6 Strategies To Decrease Inflammation

Would you agree that time is our most precious resource?  One thing that can rob you of time is being in pain.

You only have so much energy (i.e. brain power) in a day and painful joints or muscle soreness takes up brain space.

If you’re in pain and not able to move well, what are you missing out on in life?  Is it time with loved ones, your favorite sport or hobby, planning your dream trip?

What’s pain costing you?  At work? At home?

It's never too late to learn simple strategies to help you get out of pain and calm things down.

So, let’s do an inflammation checkup.

Are you in pain?  Does your body feel, sore, tight, or stiff?

Inflammation and soreness are signs of over-training or over-use. 

Healthy tissue doesn’t hurt. It’s not tender to touch.  It doesn’t hurt when you move.

Pain is telling you something is not right. It’s a protective mechanism.  It’s locking up to guard.

Your body is like “Hey, over here. Pay attention to me. You better stop that. I need a break NOW!”

It’s talking to you all day. We get hunger signals. Thirst signals. Fatigue signals. All of them are like the warning lights on your car. Alerts before you break down.

Most of us wait until our body is screaming at us all day or we can’t move before we pay attention.

The good news is you can learn to calm it down if you missed the warning signals.

6 Strategies To Calm Down Inflammation

1. Fascial Body Work: Our favorite way to deal with inflammation or flare-ups is with fascial stretching and trigger point self-massage.   Sore muscles after workouts is common.  Soreness that lasts several days is a sign you over did it and might be pushing too hard without having a good recovery program in place.  HIP Camp™ shows you how to use bodywork recovery tools for flare-ups and chronic pain so you can get stronger and recover faster after workouts. Learn more here.
2. Lymph Care: we shared 4 tips to start a daily lymph care practice in the last FIT BLOG that’ll help decrease inflammation in your body.  You can find them here.
3. Sleep Care: 7-9 hours of consistent sleep that’s also good quality helps your body renew and heal itself.  Do you wake up feeling refreshed?  If you’re exercising and eating well but not getting enough or quality sleep, you’re actually aging yourself faster and lowering your immune system.  Here’s a 5 minute rest meditation to help you prep your body for sleep.
4. Clean Eating: eating an anti-inflammatory diet full of anti-oxidants and whole foods can help decrease inflammation in your body.  Aim to eliminate or avoid artificial foods, dyes, sweeteners and GMO’s as well as highly processed foods from your diet. Here are some simple recipes to help you get started.
5. Treatment strategies:  a physical therapist can show you how to use ice packs, compression garments, kinesiotape and/or cupping to help manage flare-ups and chronic pain.
6. Acupuncture: one form of traditional Chinese medicine where the practitioner inserts needles into specific points on the body to alleviate pain and to treat various physical, mental, and emotional conditions.  Studies suggest it can help relieve chronic low back pain, dental pain, migraine headaches, fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis.  It has also been used to treat addiction, anxiety, depression, digestive complaints, and neurological problems. 

THE MORE YOU:

• sit for your job (computer work) or sport (cycling)
• have adhesions from chronic injuries (neck/back/knee injuries)
• play a contact sport (running/tennis/basketball/football)

 
The more you'll benefit from supporting your body with daily practices to decrease inflammation.

Which one are you going to test out first?

It's never too late to feel, move, and perform better!  Here's to taking it one day or one step at a time.

Happy Healing!

P.S. Want to get stronger with less effort? 

Download this 3-minute Active Recovery Yoga Routine to help you train smarter, it's free!
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