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The Health Brief

Changing how you grip helped more sore hands than hand drills

4 min read

Live well

There is a gray foam tube on the handle of my coffee mug now, and it cost me a dollar and nineteen cents at the hardware store in Camden.

I bought it last Saturday, the morning after the mug nearly hit the floor. My right hand had been sore all week, mostly at the base of the thumb. Each time I pinched that thin handle, a sharp ache ran up into my wrist. Carol watched me set the mug down with both hands. She did not say a word… and she did not have to.

So I cut a length of the foam, the kind you wrap around pipes so they don’t freeze in January. I slit it down one side and pushed it over the handle. Now my whole hand closes around it, with no pinch at the thumb. The ache is less. But one mug is not a study, and I have been fooled by my own hands before.

So I went to see if there is anything real behind the trick. There is. It has a dull name: joint protection. That means doing the same daily jobs in ways that put less load on small, sore joints. Fat grips, two hands, the palm in place of the fingertips. It sounds like plain common sense. The odd part is that someone tested it, and it beat the hand drills.

The trial in England

In 2015, a team at Keele University in England put this to a fair test. The report ran in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, a top journal for joint doctors. They took 257 people with arthritis in their hands, all aged 50 and up. The average age was 66, a year short of mine. About two in three were women. Arthritis here means the wear-and-tear kind, where the smooth pad at the ends of the bones wears thin.

They split the people four ways, by chance. The first group got a leaflet and some advice. A second group was taught joint protection by an occupational therapist. That is a health worker whose job is to help you do daily tasks with less pain. A third got hand drills to do at home. And the last group got both.

Then they counted “responders” at six months. A responder is a person whose pain or hand use got better by a set amount. The bar was fixed before the trial began, so no one could move it later. With joint protection, 33 percent cleared the bar. Without it, 21 percent did. In other words, about one more person in every eight got a real gain.

Now the part that made me sit up… The hand drills did not do much in this trial. People who got them cleared the bar 28 percent of the time, against 25 percent for those who did not. That gap was too small to count. It surprised me. I still do my slow fists from Monday, and other trials have found small gains from them. But here, how people used their hands mattered more than how they trained them.

There was one more finding. The joint protection groups felt more sure they could deal with their own pain. That held at three months, six months and a full year. Most of the other scores in the trial showed no clear gap. So I would not oversell it… it’s a modest win.

What the rule book says

In 2018, a panel of 19 doctors, therapists and patients wrote the rules for treating hand arthritis. They came from ten countries in Europe. The group is called EULAR, the league of joint doctors in Europe. Their advice is blunt. All patients should be offered three kinds of training. Using the hands with less strain. Pacing the day. And using helper tools. Every patient. Not just the bad cases.

Bear in mind the limits. This was one trial, with 257 people, over six months. You can’t hide from someone that they have been taught a new way to open a jar, so the people knew which group they were in. And 33 percent means two in three people still did not clear the bar. Or put another way, it helps some hands, not all of them. But the cost is a few dollars… and the risk is close to zero. I’ll take those odds.

Four habits I use now

Here is how I put it to work in our kitchen. None of these is magic. Each one moves the load off the small joints of the fingers and thumb. It puts it on the palm, the wrist or a tool.

 

Make the handle fat.

A thick grip spreads the load over the whole hand. Foam pipe tube works on mugs, pens, forks and garden tools. You can also buy kitchen tools with fat, soft handles.

 
 

Use two hands, or the palm.

Carry the pot with both hands, close to your chest. Press a jar lid with the flat of your palm and turn from the elbow, not the fingertips.

 
 

Let a tool do the twist.

A rubber jar pad, a key turner, a lever tap in place of a round knob. When a job hurts, ask if there is a gadget for it. There usually is.

 
 

Pace the job.

Switch tasks before the ache starts, not after. Peel half the potatoes, set the table, then come back and peel the rest.

 

Carol says the foam on my mug is ugly. She is right. I’m keeping it.

When to stop and call your doctor

Call your doctor soon if a finger joint turns hot, red and puffy all at once. The same goes if your hand goes numb or weak, or you can’t make a fist after a fall. Some arthritis is a different kind. A clue is stiff, swollen knuckles on both hands that last more than an hour each morning. That needs a doctor. And as always, see a doctor today for pain shooting down a leg, numbness between the legs, or loss of bladder or bowel control.

Here is to an easier grip,
Walt

The Health Brief is for education only. It is not medical advice. Always check with your own doctor about your own situation.

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A stretch, a sleeping position, a heat trick for a stiff hour. Short enough to read with your coffee. If one does not fit, skip it. The next one might.

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