At-home Guide to a No-pain-in-your-joints Life

Save Steps - and Stairs, Too

With a little forethought, you can save yourself a lot of extra running around that may sap your energy. For example, one can plan his errands by geographical area so he could accomplish several chores at once instead of needing to make repeated, separate trips. When you shop, stop in the entrance and look over the store, thinking how you can save steps before you venture in. At shop­ping malls, you can use a wheelchair. Also, one can skip as many trips to the store as they could by shopping from mail-order catalogues.

At home, too, especially if you have stairs to climb, try to plan your activities to minimize the number of trips you make from one part of the house to another. You may want to keep an upstairs and a downstairs supply of inexpensive cleaning and grooming supplies so you'll always have what you need at hand.

Take stairs one at a time, hold on, and don't fall. If it's easier for you to go downstairs backward, then by all means do so.

Relax Your Cleaning Standards a Little Bit

Learning to look past the dust makes housekeeping much easier. Changing the sheets less often helps, too. (And if you have fragile hands, choose flat sheets over fitted ones.) Accepting something short of perfection from yourself, though difficult, comes highly recommended.

Protect Your Joints from Injury

When you can't avoid using your affected joints, you can guard against injury with many kinds of protective coverings. These range from back braces and cervical collars to splints and simple elastic bandages. Most people who used them did so only at spe­cific times or for specific tasks. Wear a cervical collar while doing housework, put splints on your wrists when typing or playing golf. Avoid jobs that require too much flexing, as that also makes the pain worse.

Bend from the Knees - or Avoid Bending Altogether

Many who suffered back pain from arthritis said they stooped down rather than bent over when they had to reach to the floor, letting their legs do the work instead of straining their spines. This is sound practice for the back, but if your knees are arthritic — and there were more sore knees than bad backs in the survey group — stooping may be difficult, if not impossible. Some individuals said they must avoid stooping or bending altogether.

One solution is to use a long-handled spring action tool that extends your arm's reach by about three feet and has a hand with magnetic fingertips that are quite good at picking up dropped coins, paper clips, and the like. Almost everyone who uses this item has his own name for it. Arthritis sufferers called it by turns a reacher, a gripper, an extender, a long-lifter, a pick-up stick, a grab-it, and tongs, but they all meant the same thing. You can buy one for about eight dollars by mail order or try to make something similar yourself out of a clothes hanger or other materials. A helpful homemade tool to reach things too high or too low can be made from a broomstick. Cut off the broom and cut the head off a nail. Then pound the nail into the end of the stick. You could even clean up litter in the park with this gadget.

Prepare Yourself for Extra Exertion

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Anytime that you're planning on being more active than usual or are about to do something that has brought on pain in the past, you may be able to ward it off by trying a pain-relieving strategy in advance. When you are going to do something that usually causes more pain, use medica­tion and precautions before, not after the pain starts. Some prob­lems can be avoided or at least minimized by using caution and good sense. Use whatever works for you.