We're all Bag Ladies, or Bag Guys, and it's getting to be a real pain. Not just the billions of plastic shopping bags we carry our groceries and worldly goods around in. They were a pain 20 years ago. This pain starts in the fingers and goes through the hand and wrist and into the forearm and back. Everything we carry or pull around these days has a flexible strap or an unforgiving rigid handle: carry-on and pull-along luggage, sports bags, lap computers, grocery bags, golf bags - you-name-it. And carrying all that is awkward, uncomfortable and oftentimes painful.

An estimated 40 million of us suffer arthritis, although many of us refuse to acknowledge it as anything more than "growing old" pains. If you're on the end of Concourse C at Anywhere International Airport and are trying to connect with the real world about seven city blocks away and are handling as much carry-on stuff as you can, you already know this pain.

Kristian Nielsen, a not-quite-retired research and development engineer, experienced the pain every time he carried 40 pounds of cat litter out of the supermarket and from the car to the house. About 10 years and a couple of tons of cat litter later, he came up with a profoundly simple solution: the K'lyte® Handle. It's a rigid, springlike split tubular device about the size of a roll of quarters. The tube spreads any carry-load across the palm, molding the hand into a clenched-fist "power grip" instead of the two or three-finger "hook grip" forced upon you by most flexible straps.

Because the unique tube-like handle closes over on itself like a human hand, it allows your grip to flex, which is why a local orthopedic hand surgeon particularly loves it. Not only does it make your load seem lighter, but the flexing grip is therapeutic. The springy edges overlap length-wise, allowing the handle to slip easily over the soft handles of everything from a plastic shopping bag to a carry-on suitcase, or packages tied up with strings.

Reprinted by permission of Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Jon Hahn, Staff Columnist