If you have been diagnosed with degenerative disc disease, you have also probably been told there is nothing that can be done. Before sinking into despair, take a moment to consider the facts of the diagnosis.

First of all, degenerative disc disease is a misnomer. The condition is not a disease by definition; any more than one can define age as a disease. As Alf Nachemson, MD once observed: Wrinkle on your face, wrinkle in your back. After age 35 you will have some. Unless you have been a paratrooper in the military, then you will have lots.

The medical field has better names for degenerative disc disease. Spondylosis, for example. The name avoids confusion and is much sweeter to the ear. Another name is osteoarthritis: osteo meaning bone, and arthritis referring to the joints. Unlike the inflammatory arthritides like rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, and lupus, osteoarthritis is a non-inflammatory process affecting the joints.

Typically, the basis of a degenerative disc disease, or osteoarthritis, diagnosis results from x-ray findings. Instead of the normal smoothness of joints, we start seeing osteophytes, or little bone spurs, at the edges of joints, possibly with calcification of the tendons.

While it is true that nothing can be done to reverse the spurs or calcified tendons, there are many behaviors you can develop to prevent worsening symptoms or to alleviate the discomfort caused by osteoarthritis.

Shed extra pounds. No need to starve yourself, but you should try to keep your weight manageable. If a good weight for you is 220 pounds, but you walk around at 270, then you’re lugging around 50 unnecessary pounds with you all day, every day – getting up from bed, climbing stairs, sitting and standing. Imagine carrying around a 50-pound feed sack or bag of sand everywhere you go. That would add a lot of extra stress on your joints. Losing extra weight will take stress off your joints, decreasing the progression of wear and tear.

Open up the space in your joints. Maintain flexibility around your joints with stretching or exercise. Opening up the spaces between your joints by just one or two millimeters is enough to significantly decrease the affects of spurring.

Build endurance. Walk, bike, dance, swim. Take your pedometer on a daily 10,000-step journey to help maintain joint mobility. After a few weeks, you will also see smaller numbers on your scale.

Correct your posture. A good posture helps to maintain proper alignment, reducing undue stress on your joints. Posture is like the alignment of your car, with joints acting as the tires. You want to make sure it is correct, or you will end up with funky wear patterns.

Practicing these four behaviors will reduce the symptoms of degenerative disc disease. Remember, though, that just because anomalies associated with osteoarthritis show up on an x-ray, the finding is not a definitive answer as to the cause of your symptoms. Your doctor will need to correlate the diagnosis with your medical history and a physical.