Yoga Poses or Asanas for Articular Cartilage Injury[1]
Yoga helps to keep the flexibility of your body. Joint pains could be cured with regular yoga practices. Yoga helps you to maintain the weight and shape of your body, which helps to eliminate most of the cartilage injuries including articular cartilage injury. This is a precaution, but if it is too late for you and if you have already undergone a surgery and after the healing process still you can start yoga to maintain the recovery of your joints.
You can start the yoga lessons only if you are completely recovered from the articular cartilage injury. Get the lessons under a professional and practice daily at home. Start yoga after a 20 minutes break so that your mind and body will be calm.
Contact your doctor before starting any yoga classes and ask him/ her if you are ready for these sessions.
When doing yoga practices use a proper yoga block or a cushion mat to avoid any irritation to your body and its joints. Do not go beyond your limit, gradually you will catch up with the poses; at the beginning you cannot do all the movements. When doing even light yoga movements if you get a pain in your reconstructed joint please consult your doctor immediately. There are many poses in yoga, few important poses of these are:
- Virabhadrasana or Warrior pose: This is a knee strengthening yoga pose which is equally good to heal frozen shoulders. Warrior pose also assist in releasing stress from knee joint and supports to maintain the body balance.
- Dhanurasana or Bow pose: Helps to improve flexibility on the back and release out stress and fatigue from your body. Also this pose relives knee aches.
- Setu Bandhasana or Bridge pose: This helps out a lot to keep your mind and body stress free. Bridge pose strengthen knee joint muscles and this is good even for osteoporosis patients.
- Trikonasana or Triangle pose: This gives a relief from restricted groin and hips. Good to get a relief from back pains. And also this pose strengthens the muscles of legs and knee joint. When the muscles are stronger less stain is applied on the knee cartilages.
- Makara Adho Mukha Svanasana or Dolphin plank pose: This yoga posture is good to prevent osteoporosis. It improves flexibility of the whole body and strengthens the legs wrists, and arms. Helps to release stress too.
Diet for Articular Cartilage Injury[2]
Taking proper diet for the articular cartilage injury will help in faster healing process. Care about what you take as your food. Always do not hesitate to reject unhealthy foods from your meals. Take loads of fruits and vegetables, moderate amount of proteins and less starch and less processed foods. For cartilage problems fruits with vitamin A, C and Manganese are essential.
Include more Vitamin ‘C’ Rich Fruits like grapefruits, oranges, strawberries and papayas in your meals. Vitamin C is essential to make collagen and strengthen your cartilages then by keeping your tissues together. As a whole vitamin ‘C’ rich fruits help to keep our whole skeleton structure strong and healthy and then as an end result there will be less cartilage issues.
Apricots, mangoes, papayas, and cantaloupe are fruits with in vitamin ‘A’ enriched; including these fruits regularly in your diet helps the body maintains healthy cartilage and there by reduces cartilage injuries.
Manganese-Rich Fruits also cultivate your cartilage. Consume raspberries, pineapple strawberries and grape help out to meet the recommended manganese intake.
Use of Braces for Articular Cartilage Injury[3]
Braces are good supporters to your knees when it comes to articular cartilage injury. It prevents any unwanted movement on your knee joint. There are different knee braces for different knee problems. Buy a knee brace based on your doctor’s recommendation. Protection, support and stability to your knees are ensured by using a proper knee joint bracer.
Prognosis for Articular Cartilage Injury
Many factors come into picture when the doctor has to predict your articular cartilage injury prognosis, such as:
- Age of the patient. Older patients take more time to recover or heal from the articular cartilage injury when compared to younger patients.
- The recovery is faster if the size of the cartilage damage is less than 2 centimeters.
- Recurrence of the injury. Prognosis also depends on the number of times the articular cartilage injury has taken place.
- No earlier surgery.
Growth of the repetition of popping, locking, effusions even after proper conservative therapy may need surgical intervention and increase the recovery period or healing time.
Prevention of Articular Cartilage Injury[4]
Prevention is always better than cure. If you maintain a healthy lifestyle most of these knee injuries like articular cartilage injury and other health related issues could be minimized and result you a comfortable living by nature.
- Maintain the correct weight. Having only healthy meals consuming in correct quantities help you maintain the correct weight. So less stress on your joints especially on knee joints and gives you a flexible and injury free body.
- Always be in shape by doing in regular exercises or involve in activities regularly. Simple sports like badminton, swimming, tennis is few sports that you can add to your life style as a hobby.
- Healthy life is a gift to all of us. It is our responsibility to protect our mind and body from harmful injuries and illnesses. So always be positive about healthy meals and regular exercises. Promptly act on any health issues in your body, be positive in your thoughts and always be happy.
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