THE first time I visited Europe, I was surprised to find that people did not greet you in the hand.
Several times after an introduction, I found myself stretching out my hand into thin air and having it suspended in mid-air unacknowledged.
I often had to retrieve my unreciprocated hand shake in a rather embarrassed manner, while trying to pretend I was merely scratching my head.
The hand is an important social organ, which is used frequently to signify friendship and cement relationships.
This is certainly true in Africa always and in Europe mostly during election time.
You may have sometimes wondered, as I have, why the human race is the most dominant of all the other animal species.
The single most important physical difference between men and animals is the hand.
In particular the thumb, though it sticks out in an almost rebellious way when you hold your hand is up, it is by far the most important of all the fingers.
This becomes evident when you injure your hand in general or your thumb in particular.
Some things which you take for granted become impossible to do, like writing your name, or opening the door.
The hand in general and the thumb in particular are some of the most unappreciated and ignored parts of the body
1. What is the function of the hand and the thumb?
2. What are the commonly ignored conditions of the hand and thumb?
3. What can I do to protect it?
1. What is the function of the hand?
In contrast to the foot, the hand is responsible for delicate skilled movements.
This is seen in that the hand has over 33 small muscles and about 32 small joints.
This makes for a system of pulleys and levers which cannot be easily re-created by the most complex robot or machine.
The nerve supply is so detailed and complex that half of the geographical map area on the brain is represented by the hand alone.
It has a specially designed palmar surface which as dermal lines that provided tactile sensation as well as fine grip.
The thumb especially, has an extra mobile joint at its base and an extra 5 muscles that allow it to perform all the movements the rest of the fingers do and more.
This special skill of the thumb has allowed the human being to conquer the universe.
It has permitted him the greatest of all skills, the ability to write.
This has allowed him to share knowledge across generations and therefore, pool the collective genius of mankind and develop his universe at an amazing speed.
The ability to draw, paint, sketch, sow, knit and sculpture are all thanks to the special skills of the hands and the thumb in particular.
The ability to construct and build, whether for beauty or livelihood, things like ships, cars, road, statues and houses are all thanks to the hand .
All this of course, is taken for granted until you begin to drop things and your hand begins to shake when writing.
Many women, when they are pregnant notice that they become clumsy around the house, dropping their favourite kitchen party glassware.
Or when people get older and the 33 small joints of the hand become stiff, and they can no longer drive themselves to work, because the can no longer grip the steering wheel firmly enough.

2. What are the commonly ignored conditions of the thumb and hands?
Except for young women, most people pay little attention to their hands.
Young women, of course only pay attention to their nails.
For the purposes of beauty they spend hours on their nails, with all sorts of colours and this is why they hate washing plates so much.
Some of the diseases of the hand include occupational hand injures, human bites, joint problems, hand pain and hand infection.
Mechanics and builders, who use their hands for manual labour, develop thickenings of the inner palms of their hands.
Apart from being unsightly, these can be painful and make the hand stiff or inflexible.
Repetitive injury can lead to permanently contracted or deformities of the hands, that lead to loss of occupational livelihood.
Injuries of the hand may result in the course of work, that may lead to nail bed infection (paronchyia) and subungual hematomas (blood under the nail).
Subungual hematomas tend to occur typically when a carpenter or builder misses an iron nail and instead hits his finger nail with a hammer.
Children often get their hands trapped in doors and a crush between the door and the finger nails leads to a subungual hematomas.
This can cause excruciating pain in the finger, a tense throbbing pain that does not allow you to sleep.
During domestic disputes a common injury is a human bite, commonly to the thumb especially inflicted on men, by their women.
Due to the wide range of germs, found in the mouth, the human bite can be as lethal as a snake bite.
These germs enter the thumb, as a spreading infection and localise in the hand spaces between the bones and the skin of the hand as a tense collection of pus.
Women who do a lot of hand washing or sowing, repeatedly injure the nail bed and develop nail bed infection, which can be painful when they are acute(acute paronchyia), or simply stained itchy nails when chronic(chronic paronchyia).
Early morning stiffness of the joint due to Arthritis (Rheumatoid arthritis) is common in middle aged women, and tends to run in families.
When untreated it leads to unsightly deformity of the fingers and a complete loss of hand function.
Another form of arthritis, called Osteoarthitis, causes thickening of the fingers and stiffness at the end of the day, it can cause similar hand deformities.
Numbness of the little finger and heaviness of the hand may result, when the nerve of the hand are compressed at the wrist.
This condition can occur in pregnancy, Sugar disease, weight gain and other thyroid diseases.
The condition is called Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
If you shake the hand at the wrist it feels a bit better and the numbness disappears for a while.
The many muscles of the hand slide like pulleys across the bones and help to move the fingers around like puppets in a pantomime.
These stringy ends of the muscles called tendons can swell due to this friction and produce lumpy swellings around the joint areas. These lumps are called ganglions.
When they prevent the muscle sliding freely in the hand they can produce jerky movements and pain.
This is seen in conditions like De Quervains Synovitis of Trigger finger.
This is where the movements of the thumb becomes painful or jams in certain positions.
People who work on computers can injure their hand with small fractures in the bones of the fingers called repetitive stress injury. This can lead to swelling and pain in the fingers.

3. What can I do to protect it?
The way to keep your hands healthy and prevent diseases of the hands is to protect them and exercise them.
Several occupations, in which hands are used and may be injured, will have safety gloves.
Find out if they are safety gloves, which can be used to protect your hands in your job, and invest in them.
Remember that the employer may be more interested in reducing costs than protecting your hands.
It is your responsibility to ensure the safety of your hands in your work place.
This will allow you to be more productive in your profession for a longer period of time.
There is a common practice of finger nail biting which leads to nail bed infection.
Avoid biting your nails; use a nail clipper to keep you nails trim and tidy.
If you do regular hand washing, you can use soft latex rubber gloves to protect your hands from chronic nail infection. Do not be neglectful of any injury to the
hand, it can result in loss of a finger or even the whole hand.
If your hand has been pricked by a thorn, or you have had a human bite, go to the nearest clinic for quick treatment, before the disease spreads.
If your fingers begin to swell or get stiff and painful, visit your nearest local clinic, this may be the early signs of arthritis.
Don’t ignore these early sign until all your joints are damaged and you cannot use your hands effectively.
I have noticed people who regularly crack their knuckles, as a habit.
This is a form of joint stretching that keeps the joints supple and soft.
It makes the joint produce more collagen fibre and thereby delays the joint ageing process, which is a key cause of arthritis and joint stiffness.
Repetitive hand injury from typing on the computer can be reduced by occasional rest and varying the work schedules that you have.
Exercise of the hands can be done with squeeze balls.
These are small balls, like tennis balls that can be squeezed and released for a few minutes in a day.
If your hands are an important part of your occupation, add them to your daily exercise routine.