a cycle that can continue to make the pain worse, but exercise can break the cycle.
#3. Exercise Helps Repair Cartilage
We’ve all been trained that if something hurts, we rest it. Unfortunately, when it comes to the joints, that is not always the best advice. Sometimes what the joints need in order to repair faster is light exercise. Walking may be just the thing to send cartilage the nutrients it needs to rebuild.
That said, you don’t want to overdo it. A doctor should be able to help you set up a program of exercise that you can handle. If you are walking and find that pain grows severe or swelling occurs suddenly, you’ll need to cut your walk short. While your body really needs 30 minutes of exercise per day, if that means taking a 10-minute walk three times a day, it’s better than ending up hurting yourself.
How Can I Walk More Without Aggravating the Pain?
For most people with joint pain, whether or not you stick to your walking routine depends on how you feel afterward. How can you get the benefits without inadvertently increasing your pain levels? Here are a few tips.
#1. Get the Right Footwear
The best thing you can do for your knees and other joints when walking is to get yourself some athletic shoes. The shoes need to be lightweight. Flatter shoes are better because arch support actually puts more pressure on your knees. If you need an insert for extra comfort, your doctor should be able to recommend the right orthotic for you.
#2. Walk at the Right Place
You’re walking instead of jogging because there is less impact. You want a softer surface rather than a harder one because that decreases the impact even more. That makes a dirt path through the woods better than walking on the road because the ground is softer, even if it’s a little uneven. On the other hand, if your choice is between an asphalt track or a concrete sidewalk, now the asphalt is the better option.
#3. Do Some Dynamic Stretching
You’re less likely to pull a muscle or hurt yourself in some other way if you warm up before you start walking. Stretching is great, but dynamic stretching is even better. Basically, the difference is that you are continually moving rather than holding a stretch. The motion will prepare your joints for movement, whereas normal stretching only preps the muscles and connective tissue.
#4. Work Your Way Up Gradually
You may have the idea that 10,000 steps per day is the optimal amount, but if you try to do that on day one, you’re going to end up icing your leg for a few days. For osteoarthritis knee pain, 6,000 steps is optimal, but you can start with much less and gradually work your way up. If you use a treadmill at the gym, you can easily track your walking speed, distance, and time. This will help you to improve gradually. If you don’t have a gym membership, try a step counter and a stopwatch (your smartphone can do both).
What Supplements Should You Add to Your Walking Routine?
Warrior Strong Wellness wants to support your good routine of daily walking with some of our high-quality supplements. Here are a few for you to try:
- Collagen Bone Broth Powder – This is one of the best collagen protein powders out there, and the source of the collagen is pure grass-fed beef. Collagen is the most common protein in the body, and it makes up the cartilage, so this is an excellent supplement for joint health.
- Pure Hydrolyzed Multi-Collagen Protein Powder – With collagen sourced from beef, chicken, wild fish, and eggshell, you can get all the types of collagen you need for joint health in an easy to assimilate format for your body.
- Pure Organic Ashwagandha Max – Ashwagandha is a naturally occurring herb that can help with inflammation. Since inflammation results in pain, this may be able to help keep your pain levels in check according to some preliminary arthritis research.
Shop with Warrior Strong Wellness today to support your walking routine with the best collagen protein and ashwagandha supplements!
About The Author
Warrior Strong Wellness
Warrior Strong Wellness provides innovative and high quality transformational supplements and raises awareness and funds to fight childhood cancer by giving a portion of our proceeds to childhood cancer research. In our weekly blogs, we share wisdom about wellness and living a Warrior Strong lifestyle.