How to Harm Your [JOINTS]: A Guide to Breaking Yourself Down One Step at a Time
Welcome to the second installment of our How to Harm Your [Self] series. This time, we’re focusing on the joints—the essential hinges and levers that allow us to move, lift, bend, and live with ease. Want to make sure your joints ache, crack, and stiffen before their time? Great! Just follow these time-tested mistakes.
(Of course, we hope you’ll do the opposite.)
1. Be Completely Sedentary—or Push Through Pain Without Rest
Let’s start with the extremes.
- Sedentary Living: Avoiding movement altogether weakens the muscles that support your joints. Without that muscular stability, joints bear more load than they were designed for—leading to stiffness, instability, and wear.
- Overtraining Without Rest: On the flip side, pounding your joints day after day without adequate recovery or warm-up stretches accelerates cartilage breakdown. Repetitive strain is one of the leading causes of chronic joint injuries like tendinitis or bursitis.
Better choice
Balance is key. Regular, low-impact movement like walking, swimming, or resistance training protects your joints by strengthening the surrounding muscles without overloading them.
2. Eat an Inflammatory Diet
If joint pain is your goal, go ahead and load up on:
- Refined sugars
- Processed grains
- Seed oils (like soybean, corn, and canola oil)
- Fried foods and packaged snacks
These foods contribute to systemic inflammation, which can make existing joint issues worse and even trigger autoimmune responses in susceptible individuals.
Evidence-based insight
A study in Frontiers in Nutrition (2019) showed that diets high in ultra-processed foods are linked with elevated inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein (CRP), which are closely tied to joint pain and stiffness.
Better choice
Adopt a Mediterranean-style or anti-inflammatory diet rich in fatty fish, olive oil, nuts, seeds, colorful veggies, and spices like turmeric and ginger. These foods nourish your joints and reduce systemic inflammation.
3. Ignore Your Posture and Movement Patterns
Slouch at your desk. Look down at your phone for hours. Lift heavy things with your back instead of your legs. These subtle habits are a slow, effective way to cause misalignments, uneven wear on joints, and chronic pain—especially in the neck, spine, knees, and hips.
Better choice
Invest in ergonomic setups, learn how to lift and move safely, and strengthen your core and posterior chain to support spinal alignment.
4. Stay Chronically Dehydrated
Cartilage—the smooth, rubbery tissue that cushions your joints—is made up of about 80% water. When you're dehydrated, cartilage becomes less resilient, increasing friction and wear. Over time, this can accelerate osteoarthritis, especially in weight-bearing joints like the knees and hips.
Better choice
Sip water consistently throughout the day. Avoid excessive caffeine and alcohol, which can be dehydrating.
5. Gain Excess Weight (and Keep It)
Every extra pound of body weight adds roughly 4 pounds of pressure on your knees and about 6 times the force on your hips during walking. Over time, that excess pressure erodes cartilage, contributes to inflammation, and causes joint misalignment.
Clinical perspective
According to the CDC, people with obesity are twice as likely to develop osteoarthritis compared to those with a healthy weight.
Better choice
Small reductions in weight can have a big impact. Losing just 10 pounds can reduce knee joint load by 40 pounds with every step.
6. Ignore Early Signs of Joint Pain
Is that clicking in your knee getting louder? Do you feel stiff every morning? If you want to harm your joints, keep ignoring those signs. Chronic joint damage often starts with mild pain or stiffness that people dismiss—until it becomes irreversible.
Better choice
Address discomfort early with movement, therapy, or lifestyle changes. Early intervention can prevent long-term damage and preserve joint mobility.
Protect the Framework That Carries You
Your joints are the structural framework of your mobility. Damage them, and your freedom to move, play, travel, and live without pain begins to disappear.
The good news? Every one of these joint-damaging habits is within your control. With the right movement, nutrition, posture, hydration, and body awareness, your joints can stay strong and pain-free well into old age.
So, here’s your challenge:
Choose daily actions that protect—not punish—your joints. Your future self will thank you with every step.
Coming up next in the series: How to Harm Your [Brain]
