A Simple Routine That May Help Rid Yourself of Joint Stiffness at Home

Introduction

Joint pain and stiffness are common symptoms across various conditions and situations, including chronic illnesses. Pain and stiffness in the joints are often byproducts of suffering with chronic pain and fatigue, day in and day out. This stiffness is a total nuisance and adds insult to injury when already dealing with so many debilitating symptoms. However, there are things you can do that don’t take a great deal of effort, with the benefits felt short term. Whilst I’m sure you’ve seen and read posts like this all over the place, take care that some of it isn’t nonsense and leads you astray. This is a simple, tried-and-tested, three-step routine that I’ve been using with my clients for years, that you can implement within your own home in no time at all, and I promise you will feel benefits not long after.

First Step – Movement

No, I’m not going to bark on about how exercise will help your chronic illness. Nor will I start listing the benefits of exercise to your fatigue. I’ve honestly seen enough of that stuff as a coach in the chronic illness field that it triggers me too. Swap the word ‘exercise’ with the word ‘movement’. Moving. More movement helps joint stiffness because one common characteristic of joint stiffness is a lack of movement. The joints get stiffer because they’re not being used, and when they’re not being used, they tend to give you more pain. It’s a chain reaction, like many symptoms of chronic illness.

Time and time again I see people going headlong into some form of exercise, every day and at high intensity, believing it will help their joints, and more days later be on the receiving end of a flare. This is one of the results of misinformation on the internet. In the beginning of managing your joint pain and stiffness, do NOT commit to a medium or higher intensity exercise programme, no matter who tells you to, or how much you want to.

Start at the very basics with simple, short-term, regular, ultra-low-intensity movement. I’m talking a 5 minute walk every day. I’m talking 2500 steps a day. I’m talking about getting up half an hour earlier so you’re moving a little bit more across the time you’re usually upright. Do this every single day for 3 months, no more than 10 minutes of gentle movement, and get used to that slight increase in activity. This is how we avoid fatigue flare-ups, and excess pain from over-exertion but GRADUALLY increase the work the major joints are doing regularly.

Remember, this regular, low-intensity activity added to your normal daily routine won’t be the thing that fixes your joint stiffness. The activity just causes a little bit of blood flow to occur and to make these joints fractionally more malleable, as well as clear the cobwebs out so to speak. Do this for around a week BEFORE bringing in the next two steps to this daily routine, as it will take the chronically ill body this time to adjust in the small exertion increase. The rest of the routine is also much more effective when regular higher blood flow is occurring to the muscles around your stiff joints.

Second Step – Stretching

Nope, this isn’t me suggesting yoga or Pilates to cure your chronic illness. When I say stretching, I mean very slow, very gentle stretching. Maybe 5-10 minutes or so, after the first step and you’re good! What does stretching do? Well, it loosens the major the joints in the body by stretching the ligaments that connect them.

A typical joint consists of two or more bones, with a cushion at each end of the bones, fluid in-between, with ligaments securing the space by attaching to each bone surface. Many chronic illnesses affect the anatomy of a joint and so they either bring great pain, or don’t work too well. Stiffness can develop in any kind of joint, and so can the pain, but some people have this daily as a baseline with their conditions. In those cases, the stretching MUST be gentle and less isolated. Some stretches focus on a single joint, whereas others (the ones I’m talking about) are more full body orientated. Assuming there’s no underlying issues, the cat/cow stretch and adaptations of the crucifix stretch are excellent for spinal and pelvic relief.

How does loosening a joint help battle against stiffness and pain? Well stretching is essentially the opposite of stiffness. The looser a joint is, the less stiff it is but this doesn’t always hold true for joint pain, however. For example, with EDS, someone’s joints are usually hypermobile, but they can and usually do still hurt despite stretching. The loosening of the joint for the purpose of reducing stiffness is best done after activity and is why it is step two on your routine. The slightly increased blood flow makes the joints easier to stretch, and much, much less likely to cause even the smallest amount of trauma for the surrounding muscles.  

Third Step – Heat Application

The final step is certainly the easiest. What you need first of all is some kind of product that can put out consistent heat BUT not too hot. We want very warm, too hot will cause too much trauma for what we’re trying to do. Hot water bottles are the classics but microwavable bean bag pads, general heat pads and even heat lotion are good alternatives.

Once you have your preferred application, simply heat it up and place on the problem areas AFTER step two, within 10 minutes. If you have any chronic illnesses I would advice getting several applications due to possibly having several problem areas! I would advise using a bath as a heat applicator however, as it is too much heat all at once for the entire body. We just want to go for the joints for now. A bath can often actually push someone into a flare up due to it being sensory overload, so be careful.

Those areas have now received more blood flow from the activity you did, followed by the gentle stretching to loosen the areas further and assisted by that gentle blood flow, have now got stable heat on them. That’s going to increase blood flow even further, warm the muscles and ligaments, and soothe any extremely minor exertion issues from both previous the steps (if there are any). All these steps together create a looser, warmer, and hopefully less stiff joint.

Conclusion

Do these steps in order, every morning and/or every night. Aside from any complex illness-related complications, you will feel your stiff joints ease within three days, I promise you. It’s not so much the steps that create the environment your joints need, its the consistency of performing them. Doing this every other day, every three days or once a week just won’t do anything, or at least very, very slowly. I want you to get results quickly, but it requires regular, small bouts of action. This routine will take 15 minutes each time through once you’ve got a good familiarity with it. Another 15 minutes in the evening, and that’s half an hour a day for a huge improvement in how you feel. Just go slowly, go gently, and take your time. Intend to do this routine forever, rather than a short term reliever. It is a consistent, long term, easy reliever that can run alongside many other little routines like this, all designed to help and soothe your symptoms.

I use this routine regularly within my personal coaching programme, and it works. Try it today and let me know how it goes for you.

Mark