[abarro81]

My chronic PIP joint issue is currently behaving very strangely... At night the inflammation is currently very bad, and this seems to be the case irrespective of what I've done and how it feels during the preceding day (harder session, easy session leaving knuckle feeling good, even double rest days). However, the next day it can feel surprisingly ok (usually takes 1-2hrs after waking up to feel ok again)...

 What I can't work out is whether how it feels in the day or how it feels at night is a better representation of where it's really at? I'm starting to wonder if the night-time inflammation is induced by something else (diet, stress etc?). Wondering if anyone else has any experience of this? (Obviously inflammation at night is normal, it's the lack of correlation between night and day that seems out of step with what I've experienced before)

[M1V0]

Night as in whilst you sleep, or night as in later in the day?

I experienced chronic inflammation for a while that was positively awful each morning regardless of what I did during the day, easy session/ hard session didn't matter. Turns out I was sleeping with my hand under the pillow and laying my head upon it. Once I got out the habit of sleeping like so and not putting any weight on my hand, it more or less resolved itself.

[abarro81]

Night as in sleeping - feels particularly bad if I wake up during the night.

Your experience sounds interesting, not aware I'm doing anything similar though!

[A.Greenhorne]

It’s a common pattern with arthritis type inflammation

[spidermonkey09]

Could you be clenching your fist while sleeping? Try splinting it overnight.

[tomtom]

Could you be clenching your fist while sleeping? Try splinting it overnight.

I used to do this - and made a real effort to sleep with a flat ish palm. Helped with arm aches (but not fingers - soz).

[A.Greenhorne]

Could you be clenching your fist while sleeping? Try splinting it overnight.

No doubt raging over sharks knee pad induced megalomania rrraaaghh

[Ru]

Few things may be going on - you have a natural cortisol cycle. Cortisol reduces inflammation, but it's also used as part of the waking up process. Levels reduce at night and then increase in the morning, peaking about 1/2 an hour after waking up. Secondly, movement of the joint will move fluid through it, so if there has been a build up over night, moving it in the morning may reduce fluid levels in the joint.

[abarro81]

Thanks for the input all, will try a splint out and see if it makes any difference! Gonna try a few diet tweaks too