Joint health is important to living a good life and that includes healthy aging. The American Chiropractic Association (ACA) encourages everyone to lead a healthy life by promoting joint health through physical activity. ACA wants people to get off their couches and office chairs, stand up and move! In other words…Get Vertical!

ACA is emphasizing joint health because joints are critical to all movement and allow us to carry out normal activities of daily living. Some 150 million to 200 million cases of back pain send people to the doctor every year—and many of those are related to joint injuries. The bones that make up the joint allow movement, but it is the muscles that pull the bones that produce the movement.

The movements that you perform on a daily basis are critical to long-term joint health, as are proper nutrition, a healthy exercise regimen, and a healthy lifestyle. Moving a joint through its full range of motion serves several important purposes. Joints are not supplied directly with blood as are other organs within the body, but instead are nourished with synovial fluid that is forced into the joint cartilage through pressure resulting from body movement. So the saying, “Use it or lose it” applies to joint function.

Article written by Carol Cline, editor of chirohealthy.com