Waking up in the morning stiff and sore? Can you barely move when all you want to do is get to your morning coffee? Already tired enough as it is with all life’s problems and just want to be able to get up in the morning and start your day?
“Morning stiffness is heavily attributed to changes in inflammation. These changes can be linked to increases of sugar in the diet.”
Waking up stiff and sore can be so annoying and debilitating. I mean we have so many different things on our plates these days that morning pain becomes such a nuisance and slows us down.
What a pain it must be having to lie in bed for 15 mins every morning trying to stretch and bend yourself till you have some sort of ability to get out of bed. Stretches, core exercises, hot showers, cold showers, all these I see are most often just temporary fixes and just don’t address the problem.
Wouldn’t it be great to just wake up and get going? To not have to deal with the above. To not stretch or hot shower till the pain stops.
Morning stiffness generally comes from inflammation. The way it works is simple.
Inflammation needs to be pumped out of joints. You need to move to flush it out. So when you’re still for long periods of time, (eg. sleeping) this excess inflammation accumulates in your joints and other areas of your body.
When you move for the first time, the inflammation in the joint creates a level of stiffness and quite often pain. Once you start moving around you basically pump the inflammation out..
This is why after some morning stretches or a hot shower the pain reduces. You may find a similar thing happens after you’ve been sitting.
The great news is there’s a few easy ways to reduce your inflammation that doesn’t involve taking medication.
Inflammation is regulated by specific hormones in our body. Whilst this is a complicated affair, insulin is one of the hormones that has a profound affect and can be easily altered. To keep things simple for now, the higher our insulin levels the higher our inflammation levels.
When we eat carbohydrates, insulin converts some of these sugars into energy and puts the rest away as fat.
When insulin becomes elevated, it stimulates a key enzyme responsible for regulating our unsaturated fat metabolism. When this occurs, the ratio of a key agent known as prostaglandin is altered leading to a higher level of pro-inflammatory substances in the body.
There are 2 key items that drive our insulin levels. Stress and carbohydrate!
Stress can elevate sugar in the bloodstream through the key hormones adrenaline and cortisol, whilst carbohydrate has a direct impact
If you want to make a change to your morning stiffness, I mean wake up and jump out of bed ready to start your day. I mean literally open your eyes and get out of your bed stiffness free, then I’m going to share with you the top 3 things I do with patients every day in practice that often helps them achieve that goal.
These are my number one top 3 secrets I use to get people off the morning stiffness merry-go-round and back into living
- Reduce, preferably eliminate, refined sugar in the diet – what I mean by this is to reduce all the high GI carbohydrates. These include things like sweets, white bread, pasta, rice, potatoes etc.
- Reduce Stimulants – These include things like caffeine and alcohol.
- Reduce Stress – An easy way to reduce stress is to improve sleeping habits by going to bed earlier and setting up a good wake-sleep routine.
If you are struggling with morning stiffness and you just don’t know what to do, then send me a message and I’ll get you some advice to get you back on track.
