If you have arthritis and love gardening, you know how painful this task can be! Over the last year I’ve been testing out some new gardening tools and here are two of my favorites so far:
- Upright / Vertical Handle Designs for small hand tools (like a trowel or cultivator)
- Padded compression gardening gloves (to reduce swelling, provide gentle compression and provide extra proprioceptive input to improve body awareness)
Why does it matter what tools we use when gardening with arthritis?
As an occupational therapist, I’m trained to do an “activity analysis,” which means a super in depth look at what is required for someone to complete a task in the context of their own specific environment & context (cognitively, physically, emotionally, socially, environmentally, etc).
Something as simple as gardening can be GREATLY affected by simply the tools one uses – I know this both as an occupational therapist and also as someone who’s lived with rheumatoid arthritis for the last twenty years (since age 21!).
The problems with traditional gardening hand tools
Zooming in on the task of holding a trowel for example, purely from a biomechanical perspective it’s easy to see that the traditional trowel / hand shovel design has 3 major drawbacks for people with arthritis:
- It requires you to pronate your wrist, which is a more awkward and potentially painful position than a neutral wrist position.
- It promotes knuckle squishing / ulnar drift (drift of knuckles towards the pinky side), which is particularly bad for rheumatoid arthritis).
- It requires the small “intrinsic” muscles of the hand and the muscles that cross the wrist to do a lot of the active grasping, which can be fatiguing and potentially irritating to small joints affected by arthritis.
Four reasons a vertical / upright handle trowel is better for gardening with arthritis
By contrast, a vertical / upright angle trowel has the following 4 advantages:
- ❤️ 1. The grasp keeps the wrist in the “neutral position,” which alleviates stress and strain from the wrist & carpel tunnel
- ❤️ 2. The knuckles are not squished, which is a relief for rheumatoid arthritis
- ❤️ 3. No active thumb grasp required, which is particularly handy (pun intended) for arthritis of the base of the thumb joint
- ❤️4. It reduces intrinsic hand muscle grip requirements by allowing you to utilize larger joints and large muscles to achieve movements, relieving stress and strain from smaller joints and muscles. This is known as a “joint protection strategy” and is an important self-management tool for people living with inflammatory arthritis or osteoarthritis.
Where to learn more about these products
As always, I have links to these products in my “Cheryl’s Favorite Arthritis Products” page. These are “Amazon Affiliate” links which means I make a very small commission on any purchase made directly from my links.
Do you have a favorite tool or strategy you use to promote arthritis relief during gardening? Did you notice any other tricks I used that I didn’t point out in the video? Let me know in the comments!
Medical disclaimer:
All content found on Arthritis Life public channels was created for generalized informational purposes only. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
Links to the products I demonstrated in the video:
- Easi Grip Garden Tools Trowel – hand shovel
- Easi Grip Garden Tools Cultivator (one with 3 prongs)
- Gloves: Women’s ReliefGrip Gardening Premium Leather Gloves – brand: Bionic Gloves. Note: they ran very small for me, I’m usually a small but ordered a medium
