Harvard Medical School just sent through these great tips for keeping your hands pain-free. Unnoticed and unsung, healthy hands perform countless small tasks, from pouring your morning coffee to brushing your teeth at night. But aching hands transform even a simple task into a painful ordeal. Beneath the skin, your hands are an intricate architecture of tendons, joints, ligaments, nerves, and bones. Each of these structures is vulnerable to damage from illness or injury.