April 26, 2022 Allen Arseneau

Why Every Person with Hand Arthritis Needs a Jar Opener

Jar Openers are handy little kitchen gadgets that can make your life not only easier, but also less painful. And if your hands happen to be weak, sore, or arthritic, you absolutely need a jar opener in your kitchen!

Did you know that when you open a jar with your bare hands, you're putting very high stress on your fingers, thumb, and wrist. This strain creates tears in the fibers of your muscles and tendons. These tears are injuries, and lead to increased pain, inflammation, and further injury. In fact, the Arthritis Foundation recommends reducing hand strain as a hand arthritis treatment.

Jar openers are an inexpensive and highly effective way to avoid this hand strain. So do yourself a favor, and use a jar opener to open that apple sauce or pasta sauce.

What is Hand Strain?

Let's talk about hand strain for a moment (at Jamber, we are all about science after all...we can't help ourselves!). So again, trying to open a jar with your bare hands requires a tremendous amount of force and torque to overcome the pressure holding down the lid. Forcing your hands to turn (or try to turn) that lid ultimately creates strain, which is real damage to your tissues and joints.

According to NY Langone Health, hand strain is the tearing of fibers of your muscles or tendons. These tears, or micro-tears, hurt. You can feel the strain in your fingers, thumb, palm, or wrist after battling with the lid of a jar (regardless of who won!).

Solutions Don't Have to be Fancy or Expensive!

Simply using a jar opener will almost eliminate this strain entirely. And since jar openers can cost as little as $5.95 (yes, that's right....they are not expensive), there is no reason why every single kitchen doesn’t have a jar opener. If you have weak hands, or you have arthritis, RA, carpal tunnel, tendonitis, etc., then you should definitely have a jar opener handy. It doesn’t really matter which type of jar opener you, so long as you have one.

SHOP INEXPENSIVE ERGONOMIC JAR OPENERS

Here's a 3-min video explaining why it is so vitally important that you use a jar opener!

How Does a Jar Opener Work?

Jar openers work by improving your grip and increasing the torque that you are able to apply to a jar lid or bottle lid.

Torque = Force x Distance (T = FxD)

Torque is the rotational force to turn an object around a point. If you’ve ever used a wrench to remove a nut, then you have applied torque. The longer the wrench (D), the more torque (T) is created, or another way to look at this is that the longer the wrench is, the easier it is to open something. So, the farther your hand is from the lid, the more torque you create! And this relationship, as you can see from the equation above, is linear. If you double the length of the jar opener, you double the amount of torque that you can create with the same amount of force! (cool, huh?!)

Use the Proper Tools

We’ve all experienced how hard it can be to open a small jar that is sealed shut. It could be one of those small jars of jam or a little mayonnaise. There are two obstacles that we have to overcome to open these lids:

Have enough friction between our hand and the lid
Create enough turning force to overcome the pressure and friction that is holding that lid in place

Often, as we attempt to open a jar, our fingers hurt, our wrist hurts, and even our forearm may hurt. Our hand can cramp. It’s not fun. We find that we're questioning how badly we want that jam!

If you just use the proper tool – like a rubber jar opener tool or a Silicone Gripper Jar Opener, then opening a jar becomes an easy task. As long as the jar opener is able to securely fasten to the lid, then we can open the lid. And the further our hand moves from the lid, the easier it will be to open it.

Types of Jar Openers

Today, there are many different types of Jar Openers, including

Rubber jar openers
Silicone gripper jar openers
EZ Off jar openers
All-metal jar openers
Slide jar openers
Wall-mount jar openers
Electric jar openers.

Which Jar Opener Should I Get?

With so many to choose from, how do you know which one is right for you?

The simple answer is that it doesn't really matter. Almost any jar opener is better than your bare hand. And at a price range between $6 - $30, there really is a jar opener for every budget. So, go out and get a jar opener today! Every kitchen really does need one. Seriously!

Have Arthritic Hands, Carpal Tunnel or Weak Hands?

And for those of you with weak hands or arthritic hands, then a jar opener is a must-have. And these are not just jar openers for seniors or jar openers for arthritic hands. In fact, there are many people who suffer from various hand ailments, who would so greatly benefit from an inexpensive jar opener. Conditions like Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA), osteoarthritis, Parkinson’s Disease, carpal tunnel, tendonitis in the wrist or finger, Dupuytren’s contracture, trigger finger, and the list goes on and on.

Each person in this list should absolutely be using a jar opener, and really they should be using any hand care product or ergonomic tool that they have access to. There are wonderful jar openers for seniors, and jar openers for arthritic hands. There are EZ Off jar openers that are modern and beautiful. There are Easy Grip jar and bottle openers that could make your life so much easier.

All of these products, these jar opener tools, these jar openers for seniors, work wonderfully well, and are considered hand care products.

What Are Hand Care Products?

Hand care products are products that are designed to make your hands feel better. They provide support and comfort for your hands. Hand care products are made for your hands, and they include ergonomic kitchen tools, compression gloves, a ZenGrip Mug, or jar openers. These products do not have to be expensive - they are just designed with one's hands in mind.

Our Recommendation

So, save your hands, and get a jar opener today!

SHOP Silicone Gripper Jar Opener

We recommend a silicone gripper jar opener, because these are inexpensive (starting at only $5.95), modern and beautiful, usually fit many different lid sizes, and are very effective. They do have the drawback that sometimes the silicone gripper will slip when being turned, especially if you don’t have a secure connection between the lid and the silicone gripper jar opener. The other drawback is that for small lids, your hands will be relatively close to the lid, so slightly more force will be required to open that particular lid. Having said this, the silicone gripper jar opener is still our favorite jar opener.