Mindconnection Brainpower Informational eNewsletter 2025-08-03

Compared to most people, I should have chronic hand pain at my age. But I do not. I say should, because I regularly put my hands under a high degree of strain. I have done that for decades, while most people have done only a fraction of that. Consider:

I'm an intermediate climber, which means I don't have the skill that an advanced climber has. Which means my hands take more weight than they should. And I'm a bit on the heavy side for a climber. Advanced climbers, however, have it even worse because what they climb is even harder on the hands.
I did knuckle push-ups for many years. I also worked a heavy bag for many years, hitting it with enough force to cold-cock just about anybody.
I regularly build, repair, and maintain--home, car, yard, etc. That is, I use tools. A lot.
I like to open jars with my bare hands. I really need to stop doing that....
I lift weights almost every day; over decades of doing this, you would expect serious issues with my hands, fingers, and wrists.
I type thousands of words per day.
I drive a stick, not an automatic.
I'm owned by a cat, which involves daily brushing, petting, ball tossing, etc.
I prepare my own meals, so a lot of time with my hands in the kitchen. Slicing, dicing, mixing, stirring, chopping, washing, drying....

There's more, but you get the point. So, are my hands weak from all of this? No. There are several ways to measure a hand grip, and using one of them I come in at just over 200lbs. That's a lot of force, when you consider that the average for my age is less than 85 lbs and the highest average for all age groups is less than 105. On my worst grip strength test, I clocked in at 145. Just so you understand what I mean by different ways of testing, the differences are due to which part of your grip is being tested. Open and close your hand, watching your fingers and you will see what I mean. So when I squeeze something as hard as I can, the force through the bones of my hand is exceptional. Same for the ligaments. You can see the averages here, but keep in mind they are just averages: https://biologyinsights.com/grip-strength-chart-averages-by-age-and-gender/

Why are my hands not like Joe Biden's brain by now? I have not done anything special for my hands, it's my overall program. I'll detail the relevant parts of that in a moment.

Specific things you can do for your hands:

Soak in hot water an Epsom Salts.
Soak in a foot bath that has jets.
Use infrared and red light therapy.
Do specific hand exercises recommended by a physical therapist who specializes in hands.

My overall program is geared toward two things:

Maximizing blood flow and lymph flow.
Reducing inflammation.

An important consideration is I am among the 17% of the USA population that wasn't conned or coerced into getting the protein spike shot. I call it that, because its only function is to stimulate your own cells to produce the spike protein. That was the basis for the theory of how it would work, only the theory wasn't subjected to critical thinking so reality was quite different. That shot confers zero immunity, and if you think it through you will reach that conclusion (if you have not already done so). What it does do, though, is fill blood vessels with these fibrous collections of spike proteins. If you received one or more of these shots, you'll need to address that. I recommend contacting Dr. Peter McCullough to get started: https://www.petermcculloughmd.com/

Maximizing blood flow and lymph flow

My weight training style incorporates extremely short rests and makes extensive use of super sets. This puts a heavy load on my circulatory system, and so do my martial arts sessions and climbing. Think of using a power washer versus a squirt gun to clean your driveway. Due to this, I have relatively large veins. Well, OK, I have really huge veins. Large pipes mean more flow than small pipes. I don't eat seed oils, as those cause mechanical damage which the body addresses by secreting cholesterol from the liver. This reduces the inner diameter of every blood vessel. I also don't take decongestants (they work by vasoconstriction).

I eat beets (greens and roots) twice a day, beets are powerful vasodilators. I also take L-Arginine, which is a vasodilator. Probably many other things in my diet help with this. Long-time readers may recall that I don't eat anything processed, 80% of what I eat is called a "super food", and the other 20% is almost in that same category.

So clean diet and intense exercise produce an environment for hand health.

Reducing inflammation

Wheat, corn, and soy (plus anything made with or from them) are highly inflammatory. As are seed oils. Obviously, these things do not belong in a human diet. If your hands bother you, eliminate these first. Also any instant versions of any grains, such as oats or rice, are injurious to your health.

Turmeric has powerful anti-inflammatory properties. I buy the powder in a one-pound bag and spread it across a bean and rice dish that I have, include it in my baked goods, and use it in other ways. I do not take the capsules, because they are hugely more expensive and you have to take a lot of them to get much turmeric. It was once very popular among athletes to use Ibuprofen ("the athlete's friend") but that has fallen out of favor because Ibuprofen stresses the liver and kidneys.

So if you're not eating your way into inflammation, what else can you do? Stress and sleep problems are two major causes. The incivility and brazen stupidity on our roads today can be stressful, the solution is to discipline your mind to stay out of stress mode. Yeah, it's one of those Zen things I learned in martial arts. Work on this, and you'll figure it out. Sleep problems are easy to solve, but you have to do some basic research and then go after each potential cause. One problem with sleep in the USA is we have this utterly benefit-free practice of changing our clocks twice a year. I opted out of that, it's stupid and I'm not gonna do it. If your situation is such that you have to change your clock, then consider doing it gradually (over the course of a month before and a month after) or only by half an hour.

If you have already done all the stuff I just mentioned, then go online and look for "causes of inflammation" and start knocking out the ones that pertain to you.

Doctors

An athlete with hand pain will go to a doctor, using their "health care" (in English, it's medical care) insurance. That doctor will do some tests or ask some questions, discover you do X (weight lifting, climbing, martial arts) and duly inform you that you have arthritis in your hands. S/he may even confirm this with X-rays. But the more likely scenario is you actually have inflammation. And that is something you can reverse.

During the Covid scam, many doctors proved they are not experts, are not critical thinkers, and are clueless about health care. They proved they can accept a religious ideology as "science", dispense pills, and give people injections without informed consent. It is prudent to remember this when dealing with doctors. If they tell you something, it is probably wrong. But you can work with them, especially the more conscientious ones, to leverage their extensive medical knowledge and training. Do your own research first, and don't be swayed by the diploma on the wall.

So you've done your research, what's next? You don't go to the appointment so that you can argue with the doctor (or other care provider). You go to get help. Armed with your knowledge you gained from your research, you can understand what the doctor is talking about, ask intelligent questions, and pretty much steer the conversation. A competent doctor, like a competent engineer, works from the data. "Based on X, your condition is Y. We can rule out Z because...." If the doctor is taking this approach, you are speaking with someone who wants to solve your problems and is probably capable of doing so. If the doctor quickly jumps to a conclusion or is annoyed with your (intelligent) questions, find a different doctor.

When it comes to hand pain, a competent doctor is going to recommend you scale back the activities that are stressing your hands. The doctor may glance at your hands during the conversation to see if you have a "finger twitch" or other tic that is putting strain on something in your hand. The doctor may recommend a round of anti-inflammatories, either oral or injected, to knock the inflammation down. Such a recommendation is probably good to accept.

Handily beating hand pain

Remember that pain is your body's way of telling you something is wrong. If you have hand pain, don't wait long to start addressing its causes. Taking pain relievers before engaging in a sport or other activity that otherwise leaves you with hand pain is a really bad idea. Cut back on the activity (active rest) for a while, and live with the pain while you solve the causes of it. There's no single solution, but by now you know some key factors that you can control.

All of this can be applied to chronic pain in other parts of your body. Back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, etc., involve these same principles. A chiropractor can help, but you still need to work on the underlying causes.

Mindconnection eNL, 2025-08-03

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