I’ve had the surgeries. I’ve gotten the injections. Sometimes things heal. You get healthy. Life moves on.
Other times, you’re left with a nagging injury. You’re left wondering how to heal your body. You become curious about natural ways to reduce inflammation.
You want to heal quicker. You want the pain to go away. But you don’t want to just pop pills hoping to numb the pain. You want to actually heal your body.
4 Underrated and Natural Ways to Reduce Inflammation
After dealing with a torn tendon in my ankle, a full-cartilage defect in my knee, a loose body floating around, patella tendonitis, and a partially torn rotator cuff – I’ve found a few ways to manage pain and inflammation.
There are a variety of natural ways to reduce inflammation and make your body feel better. The problem is they’re not too popular.
Most people talk about rest, ice, compression, anti-inflammatory pills, and other common methods of dealing with pain.
While all of the above can yield benefit to certain injuries, this common protocol can also hinder other recovery processes.
Instead, I found four natural ways to reduce inflammation that may work well for you. Here they are:
Montmorency Cherry Juice
If you’re looking to get rid of a stubborn pain without popping pills, then Montmorency cherry juice is your best bet. 
I’m absolutely baffled how much better my shoulder pain and joints feel when I take this potion a few hours before bed. It’s truly a healing elixir.
Just mix one ounce with a glass of water a few hours before bed. Try it out for a few weeks. You’ll be amazed how much better you feel.
I’ve yet to meet someone who didn’t find a noticeable reduction in pain when drinking 100% tart cherry juice.
But don’t just take my word for it…
If you’re buying tart cherry juice, make sure you get the expensive kind. The only ingredient should be tart cherry juice concentrate. No water. No added sugars. No other kinds of juice.
You can’t get a 32-ounce bottle of this stuff for under $20 USD. Usually, you’ll pay $20-30 for a month’s supply.
The best brands I’ve found are Cherry Bay Orchards and Stanton Orchards.
Click here to buy tart cherry juice from amazon.
Magnesium Oil
I wrote a whole article about using magnesium oil to reduce pain. Click here to check it out.
Put simply, I’ve yet to find a better topical treatment for reducing inflammation and managing pain. Magnesium oil alleviates a majority of my pain during the daytime hours. 
The best part of magnesium oil is how fast it works. You can apply the oil and you’ll start to feel real pain relief within 10-15 minutes. It’s baffling how helpful magnesium is to your body.
Now, you do have to be careful about not overdoing the magnesium. Only use 10-15 sprays a day. I like to use 5-7 sprays in the morning and another batch right before I go to bed.
While I believe tart cherry juice offers more relief while sleeping, magnesium oil helps manage pain during waking hours better than anything else.
I like these brands of magnesium oil:
Get Your Greens
Supplementing without looking into your diet is never a good idea. Just like Mama said – you need to eat your fruits and vegetables.
While apples and bananas are fine and dandy, your body will feel better if you start eating different sources of vegetables and berries.
Anything leafy and green is a great start. While kale can be pricey, you can buy spinach in bulk all around the world. And it’s cheap.
Why is spinach so great? Well, according to BodyBuilding.com, the leafy green:
“…contains naturally-occurring plant-based steroids called phytoecdysteroids (Bakrim et al., 2008; Bathori et al., 2008). Phytoecdysteroids are analogues of arthropod steroid hormones found in plants and are used in defense from predation by non-adapted predators such as insects (Dinan, 2009).”
Basically, eating a lot of spinach is one of the best ways to naturally reduce inflammation.
But who wants to eat a giant salad with every meal? Not this guy. So how do you get more of this superfood in your diet?
Smoothies! Spinach is super easy to incorporate into a smoothie. You can add heaps and heaps of the stuff without adding too much flavor. Kale can’t do that. 
All you need is a Magic Bullet. Make sure you get a model with a tall cup that holds 20-ounces. You want to stuff it full of spinach.
Then grab that big Magic Bullet cup you have. Stuff it with a ton of spinach. Then add blueberries and almond milk. Blend that inflammation reducing shake up.
Oh, and blueberries are great for inflammation, too. Just check this out.
My recipe is this:
- 2 big handfuls of spinach
- 1 cup frozen blueberries
- Almond milk (fill to brim)
That’s it. Mix it all up in the Magic Bullet and down it twice a day. Gives me nearly two salads worth of leafy greens and a ton of fresh berries, too. I feel a difference on days when I down a shake or two and days when I don’t.
Click here to grab a Magic Bullet off Amazon.
Stay Active
Last, but not least – don’t forget to stay active when dealing with pain and inflammation.
While certain injuries require absolute rest, especially post-surgery, others need constant blood flow to recover.
You should try to stay as active as possible without aggravating your injury when in recovery mode.
Even just walking for 10-15 minutes a day is sure to keep the blood pumping in your body. With a quick walk, you can accelerate your heart rate and send nutrients to all the areas that hurt. 
Rest is useful, especially if your overtraining. However, with inflammation and arthritis, you need to be constantly moving. Your injured areas need to be stretched and moved each and every day.
For example, I have a partially torn rotator cuff from bench pressing. On days where I hang from a pull-up bar and do my rehab exercises, my shoulder feels significantly better.
If I rest for a few days, my pain level actually starts to increase.
The same thing happened when I had patellar tendonitis. Resting made things hurt worse. I’d get stiff and take too many steps backward when I started my rehab up again.
If I did my eccentric strengthening exercises each day and went for a 10-15 minute walk, my knee felt much better. It was because I kept moving.
Now, don’t just start back into training if you’ve been resting an injury. Build things up slowly. See what you can do. Find out what type of exercise makes you feel better the next day and what makes you feel worse.
For most, some type of activity will lead to improvements in pain levels and inflammation.
Natural Ways to Reduce Inflammation
The four things above have helped me reduce my pain levels significantly. If you’re struggling with arthritis and pain, try incorporating these four natural ways to reduce inflammation.
While I’m no doctor, I’m confident you’ll feel better after incorporating the ideas above for a few weeks. Here’s to healing!