Going to the doctor, taking horrible medications, or even having to follow a strict diet are no fun ways to treat arthritis.

In fact, we usually don’t think of curing diseases as fun.

But what if there was a fun, pleasurable way to slow down, stop, or even reverse your arthritis progression – something you really loved to do?

Many academics have established that arthritis develops more quickly and severely in animals that are stressed. For example, one team injected rats with a substance that caused arthritis, after which they brought a cat into the lab where some of them were kept to bring about stress. Those rats subjected to the cat developed a more severe form of arthritis much more quickly than those rats that were calm.

This is hardly an experiment that can be performed on human beings without violating every research ethics code that exists; it even makes many of us cringe when laboratory animals are treated like this. However, by looking at information into the lives of people who already have arthritis, scientists can estimate whether arthritic people were more or less stressed than the general population before the arthritis developed.

In this way, most studies, including those on children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis, show that prolonged stress brought on by traumatic life events probably contributed to the development of arthritis.

Researchers have also taken people who already have arthritis and tested the effect of stress management on the progression and symptoms of their condition. They found that stressed people definitely suffer worse pain and stiffness than non-stressed people, and that the disease progressed faster in the former than in the latter group.

So what can you do to relieve the stress that worsens your condition?

Here is one simple technique to relax:

Mindfulness is the practice of focusing very narrowly on your present sensations. The point is to pull your attention back from your worries about past, present, and future.

Directions: Sit down comfortably and concentrate on everything you can hear. How many sounds can you count? Contract your muscles and count the number of individual sensations in this simple action. Feel how your breathing feels. Is it happening only in your chest, or can you feel things change in the rest of your body too?

If you do this for an hour every day, you will become better at dragging your attention away from your worries back to the present, whenever you become stressed.

Exercise is relaxing. Swimming and walking are gentle on your joints. They are also fun to do, especially if you find a green park or forest in which to walk. It pulls you away from your worries, and it brings about the secretion of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which many call your body’s positive mood hormone.

Get enough sleep, even if you must catch some of it in the afternoon. There’s no shame. It is, in fact, healthy to take a break between your morning and afternoon work. Some of the most productive people do this. it clears some of the crud from your head.

If you can accommodate it in your life, acquire a pet. Taking care of it will make you feel important and needed, and animals are always cute enough to get a smile out of you, no matter how bad you feel.

Never withdraw from people, as social support as essential to combating stress. Arrange regular meals or tea with friends. Join a club that practices your favorite hobby so that you always have someone to call up when you want to do something you love.

Tell yourself all the time that your worries are not as bad as they seem. Many people have survived them before you. Challenge yourself to devise strategies to deal with them. Reward yourself for handling your stress well.

But the greatest stress relief is, of course, to completely reverse your arthritis naturally. Here is the step-by-step strategy thousands of readers have successfully followed before you…