I'm looking for any tips on how to cope with advancing arthritis. I find twisting motions to be very difficult at times, and that switching to set of
1/4" shank drills has really reduced the amount of chuck twisting I have to do when using the electric drill.
Two very helpful tools for CATV work have been wrenches for the hex rings on RG6 cable. One is on a long stalk but the more useful one is shaped like a
2" funnel with a slit in the side. It increases the function diameter of the hex nut substantially
I use the Rockwell 3Rill and like the light weight, smallness of the unit combined with lifetime battery.
Not a doctor, but from experience with arthritis hitting my family, avoid ALL allergic responses to ANYTHING. The smallest thing, avoid it. Doing so, you may find that your arthritic symptoms deminish.
I have both kinds of arthritis in multiple joints. I found that mild exercise seems to mitigate it but repetitive tasks or forceful jamming of a joint (big drill grabbing the work) really kills me. You just have to be careful. I work around my "thumb" problem but some days I still have them lock up so bad I can't hold my beer bottle. Thank god for mugs with handles ;-).
Hi Diet is big part of living with pain. Worst case, you can try Cortison shots where it hurts real bad. Wear and tear of joints are big problem getting older. I am 75 now and fortunately no pains yet. I can run with my dog, do all house chores/maintenance, gardening, etc. I can climb my antenna tower yet, LOL! When I am on the tower, all my tools are on a string tied to my tool belt. When I drop it I just haul it back up like fish. Better ease off on beer which can cause lots of uric acid increasing pain level.
First, I regret to hear. That's sad when you have the wisdom, the skill, and the aches and pains are holding you back. I've not yet had arthritis, but have had pinched nerve, and some other grief.
I find myself taking frequent breaks at the computer key board, just let my arms lay in my lap for a few seconds.
My uric acid and RA numbers are good. I have osteoarthritis in my toes and fingers and something they can't really identify in my knees and wrists but they call it arthritis.
I went through a year of hell while they tried to figure it out and in the end a trip to the physical therapist got me going again. I should have just started there first.
I am not sure how this escaped my Drafts file unfinished but it did!
I need a lighter drill. I am using DeWalts with 12VDC gel cells (that cost $10 each compared to the $40 DeWalt wanted for a crappy NiCad pack whose center cells always fail prematurely from overheating as they are surrounded by other NiCad cells). Getting too heavy to maneuver easily. Lithium batteries are a god-send for weight reduction.
Tell me about it. The MD's put me on Glucotrol because my BG levels have been creeping up and my arthritis went absolutely nuts over it. Gotta switch to something else.
Yeah, been there, done that, screamed like a banshee.
Even so, there's always a new "gotcha." I made myself scream just pushing in a seat belt lock button. Exactly the wrong force applied to the thumb joint. )-:
Yeah, I just started having lockups in my fingers and it's the weirdest (and most unpleasant) sensation. You have to pry the locked finger loose with your other fingers.
I got a neat little plastic strap wrench from Harbor Fright that's perfect for opening wide-mouthed jars, something I just can't do anymore with just my bare hands. I knew getting old was going to be bad - I just didn't think it would be THIS bad.
I've got bad genes. It makes me laugh when I see late night ads touting Christie Brinkley and Cindy Crawford's youthful looks. While the ads say it's this or that miracle cream the secret is getting born with the right genes.
can climb my
I had a friend like you. One day while climbing a ladder his legs gave way and after hanging on with his hands as long as he could, he slid down a few feet and then fell the rest of the way. The problem with severe arthritis is that you can't really depend on your extremities the way you used to.
My wife gets pretty good results with PT for her bad hip but I don't. The wrists are the worst. The problem comes and goes, which is why I go for days without being able to type replies here. I've been typing so much
2nite I am going to have to stop and do something that doesn't involve hands. I hate it. )-:
On Thu, 06 Mar 2014 17:40:34 -0700, Robert Green wrote:
Allergic response, may have a high threshold, but once achieved, requires a much lower level of exposure for the allergic response to go away. Sometimes it is possible to lower the threshold to the point the 'high' initial threshold moves so far up, you are never bothered again. Check into anecdotal information regarding extreme hay fever victims, who during WWII were stationed on boats in the Pacific far away from the allergens. They missed 'one' season of hay fever and often were cured. After returning to hay fever country never had the symptoms again, plus general health was improved. Again, following my personal premise that "since the body is a system, doing something to one area often affects another." That's why aspirin, acetominophen(sp?) etc all reduce pain. It is my contention [and personal opinion, that arthritis starts, and is exacerbated by, a response to allergies, starts out as your body trying to tell you in a 'sideways' manner to quit inundating it with ?? whatever is causing the allergy. Your body is a system, perturbing here, causes response over there, type thing.
Now back to allergic and arthritis. Jason Robards [the actor] had debilitating arthritis and became wheelchair bound, until he correlated his arthritic inflammation to his allergy of red meat, which he craved. He removed meat completely from his diet, and he was out of his wheelchair and back to working in film industry. Most of the people I met always had both arthritis and what seemed like even mild allergies. The pain of arthritis always outweighed their complaints about the slight allergies they were constantly suffering. One person at the age of 26 was practically bedridden from the pains of arthritis, would lie soaking in a hot tub every day to get over pains. Had the usual slight sniffle nose allergies but didn't think too much about it, until he realized, hey wait allergic = arthritis, arthritis = allergy, so he purged his home of EVERY allergen he could find. He removed anything and everything that was a known allergen. and anything that made hime think/feel 'sniffly'. Put in electronic air cleaners. We're talking almost divorce here, the home was austere beyond belief. During this purge, he said any visitor into his realm had like a 'dust' cloud around them. Made his eyes intantly start watering, etc.Couldn't stand to have them there. But after 18 months, he no longer suffered from arthritis, nor allergies to those myriad of home products. Now at 70 years of age, he still has little to no arthritic symptoms, still playing tennis and often riding bicycle a daunting 15 to
20 miles a day. Home has all the 'normal' ecoutrements of a home and he's still married. His family history has a history of 'adult onset' diabetes, too. Don't know if that relates or not.
Note: he also noticed that after exercise, acidic levels in the blood raised due to that exercise and similarly acidic levels in the blood raised while taking aspirin in arthritic sufferers. He wanted to pursue the concept that exercise and aspirin had same effects on the body as good old exercise, but medical community would not allow 'condoned' research into that area. As in, "yeah you can do the research, but we won't pay attention to it."
Just curious, I've heard the Japanese have done some wonderous therapy into arthritic sufferers by treating them with, shudder, ICE! As in, pack the knee joint with ice, exercise beyond belief, and when all warms up, person went from immobile to mobile. Real miracle. Remembering back to my neighbor who had those classic 'claw' hands and how she complained about the cold weather, always made me wonder.
That was my experience too. I went through a year of warnings about what I couldn't do, wrist braces and drugs that made blood shoot out my ass. The first thing the PT person did was take off my braces and tell me to do things that hurt like hell. Long story short. 3 weeks later I was OK, no braces, no drugs.
I don't think that there is a medicine in common use today that doesn't hav e some bad side effects. Scary thing on virtually all medical TV commercia ls is the disclaimer at the end. The possible side effects are worse than whatever it is they are trying to cure.
An anti inflamatory diet is a big help for a lot of rumatoid conditions. Lots of onions and tomatos. I haven't had to take my humira for going on 4 months since I started cooking onions and tomatoes and adding all sorts of vegies along with Janes crazy salt and somtimes a bit of cayenne pepper sauce.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.