Paul Young battles through arthritis to perform

Singer Paul Young is having to relearn how to play the guitar as his arthritis is so painful he can barely push down on the strings.
The 1980s pop icon still performs with his band Los Pacaminos but admits he now has to manage the debilitating joint disorder whenever he picks up the instrument.
“My mum does have arthritis, and I seem to have developed that too,” Paul, 60, tells Britain’s Daily Mirror newspaper. “In the last five or six years, I’ve been suffering with it in my fingers. It’s not at a really terrible stage yet and doesn’t impact on all my life, but it does hinder me when I play the guitar.”
Developing arthritis began as a painful inconvenience for the veteran rocker, but it has now forced him to alter his playing technique.
“I started getting pain and redness in both my little fingers when I’d been playing for a while,” he adds. “I notice a nasty, sore-looking swelling around my knuckles and joints. It disappears after resting my fingers, but it is certainly a problem. It’s one of those really nagging annoyances and it curbed my enthusiasm a bit.
“I really feel the pain when I try to use my little fingers to play, and find they’re not strong enough to hold down a chord. It’s meant I’ve had to learn to play the guitar differently.”
Despite his medical problems, the Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home) singer is continuing to tour and has considered receiving pain-killing injections on top of a regime of supplements, acupuncture, and massage.
“I have considered getting cortisone injections, but for now I keep my arthritis in check with over-the-counter treatments,” he says. “I take those containing glucosamine and cod liver oil supplements, too.
“I don’t know if there is any science behind them, but it feels as if they ease the joints a bit. I also seem to get more twinges while carrying out DIY or getting out of my car – but I’ve found that acupuncture and osteopathy take the edge off it.”