The Body in Action: You Can Keep Your Joints Young

The material in this book is invaluable. There are between 6 and 8 excercises for each major joint or spinal segment in the body, graded from beginner to advanced. They are all beneficial, I have tried them. All can be done safely by the average person with osteoarthritis, spinal aches and pains and stiffness/loss of mobility of all causes. For more complicated musculoskeletal problems, physio supervision would be required. You only need about an hour to do the whole lot, but I find it easier to break it up and do two joints/areas per day, which takes about 15 minutes and makes the whole day go more smoothly. If you only have one problem area, you can just do the exercises for that area. The areas she describes and prescribes for are: feet, ankles, knees, hips, lumbar spine, thoracic spine, cervical spine, shoulders, elbows and wrists. She explains in detail how each area works, what goes wrong and then describes the excercises to fix it. The book could have done with some more editing, it is a bit unclear at times, and more wordy than necessary. However, it is well worth the effort of decoding and abbreviating the info to suit your particular problem areas. It has totally improved my knees, thoracic spine and neck, more than any massages or other physio exercises I have had before, and understanding the mechanisms of dysfunction helps gain control of symptoms too.