Show Us Your Hands! Releases 1,000 Hands Poster in Celebration of Arthritis Awareness Month

(May 1, 2012) – Show Us Your Hands! is pleased to announce the release of its 1,000 Hands Poster Project, the latest in a series of successful initiatives aimed at uniting the community of individuals who are living with inflammatory arthritis and increasing the public’s awareness of this group of autoimmune diseases. This poster proudly displays the first one thousand hands which were submitted to the community collage project and is being released today in celebration of Arthritis Awareness Month.

May is National Arthritis Awareness Month in the United States. Its goal is to bring attention to the issues and realities faced by people who live with one of the more than 100 different types of arthritis. More than 46 million people live with arthritis in the US, including 300,000 children. It is the most common cause of disability.

The 1,000 Hands Poster is available for purchase at Zazzle. “This poster is powerful! It represents how individual we each are with inflammatory disease while also showing how strong we are together as a community,” says founding director Cathy Kramer. All funds raised from the sale of these posters go to Show Us Your Hands! An international awareness movement which serves to unite and inspire the inflammatory arthritis community.

The Show Us Your Hands! inflammatory arthritis community collage project debuted in December 2011. People of all ages from around the world are represented in this community project and new photos continue to be added to on a regular basis. The community collage project serves not only as a symbol of the wonderfully supportive inflammatory arthritis community that continues to grow and connect online, but also acts as a reminder that people who live with these diseases should be proud of, and not ashamed of, their inflammatory arthritis hands. By April 2011, the Show Us Your Hands! inflammatory arthritis community collage project had grown to include more than 1,000 hands.

Autoimmune diseases occur when a body’s immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue. In the case of inflammatory arthritis a person’s joints are frequently attacked, resulting in chronic pain and debilitating inflammation. The most common inflammatory arthritis diseases are Ankylosing Spondylitis, Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis, Mixed Connective Tissue Disease, Psoriatic Arthritis, Reactive Arthritis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Scleroderma, Sjogren's Syndrome, Still's Disease, and Systemic Lupus Erythematosus.

Show Us Your Hands! is an international awareness movement which serves to unite and inspire the inflammatory arthritis community. For more information, please visit www.showusyourhands.org. Show Us Your Hands! can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.