The hands can reveal health conditions like heart disease, Raynaud’s, psoriasis, nickel allergy, and more.

Your hands speak volumes, especially when something’s not working right. Their form, function, and appearance can offer important prognostic and diagnostic clues.

You can learn a lot about your health by looking at your hands. Certain medical conditions and diseases can present with various symptoms in your hands. Here’s what these signs and symptoms could mean.

A Rash

A red rash on your hand or wrist might indicate a nickel allergy, sometimes morphing into oozing blisters. Sensitivity to nickel is one of the most common causes of allergic contact dermatitis.1Allergic contact dermatitis is a skin condition that causes a rash when your skin comes into contact with an allergen.

Many everyday objects touching your skin—such as bracelets, watches, rings, and cell phones—contain nickel. You can also develop a hand rash from ingesting foods containing nickel.

Foods that contain high amounts of nickel include:1

• Buckwheat
• Cashews
• Cocoa powder
• Licorice
• Soy products (such as soy sauce, tofu, and soybeans)

Some things may up your chances of developing allergic contact dermatitis, including how old you are, what you do for work, and whether you have a history of atopic dermatitis, aka eczema.2

Atopic dermatitis is a chronic (long-lasting) skin condition that can appear as a rash on the hands. The skin can become inflamed, red, irritated, and extremely itchy. Flares—when the disease is worse—are often followed by periods of clear skin.3

It’s unsure what causes atopic dermatitis, but it seems related to your genetics, immune system, and environment. The disease usually appears during childhood, and many children are free of symptoms by the time they are teenagers. Some people, however, develop it when they’re adults.3

You’re more likely to get atopic dermatitis if someone else in your family has it, hay fever, or asthma. It also seems to be more common in non-Hispanic Black children and females.

See a dermatologist or other healthcare provider to get tested and treated if you suspect you have a nickel allergy or atopic dermatitis.

Finger Clubbing

Finger clubbing is a change to the nailbeds that may indicate underlying health conditions. Finger clubbing symptoms include:4

• Large, bulging fingertips that may be red and warm to the touch
• Rounded nailbeds
• Sharpened angle between the nailbed and cuticle
• Softened nailbeds that look like they are detached from the finger

Finger clubbing commonly occurs with heart or lung disease if less oxygen is in the blood. For example, lung cancer, endocarditis, and congenital heart defects may cause finger clubbing.4

Consult a healthcare provider if you develop finger clubbing. Treatments can swiftly get rid of changes to the nailbeds. Though, a healthcare provider may also want to run tests for any underlying health conditions, as well.4

Hand Pain, Stiffness, and Swelling

Various inflammatory diseases could be the culprit if your hands are hurting and inflamed. Possible causes include:

• Dermatomyositis5
• Inflammatory bowel disease6
• Psoriatic arthritis7
• Rheumatoid arthritis8

Dermatomyositis is a rare skin and muscle disease. In addition to joint swelling, it can produce a rash and muscle weakness. Its cause is unknown, but factors like genetics and the environment seem to be involved.5

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a term that includes Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. In addition to causing inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract, IBD can cause joint pain and swelling (arthritis) or only joint pain (arthralgia). The pain and swelling are more likely to affect your large joints like your elbows, wrists, knees, ankles, or spine.6

Psoriatic arthritis is a chronic, inflammatory disease of the joints. The joint swelling is accompanied by dry, red, and flaky skin. You could have relatively few skin lesions but many affected joints. Psoriatic arthritis often shows up from ages 30 to 50 years, usually about 10 years after psoriasis shows up.9

Rheumatoid arthritis has similar symptoms to psoriatic arthritis but without skin lesions. Instead, it usually appears in the same place on both sides of your body. It can also affect your knees, ankles, elbows, feet, cervical spine, and jaw. Its cause may be a combination of genetic risk factors, environmental factors, and abnormal immune responses.8

Hand Tremors

Sometimes, hand shakiness is no big deal. Other times, tremors can be a sign of neurologic disease.

Everyone has a slight shakiness in their hands, known as a physiologic tremor. You may notice shakiness when doing something precise, like threading a needle. Shakiness becomes more noticeable if you are sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated, taking certain medicines, or going through alcohol withdrawal.

Another type of tremor, called essential tremor, causes hand and arm shakiness on both sides of the body. Essential tremors often run in families and are present whenever someone performs a manual task like eating.10

There are also various disease-related tremors. Parkinsonian tremor, for example, happens with Parkinson’s disease—a neurological disorder that damages cells in the brain. Parkinsonian tremors usually involve one hand or are more prominent in one hand. The tremor occurs when the hand is at rest.