Joint Stiffness

Most people will not feel like exercising when their joints are painful, inflamed or stiff. However, an appropriate and regular exercise program can help reduce stiffness and pain, increase flexibility, improve endurance, develop muscle strength, improve sleep and keep bone and cartilage healthy. Joint Stiffness can be caused by injury or disease and is a common symptom in arthritic conditions. It can often be one of the earliest symptoms of arthritis.

Symptoms Of Joint Stiffness

Joint stiffness is gradual loss in flexibility of a joint or a reduction in the range of motions.

Joint stiffness occurs mainly due to arthritis or following an injury to a joint which is accompanied by muscle spasm.

Joint stiffness last less than 30 minutes would tend to be associated more so with Osteoarthritis. While that lasting more than 30 minutes is found in inflammatory arthritis such as Rheumatoid Arthritis or the family of spondyloarthropathies.

Although joint stiffness may not appear to be life threatening it can be painful and limit your independence. It is important that you seek advice and assessment from a qualified health care professional such as your GP or one of our highly trained Physiotherapists.

Treatment of Joint Stiffness

This will include:

• Range-of-motion exercises

• Strengthening exercises

• Aerobic exercise

Our Chartered Physiotherapists will also carry out a thorough assessment to determine the causes of your joint stiffness to help tackle this problem. They utilise manual joint mobilisations if they feel this treatment approach may help and is not contraindicated.

Your GP may also prescribe disease modifying drugs if your joint stiffness is disease related and they may help to slow down disease progression and improve symptoms.

Our Expertise

Our highly skilled Physiotherapists can help tailor an exercise program to fit your specific needs. This would likely include three components:

• Range of Motion exercises,

• Strengthening exercises

• Aerobic Exercises.

These exercise plans will significantly help with reducing any joint stiffness that you may be experiencing, so get in touch with us today and we can begin the necessary treatment straight away.