Inflammation Of Your Tennis Elbow – Is It Best To Use Heat Or Ice To Treat It?

 Tennis Elbow Treatment – Immediate self treatment.

Inflammation Of Your Tennis Elbow – Is It Best To Use Heat Or Ice To Treat It?

An important thing to consider when looking for tennis elbow treatment (and a big source of confusion) is whether to apply ice or heat. . One of my customers is a sports injury expert and he plumbs for ice everytime for tennis elbow treatment. Here’s the steps that most medical and sports injury people advise

As soon as you damage a muscle or joint you will get inflammation. The quicker this is done, the more effect it will have on the injured elbow. Tennis Elbow Treatment – The best way to apply ice to the elbow joint. A large block of ice should be kept at all times in your freezer. this means it is instantly accessible to treat the elbow joint inflamation.

Firstly cover the skin with a thin towel to prevent burning (from the ice!). Apply the ice in small swirling motions to the outside of your elbow. Do this for about twenty minutes every hour or so on the day of the injury.Re-freeze the ice. The following day you should repeat this but this time at about three hour intervals.

You can do this for a third day or until the swelling goes down. If it has not by the end of the third day, then the injury may be more serious than just tennis elbow. it’s possible you could have torn a ligament (and that will need proper medical attention).

Other Tennis elbow treatment; Getting the arm raised.

Raising a damaged area up can also aid recovery. However you arelying or sitting, the limb should be slightly higher than your heart. Finally, make sure you carry out this tennis elbow treatment fully (no cheating). Finally, make sure you carry out this tennis elbow treatment fuuly (no cheating).

Tennis Elbow treatment – Symptoms and Diagnosing Tennis Elbow.

 Tennis Elbow treatment – What is Tennis Elbow?

So what is tennis elbow?  What’s the best treatment or cure for tennis elbow?`What are the best tennis elbow treatments?

Apart from a terrible pain in your elbow joint. The sort that has you wincing with pain when you play tennis or golf (actually, golf has a very similar thing called golfer’s elbow). It can affect workers such as panel beaters and even affects fishermen (known as fishing elbow). Tennis elbow symptoms include a sharp burning sunsation whenever you try to raise your forearm (I even dropped a cup of coffee as the pain in my elbow ligament was so acute). I tried, tennis elbow treatment such as straps, splints and braces with differing degrees of success.

The medical term for tennis elbow is as lateral epicondylitis. It occurs where the tendons from the forearm are attached to the elbow bone. This area becomes inflamed and swells.
The pain becomes most obvious around the elbow joint (strangely enough, when you move it as though you are playing tennis) whenever it is put under stress with the palm of the hand facing downwards. People are still not completely sure of the exact cause, although wear and tear and constant repetitive motions make it much worse. Whilst we are not 100% sure of the cause, we are fairly sure about what helps to allieviate the pain caused. This allows fairly good treatment or even complete cure of tennis elbow pain relief.

Tennis Elbow Treatment – What are the symptoms of Tennis Elbow?

First and foremost, you WILL know if you have tennis elbow!. It will be a pain on the outside of your elbow. It will be a sharp burning pain that will get worse as you try to either lift or even grip something. Even things like lifting a glass of water can be excruciatingly painful. If you are like me, you will have probably dropped that glass of water or mug of coffee.

Sometimes the sharp pain will shoot down the forearm as well. This can be in addition to general soreness in the elbow area. If it gets better with rest, that is another indication of a tennis elbow injury. Sometimes there will be swelling as well. There even be bruising (if there is, get it seen to at once). You will notice that Sod’s law dictates that you will always bang the swollen elbow area on the door jamb as you walk through!  If it has got really bad, the swelling may even restrict your ability to straighten your arm.

Detecting tennis elbow tendinitis

Nothing beats experience. Even X rays do not always show the evidence of tennis elbow pain. The trick is to give the clearest description possible of the pain and symptoms to the medical expert. One guy I saw just grabbed my wrist, stuck his thumb in a certain place and then squeezed. As I shrieked with pain, he said “yes, you’ve definitely got tennis elbow”! The next stage was to look for the most effective tennis elbow treatment.

Tennis Elbow Treatment – Three things to be aware of.

  Tennis elbow Treatments – Three things to think about

When looking for home tennis elbow treatment, one of the biggest problems is immobilizing the arm. What I mean by that is using larger items like elbow braces or splints. Whilst it appears to be the obvious solution, it is actually counter productive. Although it reduces the pain in your elbow, it stops the range of movement of the joint. Longer term, this allows scar tissue to build up in the injured area, particularly in the ligament attachment area. This actually slows down the healing process.

The next problem is understanding (or rather, not understanding) the role of inflammation in the healing process. Inflammation occurs when the body tries to repair itself. It also causes pain, so we try to avoid it. If however, we keep taking anti-inflammatory drugs, we are in effect, slowing down the healing process. We have to strike a balance between healing and pain relief in our elbows.

The third one is looking for a quick fix treatment (like a cortisone injection).Although a cotisone shot is a great quick fix (apart from the initial pain), it can make things worse. The idea of an injection is to get an anti inflammatory dose right to the area in question. In theory that’s fine but it can lead to more problems.

I have a couple of friends, both of whom were into weight training. Both had shoulder trouble and one had severe tennis elbow pain. Both were looking for a quick remedy and went for the cortisone solution. The problem was (as explained above) that this took away the inflammation but not the underlying problem (i.ee damage to the elbow and shoulder ligaments and their attachments).

 Literally, a couple of days after their injections, they had lost all pain and were back in training. You can guess the rest. I only realised this after reading a tennis elbow treatment book. It seems obvious now but did not at the time. The jab just took away the inflammation, it did not cure the cause. Apparently, injections can weaken tendons and muscles in the elbow and it is these very things we need to strengthen to get rid of tennis elbow pain.