Reduce Your Chances Of Injury With Some Simple Steps

An injury to your joints, muscles, or bones is not welcome, ever. If your mobility is limited because of an injury, it can restrict a lot more of your life than just movement. Keeping your body healthy relies on taking some simple steps to help ward off potential injuries.

Eat, Drink, Sleep

It's such a cliche, but it's true: Your body is a machine. However, instead of maintaining it with oil and tools, you use water, food, and sleep to ensure it works as smoothly as possible. While eating and sleeping properly, and drinking enough water to keep you well-hydrated, don't guarantee you'll never, ever have a problem; they go a long way toward keeping joints, muscles, bone, and skin healthy. Your body can handle a lot more stress if it's got this fantastic support in the form of a good diet and proper sleep.

Check Your Steps

As you walk, you could be putting yourself at risk of more injury if your steps are too far off from the center line of your foot. If you tend to overpronate or over suponate as you walk, you risk straining your ankles and feet. You also increase your risk of falling, which could cause more injury, of course. An easy way to check your steps, if you're not sure what your feet are doing, is to look at the heels of your shoes. The wear pattern at the very edge of the sole at the heel should be rather even; if you see that the shoe is wearing down more to the left or right, try to adjust your steps so that you are not emphasizing one side. An orthopedic doctor can help you with the adjustment and possibly recommend orthopedic footwear to help you as well.

Pain Is Not Gain

Dignity Health notes that athletes often try to run with the "no pain, no gain" rule and that this belief can lead to overuse injuries. In this case, they were talking about child athletes who looked up to pro athletes, but the advice applies to adults as well. There's really no such thing as no pain, no gain. Working yourself to exhaustion might not feel very good, but it shouldn't hurt.

If you start experiencing pain while playing sports, working out, or even just walking to the grocery store from your car, rest up a bit (stay off the affected leg for a day or so, for example, if your knee started hurting), and get that pain checked out if it doesn't go away, or if it keeps coming back. Act quickly, and you could prevent the pain from turning into something worse.

See an orthopedic doctor if you have been having trouble with pain or not being able to walk without pronating or supinating. Your body deserves the best treatment possible.