Having healthy cartilage allows your bones to glide over one another smoothly. It will serve to protect your bones by preventing them from rubbing against each other which causes pain. When you have healthy joints, you are free to walk, run, jump, and do things that you like. In this blog post, we’re going to talk about how to maintain good joint health. 

What is a Joint?

A joint is where two bones meet. These joints are the reason why the skeleton of the human body is flexible. Without them, the movement would never be possible. Your shoulder is a joint. Your elbows, wrists, fingers, knees, and hips are all joints. They allow your body to move in many different ways. 

 Where bones meet together, there’s cartilage that helps your joints glide smoothly, especially when you create physical movement, but it's encased in what's called a capsule. This capsule is filled with synovial fluid. It’s the fluid that gives or delivers nutrients to the joints. 

 Let’s say you go on a trip, and you’ve been sitting on your chair in the office, or in the same position for a long time, then when you move, it’ll help pump in and out the synovial fluid that will give you comfort and feel better. Maybe you've heard this common line that says the movement is medicine. The way that you change the synovial fluid is by movement, so doing that gets the synovial fluid pumping in your joints.

Keeping Your Joints Healthy

Every physical movement that you make is a way to keep your joints healthy. 

For Your Hip

Forward and Backward Sagittal Plane 

You can call this a stretch, but this is the movement you can try for your hip. Be in a kneeling position with your one knee and just go and rock back and forth. You will then notice that when you rock back, you would feel normal but when you rock forward, you would feel that stretch in front of your hip. You can do this for three sets of ten every time you switch sides from left to right. Keep in mind that your goal here is to feel that stretch in front of your hip when you do the movement of rocking forward. 

Coronal Plane

You go side to side, but instead of going in a kneeling position, you have to square on like you normally would. You’re going to stretch your right leg a little bit further and lean into it. Then, you’re going to feel that stretch in your inner thigh. After that, do the same thing with your left leg. So whichever knee is on the ground, that's the leg that you should be feeling the stretch in. 

For Your  PIP Joints

Myofascial Release Technique

With the PIP of one of your fingers, press it lightly and you're going to traction or pull it apart just very slightly. Then, you're just going to hold it there for at least five minutes. After that, you’ll notice it moving a little bit and you’re going to follow that along. So when 5 minutes is up, you just have to shake it out. 

Three Planes of Motion

If the myofascial release technique doesn’t work for you, you can do this technique. With your right hand, hold the PIP joint in one of the fingers of your left hand and pull it apart very gently. Then, move that finger up and down, pull it side to side, and pull it again in a circular motion. Do each movement for at least 5 minutes. 

 Always remember that joint health is all about getting that synovial fluid moving. So once you can pump out that old oil and get the new one of the new synovial fluid, that's typically when your finger will feel better. 

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