Keep Your Hands Flexible and Functional
Do you have trouble buttoning your shirt or tying your shoes the first thing in the morning? How about trouble turning doorknobs or picking up your cup of coffee? If so, you may have osteoarthritis (OA) in your hands, which can produce stiffness, pain, joint swelling, and diminished dexterity and hand strength.
Movement Helps
As is the case for most joints in the body, regular exercise will help maintain range of motion and reduce pain and stiffness. Warming your hands in a warm bath or shower—or even by clasping them around a cup of hot tea or coffee—will make it easier to move them, since heat aids flexibility. Another option is a paraffin bath; a home unit can provide an experience similar to what you might get in a nail salon.
If your fingers are very stiff in the morning, start to get them moving by using your left hand to gently push the fingers of your right hand down toward your palm, and then extend them, using the left hand to help straighten them. Then do the same for the left hand, using the right hand as a helper. If using one hand to assist the other—an approach called passive exercising—causes pain, stop and try simply bending and straightening the fingers of each hand to get the blood flowing and the joints moving.
Then, do the set of exercises in Moves of the Month (below). It’s best to do them in the morning, when fingers can be especially hard to move after being largely immobile overnight. You’ll reap more benefits if you do the exercises again around midday and before going to sleep.
Do’s and Don’ts
Do report hand pain to your doctor. Although you may believe you have OA, the most common type of arthritis, it’s possible you have rheumatoid arthritis, which is an autoimmune condition that requires different treatments than OA.
Don’t apply ice to your hands unless your doctor has recommended it. Icing sore joints can make them even stiffer.
Do use assistive tools and devices that make daily activities easier. Many hand-friendly products are now available, such as gardening tools with fat handles, grip pads, key turners, grabbers, and doorknob grips. There are also gadgets that can help you more easily reach and buckle your seat belt, carry multiple shopping bags at once, and button and zip your clothing. For more information, visit the Arthritis Foundation’s website at www.arthritis.org.
Don’t do activities that involve resistance, such as forcefully squeezing or grabbing an object or trying to twist open a jar without using a grip pad. There is a limited amount of cartilage in joints affected by OA, and doing anything against resistance can compromise the cartilage that remains.
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