Military Muscle: Fight arthritis with simple, targeted stretches - Military Health, military health and wellness, military physical fitness - Military Times

Military Muscle: Fight arthritis with simple, targeted stretches

Arthritis may often be a problem for older people, but even young people are being identified with it at an ever-increasing rate.

When it affects the upper body, arthritis can hinder your ability to grip, raise your arms and move your hands. To address the problem here at the Navy Wellness Center in Pensacola, Fla., we’ve hired an individual certified by the American Arthritis Association to teach a range-of-motion exercise class.

Here are a few exercises from that class that you can do at home:

• Shoulders: Extend your arms out to your side, palms up. Bring your hands back over your arms until your fingers touch your shoulders. Keep your fingers on your shoulders and rotate your elbows in a circle (forward motion), starting small and widening the circle if you can. Complete 10 slow, gentle circles, then another 10 in the opposite direction.

• Hands: Extend one arm in front of you with your hand up in a “halt” sign. Grasping the fingers of that hand with your other hand, gently pull the hand back toward your body. Hold for 10 seconds. Now turn the hand that you pulled so the fingers are facing down and the palm is facing toward you. Grasp the fingers and gently pull the hand toward your body. Hold for 10 seconds. Repeat on your other hand.

• Fingers: Hold one hand out in front of you, palm up. Take your thumb and touch the tip of each finger, forming a circle. Do three complete cycles of each finger, then do the same on the other hand.

Nutrition tip: What ‘lean’ means

Looking through the ground beef section for that magical 90 percent lean, 10 percent fat content — or even better?

If you think you’re getting only 10 percent fat, think again. The number on the package reflects product weight — not fat calories per serving.

On a trip to my neighborhood store, I verified this with a package of 93 percent lean, 7 percent fat ground beef. The nutrition label for a single serving revealed 170 calories and 7.6 grams of fat. Convert the grams of fat to calories by multiplying by nine to get the real fat percentage: 68.4 calories of fat in 170 total calories equals 40 percent fat.

A quick reference for the fat percentages per 4-ounce serving for each of the following lean/fat labels:

Stated lean/fat ratio       Calories from fat

95/5              28%

90/10              47%

85/15              54%

80/20              58%

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For more exercises from the range-of-motion class, e-mail Bob Thomas.