An Enjoyable, Productive Hobby for Arthritis Relief

The last thing many people with arthritis feel like doing is an activity that involves constant and precise finger movements.

Some Canadian seniors, on the contrary, have just discovered that one such activity seems to drastically decrease pain and stiffness and increase movement.

Academics sometimes find subjects worth studying in surprising places.

Professor Lucie Brosseau, from the University of Ottawa’s School of Rehabilitation Sciences, has just teamed up with a seniors’ walking and social group called the Pace Setters for her latest study.

Among their many other projects, the seniors had been knitting blankets for a children’s hospital for more than 20 years, and some of those with osteoarthritis thought that the knitting reduced the arthritic pain and stiffness in their hands and fingers.

After watching her mother’s friend knit to relieve arthritis pain, Professor Brosseau decided she would do a small pilot study to find out whether this really worked. The study is not yet completed, but there are reasons to think that it might work.

She has given each person a logbook to record the amount they knit, the intensity of pain with which they wake up, and the severity of the pain before and after the knitting. She then wants to examine their recorded information to see whether there are any patterns.

She believes that the hand movement involved in knitting might help them maintain joint flexibility and muscle strength to fight off the stiffness and pain.

If knitting is not quite your thing, you might want to try music. A few years ago, the Journal of Music Therapy printed a small pilot study by a University of Kansas researcher that tested the effects of daily keyboard playing on the finger strength and movement of older people with osteoarthritis. She used a midi sequencing computer program, called Master Tracks Pro, to measure finger velocity before and after each session.

Three of the four participants benefited significantly from the program, which involved four 30-minute sessions per week for a period of four weeks. Three could press the notes harder and stretch their fingers further apart by the end, while two reported a significant decrease in discomfort.

But knitting and piano playing is not going to cure arthritis. For that you need to follow the specific diet and lifestyle strategy found here…