(soft folk music)
- So here we are in the spring, and our clients
are looking forward to starting
their gardening projects again,
but they're concerned about
their arthritis flareups.
So, we're gonna talk over some of the tools
that will help them not wear down their hands,
not wear down their joints; their larger joints
like their knees or their back.
Let's just demonstrate what you have to offer for them,
and we'll talk about some of the
therapeutic concerns or positions that will help them.
- Well this is one of my favorites.
This is a simple garden trowel,
and this is a trans-planter, so you know
how deep you are in the garden which is kind of nice.
But it's lightweight.
But I like it because I can push down from the top
without messing with my wrists too much.
Maybe you can take a look and see
what you like about it.
- Right, that's a nice handle.
And, it's nice that
you can place your wrist
in a neutral position anywhere that you hold this handle.
So what I mean about a neutral wrist position,
is a wrist that when you make a fist,
that wrist that stays locked in its natural position
without being deviated, or extended, or twisted.
The handle fits very nice so that you can push
straight down into the ground.
That's a very nice handle, and it is very lightweight.
- Well I saw you had a tool belt.
Do you have a trowel in there too?
- I do.
This one's a little different.
Even though the handle's not as curved,
you can still hold in a neutral wrist position,
and you can lock your thumb on the tip of here
and not let the thumb slide.
So it's important to have padded handles
with a nonslip grip.
Several of your handles here might be a little slippery,
but there is pipe insulation.
There are different size circumferences
of pipe insulation.
What I have here is a therapeutic type of thumb,
but in the hardware stores, you can buy just a regular
pipe insulation, cut it in half, and just insert it
onto some of your handles.
So this, for an example, is wide enough to go...
This is wide enough so that it can be inserted
on a
slippery-er handle.
But now this handle is built up to the point where
pressure on the thumb won't be felt as much
as if it were just the vinyl that's
coated on this tool.
- And if I can just point out,
these are bypass loppers.
So these have a scissor-type cut.
There are also some pruners that have
one solid end, and an anvil end, and a cutting end.
These are much better and easier to use.
They're better for the plant.
And that spring will help you open and close it.
- So the spring is very important
because when you have a spring,
you're not doing so much thumb extension.
And that repeated thumb extension usually bothers
our patients with thumb arthritis.
So I have a simple, household item;
not so much for gardening, but the design
is pretty much the same.
So these are just the typical, household scissor
that has a spring-loaded end that reduces the strain
on the thumb having to extend the scissors open.
And so just like your handle here,
and the handle of these scissors,
you're using all five, or all four fingers,
to squeeze versus just a typical pair of scissors
would have just one finger and then thumb extending.
So, it really saves the wear and tear on your thumb.
- These are some of the watering tools.
So these are kind of cool.
Again, it has the fingertip grip here so that
turns on and off.
And with everybody being a little bit more
water conscious, it automatically turns off
when you let go.
- What I like about this, is that
the shoulders don't have to reach so high.
Even though you can squirt this onto your plants,
it's not like holding a water can,
which is very top heavy, harder to control,
the thumb and the wrist take a beating,
and the shoulder does too,
with trying to water your plants up high.
So this is for either high or low watering,
and the patient does not have to
use smaller muscles, smaller joints to do
what they need to do to water their plants.
This is very lightweight.
So let's talk about some other long handled tools.
- Okay.
This little rake that you have next to you,
I like this because it's so lightweight.
And I'll be honest, I was out cleaning up my yard
the other day and I was using a regular rake,
and I was tearing off some of my flowers.
So this is better for getting between your shrubs
and your perennials.
It's extraordinarily lightweight.
And then, the wrist, you probably have to teach me.
- Right, so the wrist being in neutral
is pretty much...
As soon as you grab the tool,
your wrist is in neutral, and so you can
still scrape the ground without a lot of twisting,
without bending the wrist forward or back a lot.
And they can also learn to use their legs
instead of their hands for bigger projects.
Because the more they have to reach in,
and the more they have to use their back
or extend with their shoulder, they're gonna wear down
and fatigue more quickly.
So we're always thinking about using larger muscles
to do the activity instead of the smaller muscles
doing the activity.
- That makes sense.
- So you showed me this really nice bench for gardening,
and you recommend it because of our patients
who have bad knees?
- That's right.
- And you suffer with that yourself?
- I suffer with that, yes I do.
So I will do some sitting in the garden,
do some weeding and things like that.
But sometimes you just need a little bit of reach,
so you can also flip that over and use it as a kneeler.
And what I like about it is,
I have trouble getting back up.
So those handles, I can push up and get up
nice and straight and easily,
and it gets me up high enough that I have no issues.
- Right, and you can certainly put your wrists
in neutral when pushing up from this lower position.
And if you feel like you need some handles on that,
one of the things that I mentioned earlier was about
putting some pipe insulation on there
if your palm and the base of your thumb
is very aggravated by your thumb arthritis.
- Okay, so this is a half moon edger,
but the spades are gonna work the same way.
This has what we call an O-handle,
but sometimes it it'll have a D-handle,
and it allows us to put our weight like here,
and just step down on it.
And again, we can go anywhere around the edge there
to sort of keep our wrists, like you said,
in the right place.
- Definitely.
And so since the legs, versus the hands,
can be used, you're taking pressure off your hands,
and you're using larger muscles and larger joints
to do the harder work.
- Now hedge clippers are a little bit different,
and these already have some handles that are pretty good.
But because we're using those more,
probably at waist level or higher,
that motion works out okay.
- It does.
This is very light.
I was expecting something heavier, but this is
extremely light.
And that's important too, because the heavier the item is,
the more muscle work, and the more strain it is
on your smaller joints of your hand.
- And speaking of that, just again with the smaller joints,
so I use this a lot to mist my plants at home.
But I'm sure a lot of people put other sprays in here.
And unlike a regular trigger thingy,
this kind of primes.
- Right, because
you don't need to have a single trigger,
or especially the trigger of the thumb,
which would be wear and tear on the thumb.
The thumb seems to be the finger that
takes the beating the most.
So if you can take pressure off of the thumb,
then you're using all four fingers,
which is a much stronger group of muscles.
So a lot of times we talk about not using the hands at all.
If some tool, or some device had a pump version,
and they can just put palm-ward pressure down,
the fingers aren't even used when you're using the palm,
and the force of your palm on the tool.
- The other thing I like just out in the yard,
kind of going back to the raking part.
This comes out and makes just a great big bin
for your leaves, but it's compact when you don't need it.
But it's lightweight for moving leaves
and things around the yard.
- There are a lot of pull behind wagons that
have some higher handles.
That's helpful too so they don't have to bend down a lot,
or use a wheelbarrow and bend down a lot to hold that.
So, a garden pouch is very nice to have
around your waist so you don't have to
constantly bend down to pick up your tools
which you leave all around.
So just getting used to an apron or garden pouch
around your waist will be a very easy way to find
all of your little tools.
A good garden glove would be helpful as well.
I would go with the lightest weight glove
that you possibly can use.
As they become thicker, more leathery,
it takes more squeeze out of your body
to hold onto a tool with a leather glove
versus a cotton, padded glove.
That would be much better for your arthritis.
So we want to reduce our strain on our fingertips,
because our fingertips, when you load them in a pinch,
about three times the load goes to the thumb,
compared to any other joint or any other finger of the hand.
So I like the idea of these little snips
that you can use the full hand versus pinching
and snipping using just the load of your thumb on the plant.
- We're doing a lot more with container gardening.
I was talking to some retirement communities
just last week, and they're doing more and more of this.
And it's kind of nice because when you get the pots,
they're relatively lightweight.
Now once you fill them with soil and water,
they can get a little heavier.
These are actually both fabric.
This one's from a company called Smart Pots.
This is from Bloembagz, and you can find them
at any store pretty much nationwide, I would think.
But, these are just some nice flowers to grow
in these pockets.
We left one here blank so you can just kind of see this.
So this is great if you wanna do
even an herb garden in this.
You could plant some of your hangy-down-iers.
Things like oregano could go in there.
Pansies for now, but you can flip those out
and put in some summer blooming annuals later.
And there are other pots that are available,
certainly plastic and clay and all of that .
But it's easier for me, at my stage of life,
just because I can get them up
where I'm working on them and then move them
to where they need to go.
- And speaking about working up,
being in this upright position, you can transfer them
from table to table and not have to bend down.
Or along your fence line, or along your banister line.
That's perfect so that they don't have to stoop over
to pick up anything from the ground.
(soft folk music)