Hand Pain

[PinCushion]

I have been experiencing pain in my hands, not my wrists but more the joints in my hands. I am unsure if this could be diabetes related, and curious if anyone has any eperience with hand pain, either related to diabetes or not.

Thanks
Amy

[NoraWI]

Of course I have experienced hand pain but, then, I'm 68 years old! It does not necessarily have to be diabetes related... could be caused by arthritis or repetitive motion or a myriad other things. Aspirin takes care of it for me.

[davef]

Amy,

Strange you should post this I was just about to post something similar.

I have had a pain on the knuckle (where index finger joins the hand). The pain is not in the knuckle, at first I thought it was a tiny cut that I could not see. But this has last about 9 days and I have checked under a magnifying glass and there is no cut there. If I rub the skin over my knuckle it get a searing pain, it's actually worse if I run the skin gently.

Last night I had joint pain in all the knuckle of the same hand but I think that was unrelated and more down to the amount of work I do on PC's using a thumb-ball mouse.

If this is not gone by next week I think a visit to the doctor will be on the cards.

[princesslinda]

I've had a lot of hand/finger joint pain recently, that i've attributed to arthritis from many, many years of typing. My hands feel "tight" and hurt when I bend my fingers. Ibuprofen has been helping a lot....and I hurt less on weekends when i'm not typing. Cold weather probably isn't helping either.

[alura]

I'm assuming my pain is due to arthritis. The bases of my thumb joints hurt sometimes so much it just about brings me to my knees - strange how an area so small can hurt so much! I find that elevating my hands sometimes helps, but mostly relief comes from aspirin and heat. Cold damp weather makes it worse.

[LancetChick]

When I started getting my blood sugar under really tight control, my eyes cleared up, my frozen shoulder finally thawed completely, and to my complete and utter surprise, my arthritis disappeared! I had no idea it was diabetes related. Actually, it hasn't disappeared completely, I still have a little residual stiffness in the morning, but it's so mild now that I consider it a non-issue. My hands used to be almost locked into place, they were so immobile and useless, and I remember complaining about it to everyone I knew. Now they work just fine, and I'm working on getting my strength back after losing it with so many years of disuse.

Excessive and fluctuating blood sugars wreak havoc on connective tissues, as well as just about everything else, and it seems that connective tissues are my Achilles heel when it comes to this disease. I read somewhere that roughly 50% of diabetics have arthritis.

[UpNorth]

I don't have much hand pain, other than sometimes feeling some old injuries- esp. in cold weather or if i've been doing the same thing too much, or lifting too much. But for the last few days i've had pretty bad foot pain just where the toes and foot meets, on and off it's bad enough for me to make faces from it and it hasn't done any difference with change of shoes:( I don't think it's diabetes related in my case though, i blame it on the cold rather humid weather! I seem to be a bit allergic to cold damp weather:eek: My whole body just becomes stiff and rather achy in that type of weather:( I feel my best in summer when it's over 20 degrees C!

[VinceF]

I have had trigger finger for several years (trigger thumb too). It hurt the worst when I rubbed over the knuckle. An x-ray revealed no arthritis. I had several cortizone injections into the knuckle (palm side) and finally sugery to do a release on both thumbs and two fingers. I think I read it was most common in the pinky and ring finger. It really got bad when My fingers locked in curved position. They told me it was more common in diabetics. I'm not sure what else I could tell you.

-Dave

[InCogNeato]

I have been experiencing pain in my hands, not my wrists but more the joints in my hands. I am unsure if this could be diabetes related, and curious if anyone has any eperience with hand pain, either related to diabetes or not.

Thanks
Amy

I have suffered with this problem for many years. It's finally gone since I've been using heated computer devices. There's tons of info about the healing effects of infrared heat on the Net. 20-30 minutes daily will help relieve joint pain in the hand. Look at the heated mouse and heated mouse pad used inside a fleece blanket. It REALLY helped me. Here's the link:

IGMproducts.com (http://www.igmproducts.com)

Hope this helps you as much as it did me, my sister and many of my friends. :)

[brendersue]

i had xrays done for my hand pain a few weeks ago. I was a Type I for 40 years. They found calcification in my arteries and some beginnings of osteoarthritis. I've also had pain from neuropath, esp when glucose gets up there, and diabetic tendons are especially sensitive to repetitive motion. I use to be a goldsmith, but after trigger finger surgery I had to hang it up. I guess try keeping those darn rascally numbers down for a couple days and see if it helps. If it does, it's prob neuropathy. Cold weather pain means tendon or joint issues. Good luck!

[InCogNeato]

please let me know.

[JudeFranc]

When I started getting my blood sugar under really tight control, my eyes cleared up, my frozen shoulder finally thawed completely, and to my complete and utter surprise, my arthritis disappeared! I had no idea it was diabetes related. Actually, it hasn't disappeared completely, I still have a little residual stiffness in the morning, but it's so mild now that I consider it a non-issue. My hands used to be almost locked into place, they were so immobile and useless, and I remember complaining about it to everyone I knew. Now they work just fine, and I'm working on getting my strength back after losing it with so many years of disuse.

Excessive and fluctuating blood sugars wreak havoc on connective tissues, as well as just about everything else, and it seems that connective tissues are my Achilles heel when it comes to this disease. I read somewhere that roughly 50% of diabetics have arthritis.

Are you controlling your sugar by decreasing carbs or portions in general?

[LancetChick]

Are you controlling your sugar by decreasing carbs or portions in general?

No, I'm a high-carber actually. Large carb loads and large volumes of insulin keep my blood sugar steadier than 20-30g of carb, which usually gives me a spike in BG (not a big one, but not an acceptable one either). It isn't unusual for me to have 150+g carb in a single meal, with steady blood sugar (providing I dose correctly). I'm in the minority with my digestion, of course, and can't think how I managed to luck out this way.

What I did to tighten my control was test often, roughly every hour that I'm awake, and record in a logbook everything that influences my blood sugar. There's a lot more to it, of course, but testing often has been the single most influential factor in my control.