Roamset Health Team
Stop simply coping with arthritis and start taking charge. Discover the 8-step self-empowerment strategy to reduce joint pain, set reachable goals, and improve your quality of life.
If you have arthritis and have been concentrating on simply coping with your condition, it is time to raise your sights, as you are capable of doing a lot better. You can control your arthritis to a much greater degree than you may have ever imagined.
Attitude is almost everything.
Since arthritis is a chronic disease, many patients resign themselves to a life sentence of painful joints and the disability they can cause. Such a Defeatist attitude practically guarantees that they won't get better and may get a lot worse, because when it comes to a condition like arthritis, mind really doesn't matter.
The confidence to overcome. Thousands of people who suffer from arthritis have discovered a simple yet powerful truth that can provide hope and strength to just about anyone who develops the condition: the most successful patients, the ones who go on to lead richer, fuller lives, are the ones who are most confident they can overcome the limitations of their disease. Researchers have studied many patients enrolled in arthritis self-help programs to determine which behavioural changes are most important. Much to their surprise, the researchers found that successfully overcoming symptoms depends mainly on patients’ confidence that they can do it. What's more, a Positive attitude was even more important to patient success than following a doctor's advice on treatment, nutrition or exercise. This way of thinking – the conviction that you control your destiny- is called self-empowerment.
Knowledge is power.
In taking Charge of arthritis. You will Learn everything you need to know about your condition – From the newest information and insights into the cause of the condition to the Latest breakthroughs in conventional and alternative treatments.
But even more important, you will learn to become an effective practitioner of self-empowerment. You will do that by formulating an effective arthritis action strategy that incorporates the eight steps outlined here to take control of your condition. They will guide you in tailoring a plan that will suit you and your particular circumstances.
Your goal is to climb the stairs unaided. You can make it to the top, slowly but surely. Or if you have trouble rising from a chair after sitting down, you can achieve a painless liftoff. It's a matter of assessing your problem, setting reasonable goals, and working to achieve them. You will be able to measure your. Progress in the form of reduced pain, greater mobility and enhanced well-being.
The 8 steps for overcoming arthritis.
As many patients have found out, thoroughly educating yourself about your condition and treatment is key. What is available to you is a giant step towards that liberation. Just because you have a chronic disease doesn't mean that it has to rule your life. There are always ways to alleviate the effects of your condition, and most of them are Common sense and quite obvious once they are pointed out.
Digesting the information in Taking Charge of Arthritis and incorporating these 8 important steps into your daily life will give you the upper hand in managing your arthritis.
1. Get to know your problem.
The more you know about a problem. The better you will be at dealing with it. And the better acquainted you are with arthritis, the better equipped you will be to overcome it. This isn't a very profound insight. But it is a very powerful one. In taking charge of arthritis, you will learn the answers to vitally important questions about your particular type of arthritis, such as
What causes it?
How to diagnose it?
What are the best treatments available?
This post is full of valuable insights that will help you to analyse your individual problem. Is pain the most troublesome symptom you experience? If so, how bad is it? Is it worse in the morning or later in the day? By answering these and other questions, you will be able to develop an effective anti-arthritis programme tailored to your needs.
2. Choose your long-term goal.
Chances are you want to resume a much-loved activity, such as going for a walk on the beach or playing with the children or grandchildren that arthritis has taken away from you. The best goals are specific, well-defined ones, such as I want to be able to walk a Couple of kilometres without knee pain. It's easier to motivate yourself to a specific goal than an overall goal, and it's also easier to tell whether you have attained it. Whatever it is, carving out a clear-cut goal can provide the motivation you need to jump-start your arthritis self-management plan.
3. Decide on a Strategy to manage arthritis.
Once you have your goal, you need a treatment strategy to help you to reach it. Certainly, there is no shortage of treatment approaches available. Books, websites, and news segments on the latest arthritis treatments. There is a confusing glut of information to contend with. Do you want to eliminate the pain in your arthritic knee? If so, you could take a number of approaches, including weight loss, an exercise program or using anti-inflammatory drugs. Do you want to take the load off your knees by losing 10 kilograms? You could skip high-kilojoule desserts and cheese, begin an exercise program, decrease the size of your portion at meal times or take a kilojoule-controlled lunch to Work instead of eating out. Or you could combine several of these approaches into your overall strategy.
4. Draw up your weekly take-charge plan
For some with arthritis, that old Chinese saying, ‘A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step, is literally and figuratively true. When creating your weekly take-charge plan, decide on a short-term goal and assign specific actions to achieve it.
If, for example, you decide that you want to lose 10 Kilograms, your take-charge plan might call for a short-term goal of losing half a kilogram a week. When you get down to specific weight-loss actions, for example, eliminating fattening desserts or walking to burn up kilojoules. If you manage to complete those actions with relatively little effort, you can consider writing in slightly more ambitious actions for next week's plan.
Build a team. It's wise to be inclusive when drawing up your take charge plan. Ask your doctor for advice, especially if you haven't been diagnosed with arthritis yet or don't know what kind you have. Many people assume that their aches and pains stem from arthritis, but sometimes their problems are caused by something else entirely, such as an adverse drug reaction, an infection, or even a malignancy. So, you are not sure whether you have arthritis. Now is the time to see your doctor before trying to manage a condition you might not even have.
If you have been diagnosed with arthritis, work closely with your doctor to develop a management plan that suits your circumstances and put it into action. Try to see your doctor as a team. A good partnership with your doctor can greatly assist you in achieving your goals.
In our post, “Working with your doctor”, we will tell you how to get the most out of this relationship, With the advice of choosing a doctor if you need one, preparing for surgery visits, asking the right questions once you are there and building a strong team of supporters – from your family to the physiotherapist to possibly an acupuncturist as well.
5. Put your day charge plan into action.
The hard part is following through on your strategy. If your goal of losing half a kilogram over the next week calls for cutting out 2000 kilojoules per day, you may have to deny yourself that morning pastry and afternoon cappuccino.
Fitbit Charge 6 Fitness Tracker
6. Monitor your progress.
As the week passes, note how well you have done in completing the actions you have assigned yourself in your Take Charge plan. Congratulate yourself if you have stuck to your plan, but try not to berate yourself if you have backslidden. Nobody ever said that changing a habit was easy.
7. Adjust your action plan.
If you don't attain the short-term goal called for in your weekly take charge plan, Workout what went wrong and identify a way to correct it. If you lost less than planned, maybe losing half a kilogram a week was too ambitious. Or it may have turned out that losing weight was easy, and you could have safely lost a little more. Either way, you will probably need to fine-tune your action plan.
8. Build on your success.
Success, as we know, is one of the best of all motivations. If you have achieved your short-term goal for one week, the momentum from the success will carry over into the following week. And inspire you to get a more ambitious goal. As you set and achieve a new goal, you will find yourself not only managing your arthritis but also overcoming it.
