{"id":49,"date":"2010-04-27T14:50:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-27T14:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.linsladephysiotherapy.co.uk\/physio4u\/?p=49"},"modified":"2012-04-24T00:45:50","modified_gmt":"2012-04-23T23:45:50","slug":"gardening-in-spite-of-your-arthritis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.linsladephysiotherapy.co.uk\/physio4u\/index.php\/2010\/04\/gardening-in-spite-of-your-arthritis\/","title":{"rendered":"Gardening in spite of your Arthritis"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s nice to be outdoors in good weather. When you have the pain and limitations of arthritis it may prevent you from enjoying the fruits\u00a0of gardening. Here are some general tips for you to help save your\u00a0joints this season:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Break\u00a0the project into steps \u2013 avoid overdo anything.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Take frequent breaks \u2013 rest at least every half hour or less if you have pain.<\/span><\/p>\n

Use larger muscle groups when possible \u2013 leg muscles are larger (and stronger) than the arm muscles, and shoulder muscles are larger than hand muscles. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Use the leg muscles when possible to lift\/carry objects, and use shoulder and elbow to help move things as opposed to the hand joints for gardening
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Use foam kneeling pads or a foot stools to reduce the load on your hip, knees or back.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Ask a neighbour, family member, or friend to turn your soil. If you can\u2019t get anyone else to help and have to work on the soil yourself, be\u00a0sure you use the larger muscle groups, i.e. – your leg muscles.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Use hand tools with larger handles to take the stress of the finger\/hand joints. If you can\u2019t find larger \u00a0handles, use towels, pieces of\u00a0foam or rags to build up the smaller handles \u2013 it will save your hand joints. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Consider planting in pots instead of the garden. This will allow you to work at table height and eliminate stressful bending on the back, hips, and knees.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Use a cart with wheels to carry plants, tools, soil, etc., to avoid the stressful bending and lifting.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Spread\u00a0your plants out in the garden, so you have less holes to make, fewer plants to plant and less work.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Plan\u00a0your gardening before you start out and then you can organise which things to take out from the shed or cupboard and avoid unnecessary trips.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Stop\u00a0when your body tells you to! It is easy to overdo things starting out.
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

If\u00a0<\/span>you follow at least some of these ideas you could find yourself enjoying your gardening a lot more and suffering a lot less!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s nice to be outdoors in good weather. When you have the pain and limitations of arthritis it may prevent you from enjoying the fruits\u00a0of gardening. Here are some general tips for you to help save your\u00a0joints this season: Break\u00a0the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[15,16,8,17],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-page","tag-arthritis","tag-gardening","tag-pain","tag-recreation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2swqW-N","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linsladephysiotherapy.co.uk\/physio4u\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linsladephysiotherapy.co.uk\/physio4u\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linsladephysiotherapy.co.uk\/physio4u\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linsladephysiotherapy.co.uk\/physio4u\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linsladephysiotherapy.co.uk\/physio4u\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.linsladephysiotherapy.co.uk\/physio4u\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114,"href":"https:\/\/www.linsladephysiotherapy.co.uk\/physio4u\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions\/114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linsladephysiotherapy.co.uk\/physio4u\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linsladephysiotherapy.co.uk\/physio4u\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linsladephysiotherapy.co.uk\/physio4u\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}