Weekly Health Talk with Dr. P: Morning Stiffness

Experiencing morning stiffness? Dr. Parson explains why you may be experiencing this tension when you wake up, and HOW you can work to reduce it.

Good afternoon friends, um I'm going to talk about something probably one of the most common complaints I hear In my office and we probably all suffer from it in somewhere, some form or another is: morning stiffness. “I can't get moving", “I'm stiff”, getting out of bed you can't bend over, things just don't move. Well, most of the time spent if you're age 50 or above you probably are dealing with some form of arthritis, whether it's low grades. High grade you see it on x-ray, low grade you don't. But morning stiffness is multi-factorial, meaning it has several reasons and we try to address those reasons and you should too. So, let's talk about your bed. If we're talking about morning, your bed can make a huge difference in your life. Getting the right bed can change your world, seen it so many times. The predictability of that though gets difficult and I'm not here to give you the right bed. You can spend thousands of dollars wasted uh and even those people “I love my bed”, but “How do you feel in the morning?” “Oh terrible”. Well you know, maybe you didn't get the right one. But it's important the type of bed and generally I'm recommending firm. Stay in the firm range and that can, you get sold a lot of things with beds, the air excuse me, the gel cooled the heat, you name it. You don't need all those things but you generally want to stay in the firm range and with a company that will come out and change it and firm it up firm it down because just going and laying on the bed one time even if you've been all over the place and I really like that one but when you get sleeping on it for several nights that can um change your opinion. So, you want to stay in the firm range. There's no one better than the other so we're not going to mention a bunch of names I just want you to stay in the firm range, I want you to do a lot shopping around, I want you to find a company that will alter it if you need it, say you have 30—60 days and a good warranty because these things they do wear out 7—10 years. So, the bed is important. Your pillow is important for your neck. Contour curvature pillows are the best type to support curve. Once you get used to them, you'll never go back. But again, finding the right one and I'm not gonna recommend um what's the best one we've got some in our office and I could send you online to some that people never even heard of. But um contour neck curvature is the best um and once you go down that road it's hard to go back, they're made for side sleeping also. So proper positioning but, while we're thinking about it lets jump to nutrition also. So, nutrition for morning students tough when you're really giving nutrition for arthritis symptoms which can be uh your fish oils, your omega-3, which contain omega-3s which are anti-inflammatory, very important, they lubricate as well as support inflammation in the joint. Glucosamine and chondroitin and MSM, you may have heard of those do help back stiffness. They generally  are more for the knees and other type of joints but they have uh good reported effects on those I don't have a lot to tell you on that. Those are the two main things um but hydration you want to get good hydration. Drink your water, drink your water, drink your water, it matters. But let's address once the morning comes and you've got to wake up and dread the stiffness. Well, the stretching protocol for that is first of all stretch in the bed. The idea is to get you loosened up so that when you go weight bearing and get out of there then the stiffness is a lot less and you can do a lot more before meaning stretch in your bed. We'll start with simple things bring your knees to your chest, and hold them, not for 10 seconds but for 30 seconds to a minute. Just hold them, get your knees to your eyeballs. Some people that have a  little bigger belly that's harder so let's do this one. Let's bring her knees up and let's roll left and roll right and just get moving while you're non-weight-bearing. So that's going to get your core fired up that's going to start pumping fluid out of joints and here's the thing: now we mentioned morning stiffness being mostly in arthritic Issue, stiffening of joints. Arthritis is stiffening, it's a decay. I hate to put it that way but it is. It's um and we'll address what I can do for you here in a minute but the joints have lost their space in between, now fluid tries to get in there and stiff and it's taking it. It needs to be pumped out. So, movement in the bed, so another one that I promote a lot with patients, they call it the morning stretch, imagine that. Get elongated, squeeze your tail, squeeze your thighs, reach wide while you're in the bed okay reach, reach, reach. Get longer, heels to ground, reach for the sky, squeeze, activate the core that starts a pumping effect and decompresses discs and joints. So, those things do them in the  bed, get movement one knee to the chest get moving in the bed. Yes, I know you're groggy and yes, I know you want your coffee, i got it. But then once you get up and go weight bearing, same stretches here. Get like this, don't but you'll want to go bend over, hold off on that let's hold that till last um another thing um again morning stretch morning stretch in bed standing and yeah get moving. Start little air squats, you don't have to do a lot just get them going get the hips moving we're trying to get moving before you try to lumber into that shower and turn. It'll make the morning stiffness go faster and the more and the more you do it more remember it's more you do it consistency breeds results, this has to be done every morning. If you, do it the first morning and you're not just amazed by it, well then then you're missing the boat. You got to do this every morning and you'll find you need less and less warming up to get going and you will make your mornings better. Let me talk chiropractic now. Morning stiffness generally is arthritic and I've told you it's a stiffening of joints. Chiropractors, we’ll keep simple, loosen joints, mobilize, manipulate them and put motion into joints. Motion is lotion and that's exactly what you're trying to achieve in in your morning. So, you gotta couple that with some care from someone who can who can I can point to so many cases where if we keep somebody structurally aligned and we keep the movement in there, their mornings are so much better and they would they want to come in more often. Kind of have to keep them away. So, keep chiropractic in your regimen but those are things you can do first thing in the morning, if you'll do them consistently, they will work have a good day.