|
Tennis Elbow
You
certainly don’t have to be playing tennis to
experience the nagging and often disabling pain on
the outside of your elbow that we commonly call
tennis elbow. Tennis elbow or lateral humeral
epicondylitis usually results from overuse of this
joint, either on the tennis court or elsewhere. When
patients talk about what was going on prior to the
pain, typically there’s a history of mini-aches or
twinges around the bone that’s on the outside of the
elbow.
Little microtears in the muscle over time mean
you’ll feel it come on slowly, unless a single
occasion of overuse pushes you over the edge into
severe pain. The pain will be worse during and after
use. Depending on the injury, you may experience
pain only with activities such as tennis. In a more
advanced condition, you’ll have difficulty with any
task where you hold objects at arm’s length, such as
pouring from a juice carton or lifting a pot off the
stove. The pain is often sharp and stabbing in
nature and can send zings into your forearm or hand.
Take a moment to place your bent arm around your
chest, as if you were in an arm sling. Feel the bony
bump on the side of your elbow and poke around in
front of the bone (going toward your elbow crease)
for a sore spot. This may feel achy anyway, but if
you have been overdoing it with a manual screwdriver
or playing tennis too often, this acu-point will
probably be a little worse than a minor ache.
-
Tennis
elbow. If you have tennis elbow, the pain will hit
at the outside of the elbow.
-
Golfer’s elbow. With golfer’s elbow, the inside of
the elbow takes the zing of the swing, and that’s
where the pain will be.
-
Student’s elbow. Pain comes on the tip of the
elbow, the mean lean (on a desk, that is!)
Tennis
elbow is a commonly treated condition in our clinic.
Successful outcome and patient satisfaction are
usually high. Oriental diagnosis of tennis elbow is
stuck qi or blood (pain ranging from dull and achy
to sharp and stabbing). Treatment involves the use
of needle acupuncture, electroacupuncture, and
non-needle options such as electromagnetic or
biomagnetic acupuncture.
Moxibustion is used if the pain is chronic, or if
the patient feels an increase in discomfort with
cold or damp weather. You can expect the
practitioner to apply pressure to acu-points around
the elbow as well as along the qi channel (bicep,
forearm, and hand) to increase circulation and
decrease pain. Resting or cutting back on activities
that worsen pain is the commonsense prescription,
but because these actions often involve daily
activities, resting the joint is not always a
possibility. However, we will work to speed up the
healing of the elbow using acupressure technique.
|
