How to Prevent Arthritis in Knees and Hips As You Age

How to Prevent Arthritis in Knees and Hips As You Age

When choosing shoes, “you want to be comfortable, and you also want to be supported,” Cassandra Lee, MD, chief of the division of sports medicine at the University of California, Davis, tells SELF. Dr. Wittstein suggests opting for footwear with arch support and minimal heel rise to keep pain at bay. You can add a shoe insert or orthotic for extra cushioning and support.

2. Switch up your workouts with cross-training.

It’s great to have go-to forms of exercise that you love to do over and over again. It’s also great for your joints to switch things up occasionally and cross-train, Mary Kathryn Mulcahey, MD, division director of sports medicine at Loyola Medicine in Chicago, tells SELF. This approach lets you work many different muscles—including the tiniest ones—in different ways, which helps you avoid overuse and potential injury.

So what counts as cross-training? It can be any physical activity that works your body in a slightly different way from your main mode of exercise—thereby spreading out the strain and giving your most-used joints some reprieve. In general, Dr. Mulcahey recommends yoga, Pilates, or low-impact cardio like swimming and cycling (indoor or outdoor), which “don’t put a ton of stress on the hips and knees.” Walking, using a rowing machine, and water aerobics are good options too.

“Yoga is a great habit to start early on,” Dr. Wittstein says. “If I could go back in time, I would embrace this as part of my workout routine in my 20s.” Yoga is known to build core strength and improve flexibility and balance, helping prevent falls and associated injuries. It can also strengthen the back and pelvis muscles, which helps support and protect the hips.

3. Start strength training.

Strength training is one of the best things you can do for healthy joints, Dr. Lee says. That’s because it builds muscle, and muscle protects the cartilage and tendons surrounding your joints and absorbs some of the shock that impact puts on them. Having extra muscle also helps you maintain balance and bone strength.

After you turn 30, you naturally start to lose muscle mass at a rate of about 3% to 5% a decade. Bone density starts to gradually decline after age 40 and accelerates for many women in the years leading up to menopause. Dr. Wittstein says starting weight-bearing exercises as early as you can keeps your joints strong and reduces your risk for injury and conditions like osteoporosis down the road.

Luckily, many of the same exercises benefit both your hips and knees, she says. Lunges, weighted squats, bridges, lateral lunges, deadlifts, and clam shells are some examples, Dr. Wittstein says. These lower-body exercises strengthen your glute muscles and the smaller muscles surrounding the hips that allow your thigh to rotate, as well as your quadriceps, which help support your knees.

If you’re not used to strength training, start slow, with just one day a week, and then build on that, Dr. Mulcahey says. (SELF’s 6 Weeks to Stronger workout program is a great place to start!)

4. Warm up before any activity.

Before you do anything physical—a workout, hike, or even just yard work—do a quick warm-up, Dr. Behenna says. It gets your blood pumping, moves oxygen throughout your body, and primes your muscles for movement, which minimizes strain and prevents injury.

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