Gardening Hand Woes
This is an exciting time of year in New England. The cold, dark winter is very much behind us and the wet cool spring is in the background as well leaving us with beautiful clear skies with flowers blooming and lawns in peak growth. We love our gardening and yard work, but it can come at a cost. Our hands take a beating from all that repetitive weeding, clipping, trimming, mowing, and planting care that we do around our homes. Why do our hands hurt? There are a lot of possible reasons but a very common issue we all have is hand arthritis.
What is hand arthritis?
The most common style of hand arthritis is osteoarthritis which is the usual wear-and-tear style of arthritis. Certainly other types of arthritis exist like Rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis amongst others. Osteoarthritis however, is the most common and the general reason our aching hands start screaming at us during these heavy yard work times. Arthritis is simply the process of losing the cartilage cushion between two bones at a joint. That loss of cushion causes grinding, inflammation, and pain. This can happen at all joints in the hand, but there are particular joints that seem to be more common to get the problem such as the base of the thumb and the end knuckles/joints towards the tips of our fingers.
What can be done about it?
The goal of treating arthritis issues in our hands is typically to prevent the painful episodes that interfere with our ability to do the things we love. Many times patients can get great relief by modifying activities, wearing particular splints to protect the joints, or anti-inflammatory medicines to dampen the inflammation pains. Other times, those tools have failed and other interventions are needed. Steroid (or cortisone) injections can be used in hand arthritis many times to give relief of pain for many months at a time. Therapy certainly has a role at times for various arthritis problems. Lastly, there of course are surgeries to help alleviate pain and in many cases, get rid of pain altogether without compromising strength nor function.
Contact Us
As experts of Hand Surgery, we at The Hand Center have the complete ability to evaluate your hand arthritis issues and we take great pride in tailoring a treatment that meets your needs from the most basic to the most complex situations and everything in between. We would love to meet you and see how we can help get you back to the things you love...and would love to know how your garden has turned out this season!