Tennis elbow is a common injury, also known as lateral epicondylitis, which makes you suffer with tennis elbow pain. This injury is known to be the inflammation of the tendons that greatly affect the outer part of our elbow. This injury is mostly suffered by tennis players, golfers, other sports participants and manual laborers. Yet, tennis elbow is not limited to be experienced by the ones mentioned.
It can happen to everybody. The symptoms of this injury can easily be detected through pain. When you are experiencing pain in the upper part of your elbow, pain when you try to flex your fingers, pain when you try to handle even some light objects such as a door knob, or pain when you try to lift a cup of coffee, then you must be suffering with tennis elbow. Since chronic tennis elbow may be difficult to treat, you must not ignore any elbow pain that you may be experiencing.
Pain is an indicator that there’s an irregularity in your body coordination.
The symptoms of this painful condition include:
- Unhurried increase of pain around the outside of the elbow, where that pain may suddenly develop;
- worse feeling of pain when shaking hands or squeezing objects;
- worse feeling of pain as you stabilize or move the wrist with force such as lifting, opening jars, or even handling of simple utensils.
This condition cannot be diagnosed from blood tests and, rarely by X-rays. Usually, it is diagnosed by how you described the pain to your doctor and certain findings from a physical exam. Specifically speaking, pain is being experienced about 1 to 2 centimeters down from bony area at the outer part of the elbow, pain is being felt at the outer part of the elbow when the hand is bent back at the wrist against resistance and, pain is being felt when the part just below the outer part of the elbow is pressed.
The pain hinders you from living a normal busy life. It should be dealt in with accordingly by treating it. The treatments can be done through strict medical procedure like anti-inflammatory medications, cortisone injections or surgery. The help of medical personnel is vital for this kind of treatment. This type of treatment prescribed for the injury is based on several factors that include the age, medical history, type of drugs being taken, general state of health, and severity of pain.
The objectives of this are to promote healing, to lower down the stress and abuse on the injured elbow and to reduce pain or inflammation. Another way of treatment to relieve elbow pain is to apply ice or “cold therapy” to the elbow for about 15 minutes. The cold therapy must be done for up to six times a day. This aids in reducing pain and/or inflammation. You can also wear brace or support to protect the tendon while healing.
For the use of elbow braces and supports can protect the injured elbow and promote healing to it. The use of elbow braces and supports are not to mask the pain but to aid in healing. The performance of proper exercises and stretching helps in promoting healing for it assures proper blood circulation. Most importantly, rest should be considered as an extreme component in the healing of tennis elbow. Rest is a must. Elbow pain can never be taken for granted for it forbids you to live your life normally.
