How Hand Arthritis Happens

Do you suffer from arthritis in your hands and fingers? Do you suffer everyday whenever you have to go grab things like turning on faucets to start the day in the morning, point a cup of coffee being able to grab spoons and utensils or turn knobs. It is so frustrating when you can’t even just grab a pen or a pencil and write the way you used to.

Because your fingers are so bothersome. The joints get swollen, it hurts to bend them or straighten them out all the way. And it’s just frustrating to deal with it feels like there’s nothing that’s going to make it better. And it just keeps getting worse because you use your hands all day long. I’m going to explain how this happens. And I’m going to explain why you should not be stretching.

I’ve got another video coming out soon talking about what exercise you need to be doing to begin fixing your hand and finger arthritis problem. My name is Dr. David Middaugh. And I’m a specialist physical therapist at El Paso manual physical therapy. And this channel is focused on helping people stay healthy, active and mobile. while avoiding unnecessary surgery, unnecessary injections and pain medications. Please subscribe to our channel so that you don’t miss out on any of the helpful videos we upload every single week.

Let’s get on to it. Let me show you this picture that I drew about hand arthritis and finger a greatest. So how does it happen, I need you to just skip oriented first to the bones in the hands. So down here you have the forearm bones, here’s the the wrist or you have the little bones are called carpal bones with a bunch of them in there. And then you have the metacarpals is first row long bones. And after that you have the actual finger bones and joints, which we call the phalanges.

Now, I zoomed in right here to the first finger so that you can see some muscle attachments, tendon attachments, really. So here’s the first metacarpal. That’s this phone. And then you have the three fingers, the three buttons on top of that. And what you need to understand here is there’s an imbalance that occurs let me just get a little closer to explain this here.

So in blue, here is a tendon that connects to the base of this first bone right here is this, this bone in your hand right there, then you’ve got a separate muscle that sends a tendon into the second bone, and a separate one that sends it into the third bone. For reference for those of you nerds out there that actually know the muscle names.

This is flexor digitorum profundus, flexor digitorum superficialis. And this is electrical muscles. And there’s more than this, I’m very giving you a very simple picture of of the muscles in the finger just to explain what what you got to know is that each of these muscles controls a different joint in a finger.

And you’ve got similar muscles in your four long fingers. And you’ve got some other muscles that act similarly in your thumb as well. Well, if you think about the way that you use your hand, the way the hand is designed, built, and you don’t have to know medical stuff or understand, you know the ins and outs of hand mechanics, because it’s its own specialty, you don’t have to understand all that.

Just simply put, if we’re talking about a finger, because this is a common joint right here that people get arthritis and also the one out here or any of the other joints in these two fingers. You’ve got one muscle that simple, I’m keeping it simpler, there’s more but just for simplicity sake, you’ve got one muscle that bends this knuckle, then you’ve got another of bends this knuckle right here, and then the one that bends this knuckle.

So when you go to grab anything, all those muscles work together, in order for you to wrap your fingers around whatever it is that you’re grabbing, or it’s a holding your fingertips, whatever it is that you need to grab with your fingertips. If you are in the habit of not using one of those muscles as much as the rest of the muscles over time, as we age, especially as we get into our 60s 70s and beyond, we develop a muscle imbalance.

So going back to this picture. If you have been really good about using your finger tips, especially if you write a lot if you write with your hands, then you’re going to be strongest in the muscle the bends the finger tip because that’s the one that’s going to be using us to grab things and all your fingers, which means that you’re probably going to be weakest relatively in the muscle of bins, the bottom joints and possibly the one that bends the mill joints.

If that happens, look at the lines that are colored here the red, the purple and the blue. If you’re strongest in the red one, it’s going to put excessive pressure because the line of pull in this joint and this joint. If you don’t have good strength from the other ones that it doesn’t balance out the forces going through the joint you have inappropriate forces going through joints in the area.

If you have more equal strength from all the different muscles that then eat to the knuckles, then you’re going to proportionally disperse the forces through each of the joints in your finger and keep the joint Healthy because that’s how it’s designed to be. But if you’re dominant with one muscle group that does one thing, or then you’re going to get more pressure in certain joints and others and eventually develop some arthritis problem.

So now you have to ask some different questions about how to get this better, because if it’s a muscle imbalance, meaning certain muscles are stronger, and we’ve only talked about the muscles that bend your finger and close your hand, not the ones that open really, we don’t need to worry about those too much. Your hand is designed to generate the most force closing, not opening, a good analogy that I like to give as a kid.

As a kid, I was always a science nerd. I loved watching the Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, I was just fascinated as somebody was so brave, to be able to go wrestle an alligator and get on top of it, no tools, no straps, no nothing. And he would just grab that alligators, Josh shut and control it. And he would narrate the whole time and talk about, you know, all the different cool things, cool facts about alligators.

It was just incredible to watch. I think everybody enjoyed that guy. I’m so sad that he’s not with us anymore. But one thing that I’ll never forget that he that I learned from Steve Irwin was he said, alligators, muscles in their jaw, are very weak at closing, because that’s where they’re grabbing things is how they’re eating.

They’re closing their jaw, and they have to not let go of whatever animal they’re trying to eat, because that’s how they survive. But the muscles that the alligator has to open their job are not that strong. In fact, there’s so weak that he could hold themselves with his bare hands.

And he could overpower those alligators, jaw opening muscles, it’s sinking in your head, your muscles that open your hand are not supposed to be equally strong as the ones that close your hand, because your hand is an operate open very much and grabs things he holds on to things. That’s how it’s built.

The problem with hand arthritis and finger arthritis. And you know, I’ve been talking about the finger, but this affects the Arthritis that happens here the wrist and in the in the palm of the hand as well, because that does happen, especially here, the thumb area, side of the other hand right here, the muscles that close the fingers, especially the ones that close this way, tend to get weakest, and that causes the imbalance that puts the inappropriate pressures into the hand.

So a lot of healthcare professionals will tell people to stretch their hands that go this way, or to put rubber bands or there’s little devices and contraptions out there where they work on opening the fingers. And if you’ve had a surgery, or if you’ve got a lot of loss of motion and one of your fingers or wrist, then that might be good to do for a time.

But once you can open your hand and close your hand through the full range of motion, then you don’t need to strengthen that hand very much because it’s kind of like telling the alligator to strengthen its muscles to open its jaw. When it doesn’t matter. As long as that alligator can open his mouth all the way and safely get there without pain. That alligator should be okay, as long as it can close this jar, it’s going to survive and eat and do whatever it needs to do.

Same thing with your hand, if you have the full range of motion to open your hand all the way it doesn’t really bother you, you you’ve got pretty equal motion you have your fingers should extend past your hand just a bit. So not everybody that’s just that’s more typical. But if your hands go at least completely flat, you’re good. And the most important thing to worry about is that you can grab and all your knuckles bend.

Let me show you what I mean. If you’re grabbing a handle with some sort, I just have this Sharpie here. If you go to grab it, you should be not grabbing like this because then you’re not using these knuckles right here, which means you’re not using the muscles in that area you need to be grabbing with the whole knuckles.

It’s not a problem with small things like this that in light things that fit in your hand. But when you’re grabbing items that are bigger or heavier, what tends to happen is especially if it’s hanging down, your hand strength gives up and pay attention closely next time you pick up that heavy basket of laundry or if you’re moving furniture or moving heavy items around your home or if you exercising, you lift weights or grab any handles in the gym.

That handle should be in the palm of your hand with your fingers wrapped around it. If it tends to slide off the palm and hang more in your fingers like this, then you are not using the joints and the muscles in this in the knuckles here, which means those are getting weak and you’re strengthening the joints and muscles that bend the tips of your fingers, which means you’re developing an imbalance.

So you need to practice getting that that bar that handle whatever it is you’re grabbing in the palm of your hand. Use a Palmer grip as I tell my patients make sure that you clasp with your palm use your palm think about using your palm more and more. And that’s a simple way to begin to reverse the imbalance that you’ve got in your hand.

There’s some strengthening exercises that we’ll talk about in another video. So stay tuned, subscribe if you haven’t subscribed already, so that you can catch that video. If you thought this video was helpful for you, please give us a thumbs up and ask questions. Leave us a comment.

If you’re concerned about anything, we get questions about the hand all the time in strengthening it is pretty straightforward. Understanding the problems behind it. This imbalance I’m telling you about is a little more challenging for people to wrap their head around.

But once you’ve got it, then things just click and you can really begin to reverse swollen joints in the hand and the fingers and reverse arthritis or at least keep it from getting worse if it hasn’t gotten bad enough yet. I wish you the best of luck in your hand journey guys. Have a wonderful day. Goodbye.