Hands-on health tips

If you want to stay handy with a gun it’s important to look after your daddles,

-  James Simon

Daddles, digits, brass bands, bunch of fives, lills, meathooks? Whatever you like to call them, most of us probably tend to take our hands and fingers for granted. That is until they start playing up.

It’s hardly surprising – we’re Shots after all, not concert pianists or ninja needlepointists. Yet, shooting is hard enough without hand, wrist or finger pain, so it’s prudent to take a few precautions and know what to do if issues do arise. It’s laughable how a paper cut can cause the mind and barrels to wander, yet impossible to find humour in the kind of arthritic flare-up that makes it difficult to pick a gun up, let alone fire it.

Joint pain of one sort of another is particularly prevalent in older shooters.

When it strikes it’s tempting to reach for expensive, branded, over-the-counter pain relief but studies show that the cheap unbranded stuff works just as well. Which, it turns out, isn’t very well at all.

Paracetamol is awful at treating pain caused by inflammation. In fact, it only ever provides good relief for about 30% of the population. Adding 100mg of caffeine boosts that figure to 40%. Ibuprofen is much better at treating inflammatory pain, yet still only provides good pain relief for 60% of people. A common side-effect is dizziness, which won’t improve your hit rate any.

Provided you don’t exceed the daily limits, it’s safe to take both drugs at the same time, with your favourite coffee of course.