OOOH! AAAAH! OUCH! Don’t these sighs sound familiar? You’ve heard them almost daily.

Especially when your spouse tried to load that heavy piece of luggage in the car..

Or maybe at night when your parents held onto their knees, twisted in their sleep or took a 10-minute pause to get up from the chair?

During that last trip of yours when your grandparents had to take frequent breaks while walking because of their throbbing joint pain!

Or maybe it was YOU just yesterday - who shrieked because of your neck pain and curbed it instantly with a quick fix.

For years, we’ve been bombarded with instant pain-relieving solutions to keep our joints and muscles pain-free. We’ve not just seen thousands of new products that promise to bring immediate relief but even hoarded them in all formats. Open your drawer and see how you find at least 3 types of sprays, a strong cooling gel, a warming balm that sedates you to sleep and some popular solutions recommended by friends and family that ultimately give a short-term placebo effect.

But what about long-lasting results from pain, stiffness, and restricted range of motion?

What most pain relievers have failed to recognise is that instant pain relief doesn’t help in the long run.

While there are plenty of pain relievers available in the market, they’re not as targeted to bring lasting relief and often have only one simple goal: To numb or curb the pain.

Instant pain relief is required, but is it enough?

1. MOVE BEYOND SHORT-TERM SOLUTIONS

In a country where a whopping 80% of the population aged above 65 years suffers from some form of joint pain, clearly an instant quick fix has not been enough.

What’s worse? Joint pain is no longer an aging issue with several young working professionals developing posture-related stiffness, pain and discomfort in “high-stress” zones like their neck, back and knees.

Sedentary lifestyles along with a screen-time heavy routine during the week has led to a spike in cases of knee, neck and back pain in everyone working from home and the ones commuting to work.

Sure, instant pain relief may help curb the pain and let you carry on for a day or two.

BUT SUCH ‘INSTANT SOLUTIONS’ don’t tackle these very real problems most companies fail to talk about.

We all know that our joints age with us and often lose their shock absorbing capacities: it is daily wear and tear- a part of the normal aging process after 40 or 50 or 60 years and we can’t expect our joints, muscles and bones to stay as healthy or strong as they did in our 20s.

Or can we?

Ayurveda (the 5000-YEAR-OLD ANCIENT SCIENCE OF LIFE), focuses on self-care and rejuvenation.

Most Ayurvedic routines and practices are made specifically to keep our body looking and feeling youthful– and what makes Ayurveda so special is that it focuses more on the wellness of the body inside out.

The self-care routines in Ayurveda date back to over 5000 years ago. That means that these ancient practices have been around for thousands of years. If the test of time doesn’t prove how effective they are... well, what does?!

2. KNOW WHAT CAUSES KNEE, BACK AND NECK PAIN

To best address the problem of knee, back and neck pain, Ayurveda recommends us to know its root causes. Let’s delve into 2 primary causes of joint pain. These include 1. posture-related pain and stiffness that young people encounter and 2. age-related pain and stiffness that’s common in the later years of one’s life.

Aches and pains that you experience daily are a sign of muscular imbalances in your body. These often show up in the form of muscle stress, tension or tightness, restricted range of motion, regular low backaches, constant knee pain or even bad posture.

In fact, sitting, standing, walking in faulty postures is something that we are all guilty of! And did you know that all kinds of body pain- including knee, joint, neck, shoulder, back pain which are commonly experienced in older ages are often the result of years of incorrect posture?

So why not do something NOW to avoid this later?

If you are someone who sits all day- whether caught up at your workstation or relaxed in front of the TV -your hip flexors, hamstrings and pectoral muscles must be under acute stress and may have high vulnerability to pain. To stop this sedentary lifestyle from affecting your body in the long run, you can do the following:

• Ensure to take a break from sitting every 30 minutes
• Stretch your legs, back, arms
• Adjust the screen to your eye levels
• Avoid slouching & sit up straight
• Keep your elbows at a 90-degree angle when using the mouse

Let’s now address the cause of pain we encounter in our later years.

When it comes to joint pain in the later year, the causes include daily wear and tear of joints, body’s shock-absorbing capacity being lost, depletion of bones, depletion of synovial fluid level and the like.

Ayurveda has a kinder explanation for it. In our life, we go through three stages of life: Kapha, Pitta, and Vata – which are also the three doshas or bio-elements in Ayurveda.

And Ayurveda believes that body ache, joint stiffness, neck pain, knee discomfort are all signs of aggravated Vata. The Ancient science of life also offers targeted solutions, herbs and ingredients that pacify Vata and help give long-lasting relief.

3. KNOW HOW ABHYANGA CAN HELP GET LONG TERM RELIEF

You already would know that Ayurveda specialises in the rituals of rejuvenation and self-care! It explains the practice of ‘Dinacharya’ or daily self-care rituals for your skin, body, soul and mind as an expression of self-love. This helps build a foundation to achieve good health and a better quality of life.

One of the pillars of Ayurvedic medicine and self-care is daily self-massage or ‘Abhyanga’. To know how this can help knee, neck and back pain, let’s first understand what Abhyanga means.

In Ayurveda, Abhyanga is synchronized massaging of the body towards the direction of the movement of arterial blood. Simply put, it means massaging the body in the direction of the body’s hair.

Simply taking out a few minutes every day to massage your own body, to stay grounded and connected.

The benefits of abhyanga or self-massage are manifold:

• It lubricates the joints, gives better flexibility
• Increases blood circulation, assisting cell regeneration
• Helps you sleep better and deeper at night
• Reduces stress and increases longevity
• Helps eliminate toxins or impurities from the body
• Helps tone the muscles and strengthen the tissues
• Softens and smoothens skin and helps smoothen wrinkles and fine lines

While a good self-massage should take about 15-20 minutes, to make Abhyanga time-effective and easy to adopt as a part of your busy daily routine and get its unmissable benefits, taking out even 5 minutes per day for yourself is enough to see the effects.

5 minutes a day to love yourself, to love your body, and to feel better and look better – is a 5-minute investment that is worth your joint’s while. Only 5 minutes daily of self-massage to give your painful, stiff, sore knees, back and neck that much needed comfort and relief will go a long way.

For its already mentioned benefits, Abhyanga is an unmissable step for keeping the joints moving, healthy and pain-free. But, there’s another equally essential aspect of massaging or oiling. And that is - using an appropriate polyherbal oil with targeted ingredients.

4. USE TARGETED INGREDIENTS THAT FOCUS ON EASING KNEE, BACK, NECK PAIN

While oils alone seem like a great start, a better way to get even more targeted benefits for your knees, neck and back is by using formulations that are cooked with effective herbs and spices.

Ayurveda offers bountiful, time-tested and vital ingredients that are targeted to relieve pain and promote healthy, strong joints and muscles. Ayurveda has many ingredients that provide strength to nerves, muscles & ligaments, relieves muscle & joint stiffness, and reduces pain & inflammation.

Take, for example, THESE

ASHWAGANDHA (Withania somnifera)

Ashwagandha, means the herb which gives “strength like a horse". In fact, you see, it is the herb endorsed by The Father of Ayurveda- Charaka himself to strengthen muscles. It is a “blessed” herb that has exhibited marked anti-inflammatory effects and is known to protect the cartilage in joints while preventing the narrowing in joints. That’s not all! This herb is documented to be a Rasayana herb (translated from Sanskrit as 'that which promotes rejuvenation') and is traditionally used to provide strength, stamina and reduce general weakness.

SHATAVARI (Asparagus racemosus)

This is an Adaptogenic herb, which is said to help your body cope with physical and emotional stress.

Shatavari is also high in saponins (antioxidant abilities), anti-inflammatory- helps to reduce inflammation, immunity booster, relieves pain in joints, muscles and tendons, anti-aging. Saponins in Shatavari root helps reduce skin damage that leads to wrinkles.

Shatavari has been used in Ayurvedic Practice for centuries. According to Ayurvedic texts, Shatavari possesses cooling, calming properties that can help to soothe and balance Vata and Pitta.

Its antioxidant properties help prevent cell damage and also battle oxidative stress. It is considered a general health tonic to improve vitality, making it a staple in Ayurvedic medicine.

PUNARNAVA (Boerhaabia diffusa)

Punarnava helps in deep rejuvenation of the body and its paste is used in wound healing.

It is an excellent herb to reduce inflammation (Shothaghani) and balance Pitta and Kapha Doshas. Because of its rich antioxidant and anti-inflammatory potential, this herb makes for a perfect ingredient to relieve pain The herb also helps in decreasing swelling and has skin-boosting properties.

BALA (Sida cordifolia)

As the name suggests, Bala means “strength” in Ayurvedic texts and its roots possess strength-enhancing properties.

Due to its Rasayana or rejuvenating property, it also helps improve immunity. According to popular Ayurvedic texts, it has Ropan or healing and Sita or cooling properties.

It makes for an excellent ingredient in massage oils as it helps in relieving joint pain and swelling due to its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties

5. USE AN ANCIENT, PROVEN, TIME-TESTED FORMULATION

There are multiple oils out there with some commonly known cooling ingredients that claim to help aging joints get freedom from pain but very few actually give results. To ensure you choose an oil that delivers effective results, you must go through their ingredient list. Here you’d notice how some of the most popular Ayurvedic oils contain a large amount of base oil and a very small percentage of herbal formulations.

What if we tell you that there is a 100% natural, chemical-free Ayurvedic body oil, that has
❌ NO BLENDING
❌ NO DILUTION OF ACTIVES DERIVED FROM THE HERBS
❌ NO MINERAL OILS
but only pure, potent power to give lasting pain relief.

NIRUJAM JOINT CARE Long-Term Pain Relief Mega-Oil With 40+ Ayurvedic Power-Herbs by The Ayurveda Experience is a unique Ayurvedic oil for Joint Care. Enriched with 40+ pure, powerful, pain-modulating herbs with anti-inflammatory effects cooked over several days using the ancient Ayurvedic 'Taila Paak Vidhi', this mega-oil for joint pain, muscle pain, back and neck pain, stiffness of muscles and a tired body gives pain relief that’s priceless!