EP 28: Joint Pain: The BEST Tools, Techniques, and Solutions for Arthritis Management

Arthritis in the hands and shoulders can be managed effectively with the right tools and techniques. From red light therapy to specialized adaptive equipment, these practical solutions help reduce inflammation and pain while supporting continued independence and activity.

• Red light therapy devices reduce inflammation while increasing blood flow to affected joints
• Use red light therapy for 10-15 minutes, 2-3 times daily, prioritizing morning treatment
• Motorized jar openers eliminate painful twisting motions for those with hand arthritis
• Vibration-absorbing gloves with gel padding protect joints during activities and driving
• Special vibration-dampening hammers and tools extend working life for those in construction
• Castor oil applied topically (not ingested) helps reduce joint inflammation naturally
• Kinesio tape provides an "exoskeleton" support system for painful finger joints
• Creating a tape "sling" at the base of the thumb supports the common arthritis site
• Maintain a relaxed grip on tools and steering wheels to minimize vibration absorption

Always follow up with your doctor and hand therapist for personalized advice.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Arthritis Solutions
• 0:29 Red Light Therapy Benefits
• 2:24 Motorized Jar Opener Demo
• 2:49 Vibration-Absorbing Gloves
• 4:43 Castor Oil for Joint Relief
• 5:55 Kinesio Tape Support Techniques

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome back to the Hand-to-Shoulder Solution Giving Pain the Middle Finger. I'm your host, carl Petito, occupational therapist and board-certified hand therapist. I wanna talk to you today about arthritis, any type of arthritis that's causing inflammation and pain of the joints. What are some of the good tools that you can use? Patients often tell me about some good things that work for them. They ask me my advice about what would be optimal and I wanna share that with you today. So the first thing I want to talk about is everyone has asked me about red light therapy, and I really like red light therapy a lot, and there's a couple of devices that I like and that I'll share with you. On the bottom of the video that you can click on the links to bring you right to Amazon to show that shows you where they are.

Speaker 1: 0:45

The Red Light Therapy Mitt is great to just put your hand in and absorb the red light. The red is in a spectrum of red that does two things that reduces inflammation and, at the same time, increases blood flow. It does get a little bit warm, but not hot, and I recommend using this on the fingers, the hand, the wrist for 10 or 15 minutes, two to three times a day, a couple of times a day is fine, but make make the priority using it first thing in the morning. Now you see this bigger one here. This panel is nice for over the shoulder and make sure it's directly on the skin and this is very effective at reducing inflammation. Very, very nice, a little bit warm. Always pay attention to the after effect. If the after effect of the warmth is you know, 5 or 10 minutes or so following use of this, that your joints are a little more irritated or they're feeling a little more sore, then use it less often. Or when you do use it, don't use it for as long. For example, if you've been using it for 15 minutes, reduce it to 10 minutes.

Speaker 1: 1:54

Moving on from red light therapy, there's this really nifty jar opener that one of my older patients showed me and it completely motorized and it closes onto the lid of the jar and to the jar itself both at the same time and then, once it closes onto the lid, it turns the lid and the jar independently of each other and it removes the lid. So when I now let go of the button and reverse it now, it'll loosen and the lid, the lid comes right off, so you don't have to do anything with your hand. There's no twisting. There's no using your have to do anything with your hand. There's no twisting, there's no using your muscles to do anything with it. The machine does all of the work.

Speaker 1: 2:49

Now, something that I'm wearing on my hand is a vibration absorbing glove. This is a fingerless glove. It has a gel pad in the palm. One thing that arthritis really does not like is vibration. I treat a lot of carpenters, other construction folks and even just people who want to get out there and use the lawnmower, especially when they're using a push, a push mower and that vibration is going into the wrist. It's nice to have something that absorbs that vibration. Any job, any task that causes vibration to be absorbed by the hand. It's really, really nice to have a good pair of gloves that has a gel liner to absorb that vibration. This is a pair that I like and again I'm putting the links on the bottom of the video so that you can click on those and go right to these items. These are gel pads. It's a full finger glove that can be worn just for that.

Speaker 1: 3:43

You know, even long trips in the car. I have patients complain that you know it's a long road trip and you know there is micro vibrations that travel through the steering wheel that do affect the joints. For that reason, just a quick tip it's good to not squeeze the steering wheel firmly, it's good to just have a relaxed grip so the vibration doesn't absorb quite as much. Now, folks who are using a hammer a lot during the day, they make vibration absorbing hammers. So you see how the, the shaft, the metal part, is thin and it has some variations. That helps to disperse the vibration and it's a nice rubber handle that, if you can find a thin this is a little bit thick a thin glove with a vibration liner, that is. That is very, very helpful. That will extend your life. As for, for example, a framer, you know people who work framing houses and they're swinging these framing hammers all day long, really, really tough on the joints.

Speaker 1: 4:43

Now what can you put on the joints that can absorb that's all natural and it decreases inflammation just topically Castor oil. So don't drink the castor oil. It's a natural laxative. It'll make you go. But if you just put this on your joints, what I recommend to people is just put a thin layer of castor oil on your painful joints, especially if you know, joints are swollen and irritated. Base of the thumb, these thumb joints, the, the joints of the big knuckles of your hand, the small knuckles. You can just put a layer on that, just smear a layer over. Don't rub it in because remember from the previous episodes, rubbing the joints really increases inflammation. It makes everything worse.

Speaker 1: 5:27

So you just put a little bit of this on topically, a nice, a nice coating, wrap your hand in a towel so you don't get the furniture oily, and sit down and watch a movie for an hour and a half and when you're done just wash it off, and that really helps a lot of people when you watch the Olympics and you see the athletes with the tape on their shoulders, that athletic tape is the same thing we use in the clinic. It's called Kinesio tape. So I want to show you something here. I had a lady in the clinic. Two's called kinesio tape. So I want to show you something here. I had a lady in the clinic, uh, two or three days ago and the the middle knuckles were bothering her a lot on her index and her long fingers. So what I have her do when she's out working in the garden and she's doing you know if she has a lot of dishes to do. Um, this is waterproof, this Kinesio tape, and she can wrap it right around her joints like this. 50% of its elasticity is stretchy tape. So pull it out about 50% and just wrap it around the joint. That gives the joint stability, that gives it sort of an exoskeleton and supports it and guess what Decreases the pain. It's as easy as that.

Speaker 1: 6:43

Now, another thing to do in one of the most common locations of osteoarthritis in the whole body is the base of the thumb. And what I have my patients do is attach it just at the base of the thumb and the back of the hand and then pull the elastic and sort of make a sling at the base of the thumb to support that joint. And that really makes a very significant difference If you feel that bone and follow the bone down and it steps off the base of the bone where it meets one of your carpal bones. There's eight carpal bones that form the carpal tunnel. That bone is called the trapezium that it meets. So you have the metacarpal of the thumb and then it connects to the trapezium, that joint. If you put a little sling around there, that supports it very, very nicely. In a future video I'm also going to talk about what's the best over-the-counter splint that you can use specifically to support this joint, the base of the thumb.

Speaker 1: 7:37

This is not medical advice. This is some basic tips and tricks. Always follow up with your doctor and your hand therapist. Thank you.