Having a healthy lifestyle is key to managing your psoriatic arthritis. Eating right, exercising and keeping your lifestyle healthy are some of the best ways to manage your psoriatic arthritis and its symptoms. Being overweight or obese is a big contributor to the disease and the pain and skin problems that go with it.
Low-impact activities, such as walking, swimming, and cycling, can benefit the spine and increase endurance. Modified yoga and Pilates exercises can also help increase strength without putting much pressure on your joints and spine.
Foods like fatty red meats, dairy, refined sugars, processed foods, and possibly vegetables like potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplants (you might hear them called nightshades) may all cause inflammation. Avoid them and choose fish, like mackerel, tuna, and salmon, which have omega-3 fatty acids.
What aggravates PsA? Triggers for a flare include smoking, mental or physical stress, injury, some medications, illness, and infection.
Decrease Pain and Stiffness
For occasional discomfort, Fields says, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen (Advil) or naproxen (Aleve) can be beneficial. Ask your doctor about increasing the dose during a flare-up. You can also try heat or ice at the source of discomfort, Fields says.
Stress is a major trigger for many people living with psoriatic arthritis. It's a vicious cycle. Having psoriatic arthritis can make you stressed, and in turn, being stressed can make your psoriatic arthritis (and the fatigue that often accompanies it) worse.
A 2005 study by the Mayo Clinic showed coffee was safe to drink for patients with psoriatic arthritis. The Arthritis Foundation suggests moderation is key, and to watch caffeine intake. Talk to your doctor about whether you can drink coffee if you have arthritis.
Water Intake Helps Ease Joint Pain and Boosts Joint Health
It's important to keep your joints in tip-top shape if you have psoriatic arthritis. Water helps maintain all body functions, many of which affect your joints.
While physical activity in general might help maintain a normal prostate, avoid heavy exercise directly before your PSA. Avoid exercise for a few days before your PSA test. Even bicycling, riding motorcycles or ATVs, or riding horses have been shown to elevate PSA slightly for a short period of time..
Bananas are not a typical choice for people with arthritis, but the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties in them may aid in protecting the body against certain oxidative stress.
There's No “Best Weather” for Everyone with Psoriatic Arthritis. Since there isn't research explaining exactly why weather-related flare-ups happen, there's no way of saying which weather is truly best for everyone with psoriatic arthritis. It all depends on your personal triggers.
It may help to take note of meals and new foods, weather changes, stress levels, exercise, and other lifestyle and environmental factors, both between and during flares. Some common flare triggers include: skipping or stopping psoriasis medication. skin injuries or infections.
For people with psoriatic arthritis, it's also good to try to limit cheese because of the cholesterol and saturated fats, according to Young. “You also want to avoid refined grains that can cause inflammation — for example, white rice, sweetened cereals, buns, white bread, pancakes,” he says.
Tea is one of the most-studied drinks when it comes to its benefits for arthritis patients. Green, black and white teas are all rich in polyphenols – compounds from plants that have strong anti-inflammatory effects. You'll find the highest polyphenol levels in green and white teas.
Medically supervised ultraviolet light therapy is sometimes used to help treat psoriasis, and most people with psoriasis or psoriatic arthritis find that the sun improves their skin's appearance, sometimes dramatically. “Ultraviolet rays are anti-inflammatory and can calm the skin and improve lesions,” says Dr. Gohara.
Endurance exercises
These activities can help improve your cardiovascular fitness and overall health as well as your psoriatic arthritis symptoms. The best endurance exercises for people who have psoriatic arthritis are walking, swimming, and biking, Lindsey says.
Since arthritis can cause inflammation, magnesium's anti-inflammatory effects might help some people with the condition.
“Worsening joint pain and swelling, or new or worsening psoriatic lesions, are the most common red flags that someone is having a PsA flare,” says Yamen Homsi, M.D., the section chief of rheumatology at NYU Langone Hospital in Brooklyn, NY. But there may be other signs that a flare is on the way.
The disease is most common among adults, but you can have it in childhood. In adults, the condition generally appears between the ages of 30 and 50. Arthritis is an early symptom of the disorder in children, and psoriasis is an early symptom in adults.
Symptoms like joint pain, stiffness, and swelling may be worse when it's cold, humid, and/or rainy. Plus, people with psoriatic arthritis might also experience more skin symptoms during winter months. Again, this may be because people tend to get less sunlight in the winter.
Yep, along with medication switches and stress—typical triggers for this arthritis-plus-psoriasis condition—temperature changes can affect your PsA. “Weather does, in fact, impact the severity of flare-ups associated with psoriatic arthritis,” says Anand A.