By RBR Reader Paul writes, “Any way of getting ride of some of those aches and pains associated with aging? I’m only 50 and it’s really starting to get to me. There’s no real pattern to the aches/pains. Sometimes more when I first awake, sometimes starts later in the day. Sometimes muscles, sometimes joints, probably more limbs than trunk. I’m a mailman, so I suspect it’s mostly from that. As a mailman I walk 8-10 miles a day, lugging around up to 50 pounds of mail on my hands, shoulders, and arms (often in rather awkward positions/postures), up and down God-only-knows how many hills/steps, wearing uncomfortable/ill-fitting “Postal Regulation” shoes. Is it possible it’s from some sort of allergy? I’ve tried some of those supplements — fish oil, turmeric, hemp oil — that supposedly help, but I seem to have more aches when taking those!”
Paul,
Two weeks ago I wrote that needing more recovery is one of the surest signs of aging: How Much Recovery Do You Need? Another inevitable change with aging is that more things hurt. You have 50 years of wear and tear on your joints and muscles and I have almost 70 years. The ligaments and tendons that hold your joints together become stiff. Osteoarthritis can cause the cartilage in a joint to wear away. One can deal with these aches and pains two ways:
- Supplements
- Body maintenance
Let’s look at each of these.
Supplements
You tried three different supplements.
1. Fish Oil
According to the Mayo Clinic “Studies suggest fish oil supplements might help reduce pain, improve morning stiffness and relieve joint tenderness in people with rheumatoid arthritis. While relief is often modest, it might be enough to reduce the need for anti-inflammatory medications.”
Rheumatoid arthritis tends to affect your smaller joints first — particularly the joints that attach your fingers to your hands and your toes to your feet. As the disease progresses, symptoms often spread to the wrists, knees, ankles, elbows, hips and shoulders. In most cases, symptoms occur in the same joints on both sides of your body. Unlike the wear-and-tear damage of osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis affects the lining of your joints, causing a painful swelling that can eventually result in bone erosion and joint deformity.
From your symptoms you don’t have rheumatoid arthritis.
Eating fish and oil supplements can have an important role in preventing disease. They also reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes, reduce high triglycerides and treat high blood pressure.
2. Turmeric
According to the Mayo Clinic, “Curcumin, a substance found in the spice turmeric, also may help reduce inflammation. Initial research seems to point to a benefit in people with some forms of chronic pain who use these supplements.”
3. Hemp Oil
There is less research on hemp oil. One study has been published by the National Institutes of Health National Library of Medicine reviewed studies on the use of Cannabinoids in the management of difficult to treat pain. The most promising is Sativex ® (GW Pharmaceuticals) a whole cannabis-based spray combining cannabidiol and THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis. Clinical trials have demonstrated the safety and efficacy for Sativex in managing central and peripheral neuropathic pain, rheumatoid arthritis and cancer pain. It was approved by Health Canada in June 2005 for prescription for central neuropathic pain in multiple sclerosis, and in August 2007, it was additionally approved for treatment of cancer pain unresponsive to optimized opioid therapy.
Note that all three supplements are for managing chronic pain, which is not your problem, so these supplements won’t help your aches and pains.
Anyone who wants to try one of these or other supplements should evaluate the product carefully as described in my column on The Importance of Evaluating Products Yourself rather than just relying on what is recommended on the web. After evaluating a supplement don’t start taking anything before you discuss it with your health care provider to make sure it’s right for your situation.
Body Maintenance
Trying to find the cause of a specific pain and addressing the cause is often more effective than taking a pill to mask the pain. Here are three examples.
A friend has a stiff and painful right hip and also a sore right foot as he walks. He walks a lot in his activities of daily living and loves walking and hiking for exercise. I encouraged him to see a health care professional. X-rays revealed no structural problems and the doctor referred him to a physical therapist. After examining him the PT decided that the hip joint wasn’t adequately lubricated with synovial fluid and that there were muscle imbalances. My friend compensated for these with how he walked, which generated the foot pain. The PT recommended riding the trainer for 15 minutes every morning in a low gear. (My friend isn’t a cyclist.) The motion stimulates the joint to produce synovial fluid. The PT also recommended specific exercises to address the muscle imbalances. When my friend rides the trainer and does the exercises in the morning he is generally pain-free for the rest of the day. The PT also recommended riding instead of walking for cardio and only hiking or XC skiing every other day.
The tibial plateau of my left knee was badly damaged when my knee was crushed by a truck. The result is significant chondromalacia, a condition where the cartilage on the undersurface of the patella (kneecap) deteriorates and softens. Direct pressure on the knee is painful and increases the deterioration. The more I bend my knee the greater the pressure on the patella. I saw Andy Pruitt (retired director of the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine.) He recommended not bending my knee more than 90 degrees and never kneeling. He also prescribed specific exercises to strengthen the quadriceps so that when the quads contract they lift the patella slightly to reduce the pressure.
I have a client who had chronic neck pain when riding and loves to do brevets of 125 to 1200 kilometers (125 to 750 miles) and the pain was limiting his ability to ride these. The cervical joints of the spine had degenerated and rubbed against each other causing pain. To protect against pain the cervical spine had stiffened so the joints didn’t move and cause pain. A PT worked with him for months to increase the flow of synovial fluid to lubricate the painful cervical joints and thus relieve the stiffness. My friend also learned to ride with a flat back so that he didn’t have to bend his neck as much to see down the road.
Recommendation
In each of these cases seeing a health care professional resulted in a diagnosis and exercises to reduce, even eliminate, the pain. Cutting back on exercise and spending time on body maintenance made the remaining exercise pain-free!
You wrote, “I’m a mailman, so I suspect it’s mostly from that.” Walking while carrying a 50 lb. awkward load up and down stairs and hills is putting a lot of abnormal asymmetrical strain on your body. See a health care professional to check that nothing structural is wrong. Then a physical therapist can evaluate you and give you specific exercises to compensate for the strains that work is inflicting on your body.
My new eBook Anti-Aging: 12 Ways You Can Slow the Aging Process includes information specifically for older cyclists on exercises to improve muscle balance and increase flexibility, both of which are important aspects of body maintenance. The 106-page eBook is available for $14.99.
Coach John Hughes earned coaching certifications from USA Cycling and the National Strength and Conditioning Association. John’s cycling career includes course records in the Boston-Montreal-Boston 1200-km randonnée and the Furnace Creek 508, a Race Across AMerica (RAAM) qualifier. He has ridden solo RAAM twice and is a 5-time finisher of the 1200-km Paris-Brest-Paris. He has written over 40 eBooks and eArticles on cycling training and nutrition, available in RBR’s eBookstore at Coach John Hughes. Click to read John’s full bio.
I think after years of repetitious work has simply worn out all those joints, muscles, etc and are now inflammed. I would suggest if he’s eligible is to retire and do something completely different, his body needs a major rest that a 2 to 4 week vacation won’t help. Some advice I’ve read over the years says to do strength training and cardio but I think before you start something like that is to simply take a long rest and change your diet, once you get the pain down then start a strength and cardio training program but start very slowly and use very light weight increasing about 10% per week. You also can’t go running to Ibuprofen or other nsaid’s due to the damage it can cause to the kidneys if you take to much and or take it to long so you should get a doctor to set you on a safe dosage; if you’ve been taking high dosages of a nsiad you should have a doctor do a kidney function test to make sure you’re not damaging them.
The problem is with being a postman is we don’t know if he has Osteoarthritis or inflammation of the tendons or both, but I would tend to lean towards the latter due to the repetitious work he’s done and his age, and that’s why I think he needs a prolong period of rest. If it is inflammation then he needs to do the RICE thing which is rest, ice, compression, and elevation; and of course rest means take a break from his job. Then his diet needs to change to avoid food that causes inflammation like sugar found in treats and soda, even coffee if he’s putting sugar in it; also no artificial sweeteners; anything with vegetable oil in like Mayo, salad dressings, bread, potato chips, crackers, etc; cut out trans fat foods; no fried foods; no refined flour like whats found in breakfast cereal, breads and bagels, pizza, etc; no dairy products; no artificial additives which is almost all but impossible to do so more like restrict it as much as possible; saturated fat foods like burgers and pizza; no processed meats, and severely reduce red meats and if possible eat grass fed meat; go on a gluten free diet; eliminate fast food; and finally cut way back on alcoholic beverages, but red wine and dark beer does have anti inflammatory properties but limit those to just one a day.
Then you have to eat food that have anti inflammatory properties like extra virgin olive oil which can now be found in certain butters, tomatoes, dark green vegs like kale, collards, and spinach unless you have problems with kidney stones then you want to avoid dark green leafy stuff; beans, whole grains that are gluten free, raw oats, all sorts of nuts and seeds (especially Chia seeds), fish, fruits, coffee works to but you can drink it black. green tea ( unless you have problems with kidney stones), dark chocolate paired up with an apple, red peppers, beets, ginger, garlic, rosemary, broccoli, pineapple, eggs, yogurt, raw honey, and Miso.
If you can find a practitioner of Thai body work (Thai massage), I can highly recommend it. It’s done wonders for me and others I know for those nagging aches and pains.
I was diagnosed with “terrible arthritis” based on a knee x-ray and pain. Exercises given to me by a PT worked great. You would think that as a cyclist I would have “strong knees” but my cycling muscles weren’t what was needed to control the arthritis pain. The PT did.
I’ve found that regular yoga – classes and daily practice – takes away the aches and pains from cycling and other exercise. It also takes away the aches and pains of sitting!
What about glucosamine & chondroitin for joints? I started taking them years ago because I read that they help. So far, only minor joint problems, although I’m almost 66.
I have great respect for coach Hughes and his training advice but I have to disagree with the comments about fish oil. I don’t know if it is helpful for joint pains but long term studies continue to show no benefit for cardiovascular health. Other supplements have not been shown to be helpful in any controlled study to my knowledge. Anti-inflammatories, as mentioned, have definite risks and there needs to be a risk/benefit discussion.
As a retired Postal Service employee with 31 years of service, the last 17 as a Letter Carrier, I suspect his job is the primary cause of his problem. A Letter Carrier with the U. S. Postal Service is required to carry no more than 35 pounds of mail while walking his route and be able to lift up to 70 pounds. If his supervisor is requiring that he carry or lift weight in excess of those limits Paul needs to contact his NALC (National Association of Letter Carriers) representative to request that this practice be stopped. His union rep should be able to put a stop to this nonsense immediately. There is no way he should be carrying 50 pounds of mail across uneven terrain, up and down steps, etc. EVER! Paul, for God’s sake, try a different brand of “Postal Regulation” shoes. Talk to your coworkers about which brands work for them. And you may need some orthotics for them. They can make a huge difference. Good luck.