Self Care and Home Remedies for Psoriatic Arthritis.
Besides the treatment prescribed by your dermatologist to lessen your symptoms, there are certain remedial steps which you can take and habits you must inculcate which will help reduce your symptoms of psoriatic arthritis and act synergistically with the treatment. Psoriatic arthritis cannot be cured but only controlled. These simple yet effective steps will help. They are explained below.
Other posts on psoriatic arthritis.
1) What is psoriatic arthritis. 2) Types of psoriatic arthritis. 3) Symptoms of psoriatic arthritis 4) Causes, risks and complications 5) Diagnosis of psoriatic arthritis. 6) Treatment of psoriatic arthritis. 7) Self care and home remedies.
Caring for Psoriatic Arthritis.
Learn to Protect the Joints.
Whatever you do, find ways to avoid putting strain on the joints. For example, use gadgets to do things like opening a jar with a lid opener or lifting a relatively heavy object with both hands instead of with one hand pushing open a door with the body instead of with the hands.
Exercise regularly.
Cycling, swimming and walking are good for the joints as they do not stress the them. And exercise for short periods at a time. Exercising regularly helps in two ways:
- It helps you maintain a proper weight so that there is no additional burden on the joints. This helps to lessen the joint pain and add more mobility.
- It helps to maintain the flexibility of the joints by exercising them and build up the muscles. Strong muscles give good support to the joints.
Eat proper foods.
Limit your calories and stick to plant based food as far as possible. Eat fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fish which contain omega-3 fatty acids.
Cold and Hot Packs.
Apply cold packs to the affected joints for 20 minutes several times a day. This will produce a numbness effect which will dull the pain sensation. Heat packs will help to relax the tensed up joint muscles and ligaments.
Learn to relax.
Learning to relax will battle the fatigue caused by medicines and exercise. Do not wait to become tired before relaxing but the key is to form an effective time-table of work, exercise and relaxation and sticking to it.
Learning to handle stress.
This can be done either with the help of a counselor or it can be done through meditation everyday or both. Meditation has helped people to handle stress and has proved beneficial not just for the disease but also in handling day to day activities. The idea is to increase your stress threshold. This will also help you to sleep well which is very vital.
Your action step.
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