I’m a 28 year old guy, no signs of arthritis yet. But both my parents have quite debilitating and different forms of arthritis.
My dad (54 years old) thought he tore something in his knee getting out of his car on some ice recently. It wasn’t healing. MRI revealed that he just has terrible arthritis. He’s about 200lbs and 6 feet tall and fairly active still. But for years his knees have made it hard for him to hike or mountain bike. He still goes, but complains constantly. He can not do a squat, can’t sit cross-leg, and has trouble getting down onto the ground or back up (for like 10 years straight).
My mom used to cut hair, now she has really bad arthritis in her fingers, and some in her back. She’s far more mobile than my dad. Also a healthy weight. I’m a software engineer so my fingers are quite important to me.
Neither of them smoke or drink alcohol - at all.
I’m super active. I ran track in college. I mountain bike, freedive, backpack, pretty much anything outdoors. Exercise fairly regularly (2 times a week). My hope is that staying healthy and active is enough. But seeing them struggle to keep up has me worried. They haven’t aged much, but it’s like they feel pain moving.
My maternal grandpa was backpacking and biking into his early 70s pain-free. I’d see that as an absolute win compared to my parents. The research I did this morning had some basic suggestions, but also a lot of “we don’t really know.”
I’ve had a few sports injuries, but nothing that has bothered me after it healed. Some were serious enough to required physical therapy. Mostly ankle and wrist sprains, plus regular stress fractures in my feet from indoor track.
Correct me if I’m wrong: but right now one of the things I want to incorporate more of is mobility work. I like yoga so that’s probably what I’ll try to add more of. Once a week was what I was planning on. I do a lot of active things that I don’t consider exercise, like biking to work, walking the dog, etc.
Also, I don’t run a ton anymore, but it’s never bothered me and I love going on a run every now and again. The research here seems to be super conflicting. My interpretation is that you can run unless you have arthritis and it bothers you. But running doesn’t seem to cause arthritis or knee pain (even though a lot of personal anecdotal stories blame running on knee issues). In general, the lower impact the activity though, the better it is for people with arthritis.
So if anyone has resources to link to, or long-term lifestyle suggestions, I’m all ears. My ultimate goal would be to just feel as healthy as I do right now, for as long as possible.
And so; what lifestyle practices combat/prevent arthritis?
The easy thing to monitor for your healthy insulin sensitivity is your TG/HDL ratio. https://hackertalks.com/post/5922188 You want it to be less then 1.
You get these figures on any standard lipid test, so you should have annual numbers already. If you keep this less then 1, then your going to stay low insulin, sensitive, and avoid AGEs.
When you finish your notes, I’d love to read them, I want to avoid arthritis too!
Sorry to take so long to add my notes, but I kept thinking I’d work on them more to make them more definitive and organized… Just gonna give you what I have so far…
There is a lot of great info in the other responses that go into more detail - I’ve tried to make my notes to the point, and easy to review. I also didn’t note things that I didn’t feel weren’t applicable to my life. I also added some context to these notes that aren’t in my actual notes.
That’s a great writeup, thank you for sharing it!
I would just emphasize the healthy diet is more then just avoid sugary treats.
What does a good diet look like:
Metrics you can use to confirm your diet is good:
I personally would recommend doing keto/low carb if you want to ensure you maintain long term metabolic health, but it’s not a requirement