Differences of Tennis Elbow & Golfer’s Elbow

You don’t have to be Roger Federer or Tiger Woods to suffer from Tennis Elbow. Even if you’ve never played a set of tennis or a round of golf, you can still suffer from Tennis Elbow or Golfer’s Elbow. Tennis Elbow and Golfer’s Elbow are both overuse injuries that are caused activities that requires repetitive motion of the arm and wrist. The difference between the two conditions lies in where the elbow is inflamed.

Here we are going to learn about the causes, symptoms and helpful tips for treating them both. Both Tennis Elbow and Golfer’s Elbow are forms of epicondylitis, an inflammation of tendons that attach to the elbow.

Tennis Elbow affects the lateral, or outside, epicondyle.

Golfer’s Elbow affects the medial, or inside, epicondyle.

What Is Tennis Elbow?

Tennis Elbow, or lateral epicondylitis, is most common in adults between the ages of 30-50. It’s an overuse and muscle strain injury that results in an inflammation of the outside of the elbow and forearm areas.  With repeated use, those muscles are often overworked, becoming inflamed. Plumbers, carpenters and painters are prone to Tennis Elbow due to the repetitive nature of their jobs. Seasonal activities such as raking, gardening and cutting wood can also cause Tennis Elbow.

Symptoms of Tennis Elbow

Pain may radiate from the outside of the elbow to your forearm and wrist.  It can be a constant ache in the elbow area, or you may only feel it while performing activities that involve reaching, grasping or lifting.  It is important to see a doctor to ensure that you receive a correct diagnosis regarding the cause of your pain.

What Is Golfer’s Elbow?

Medial epicondylitis, or Golfer’s Elbow, is an irritation on the inner side of the arm and elbow. This condition can be caused by activities that require repeated twisting or flexing of the wrist. Generally, it’s due to overuse of the forearm muscles. Activities such as gardening, shoveling, playing golf or tennis can cause Golfer’s Elbow. Repeated lifting, especially when your elbow is extended and your palm is facing down, can also cause it. Other causes include racquet sports, baseball or softball, weightlifting, carpentry, painting and other similar activities.

Symptoms of Golfer’s Elbow

Symptoms include pain on the inside of the elbow when lifting the wrist or hand, pain when twisting the forearm, or when making a fist. The area may be slightly swollen or tender to the touch. If the problem has lasted more than a few weeks, additional symptoms can include stiffness in the elbow or weakness in the hands or wrist.

Treatment for Golfer’s Elbow & Tennis Elbow

Immediate Treatment

Give your elbow and wrist a rest. It may take several weeks of resting the elbow and wrist to feel a decrease in pain, and even longer until the symptoms are gone completely. You can help reduce pain and swelling by icing the painful area. Taking anti-inflammatory pain relievers, such as ibuprofen or aspirin can also help. However, it’s important to seek medical attention if the condition does not show improvement.

Helpful Tips for Treating Tennis & Golfer Elbow

Here are a few helpful tips for treating both Tennis & Golfer’s Elbow:

1. For a sports related injury, we can help! After years of working on the european tour and LET we know our elbow injuries pretty well!
2. Consistently do exercises to gradually stretch and strengthen your muscles, especially those in the forearm
3. Your doctor may recommend a cortisone shot
4. Surgery could be an option after a year of unsuccessful treatment
5. Following a full assessment, an elbow brace might be recommneded. The purpose of the brace is to redirect the pressure over your muscles so that the injured area does not take the full force.

For more information on how we can help you, please contact us here.

The knee is a complex joint designed to withstand different amounts and types of forces. Despite the resilience of your knees, placing more force on them than usual or putting them in a cumbersome position for an extended period may lead to tissue irritation. This tissue irritation can be painful, and there is nothing “fun-knee” about a painful knee.

Luckily, there is plenty that you can do at home to decrease irritation and pain before having to make an appointment with your therapist for a thorough assessment.

Activity Modification
Often the best treatment you can give the knee is an opportunity for it to rest. Resting your knee does not mean completely immobilizing it. Rather, you should do less, or avoid specific activities that bother your knee until the pain subsides.

Once the pain does subside, gradually reintroduce the activity, doing only as much as you can without pain. For example, if you have recently started running, try to find a distance you can run without any pain during or after your run. Increase this distance little by little over a period of time until you can once again run your desired distance without pain.

The same strategy could be used with any activity such as standing at work, or kneeling to do your gardening. Rest until the pain goes away and then gradually reintroduce the activity, paying attention to how your knee feels, taking breaks as needed.

Therapeutic Exercise
Research has shown that therapeutic exercise does not cause or worsen damage and inflammation in your knee. In fact, therapeutic exercise is an effective strategy to reduce knee pain.

However, the amount of exercise you do is important. For most people, a good place to start is approximately 3 sets of 10 repetitions with a 30 second break between each set.

Keep in mind that this is just a suggestion. If you find your knee feeling irritated after or during exercise, you can reduce the number of repetitions or sets you perform.

If you feel as though 3 sets of 10 is too easy, feel free to do more! Here are some exercises that people with knee pain often find beneficial:

Leg Extensions
Sitting in a chair, straighten one knee out in front of you while thinking about pulling the inside and outside of your thigh muscles up towards your hip from your knee.
Slowly lower your foot back to the floor and repeat, alternating legs.

Bridges
Lie face up, place your hands firmly by your side and bend both knees so that your feet sit flat. Push your heels onto the ground to lift your hips up off the surface.
Keep your knees in line with your feet and hips if possible.

Calf Raises

Standing behind a chair or table for balance, raise your heels off the ground. Once you reach your peak height, slowly lower yourself back down.

Side lying leg raises

Lie on your side on an exercise mat with your legs stretched out. Rest your head on your arm, which can either be bent or stretched out. Place the hand of your other arm on the floor in front of your belly to stabilize your upper body. Lift your top leg sideways towards the ceiling, briefly hold it there, and then lower it again. Repeat this exercise 10 to 20 times. Do the same using the other leg. Do a total of 3 sets of repetitions for each leg. Make sure you keep your body stable and carry out the movements slowly and in a controlled way. Your upper body shouldn’t move when your leg moves.

Stretches
Stretching the muscles around your knee may also help reduce pain. Start with 3 sets of 3-4 long easy breaths.
Again, this amount is only a suggestion and you can do more or less depending on how the stretches make your knee feel. Here are some stretches that people with knee pain often find helpful:

Seated Hamstring Stretch
On the ground straighten one leg and bend the other. Keep your knee straight and reach out with your hand as far as feels safe. You should feel a stretch in the back of your leg. Repeat on the other side.

Calf Stretch
Place your hands on a wall with your arms outstretched in front of you. Stagger your feet keeping them shoulder width apart. Keep your back heel on the ground and lean forward bending your front knee.
You should feel a stretch in the calf of your rear leg. Repeat on the other side.

Seated IT band / glute stretch
In a sitting position, straighten one leg and cross the other over top. Turn your upper body towards the crossed leg and hook your elbow on the other side of your leg.
Use your elbow to gently pull your leg into the stretch. You should feel the stretch in the hip of the crossed leg. Repeat on the other side.

Standing quad stretch
Standing behind a chair or table for balance, bend one leg, bringing your heel toward your buttock and grab it with the hand on the same side.
Use your hand to gently pull your leg into the stretch. You should feel the stretch in the front of the bent leg. Repeat on the other side.

With a combination of rest, activity modification, therapeutic exercise, and stretching, you may be able to alleviate some discomfort in your knee.

If the recommendations above don’t help ease your symptoms, contact us to set up an in-depth assessment and treatment plan.

Car accidents are always a pain to have to endure but sometimes they can cause injuries that can linger and transform into chronic conditions that last for years. When you’re involved in a car accident, you probably think to call your insurance company but most people don’t think to call a chiropractor and soft tissue specialist.

Taking care of your body after a car accident is incredibly important. Not all serious injuries are visible, you may have had bruising and soreness a few days after your car accident but the persistent neck, shoulder, and back pain may not show up right away.

To explain better, let’s use a case study:

Liz is an A-Level student who was recently involved in a car accident. She was stationary in traffic when she was hit from behind by someone going 60 MPH. Her seatbelt didn’t lock and her body slammed into the steering wheel leaving her with a huge bruise on her forehead. Her CT scan came back normal but she wasn’t able to get an MRI at the hospital.

Liz’s neck, shoulder, and lower back pain appeared after her initial soreness died down and this pain makes it difficult to go about her daily life. She’s unable to get out of bed on some days and she’s had to postpone her school exams because she can’t sit for a prolonged period of time.

During this time Elite Performance Therapy have been adjusting her and releasing some muscle tightness using soft tissue techniques and dry needling but her shoulder is still presenting some issues that lead us to suspect that she may have a rotator cuff tear.

To properly diagnose the tear, we conduct a full shoulder assessment to determine where the pain is coming from so we know exactly how to treat it. This includes testing her arm strength on each side to identify any weaknesses in her muscles. We decide to refer her to get an MRI on her shoulder so we can get more information about what’s going on with her rotator cuff before going forward with the treatment plan.

Isy and Sarah are able to treat Liz to provide some immediate pain relief but we’ll be able to do more once we get the MRI results.

Can’t see any Injuries?

When you’ve been in a car accident, especially one that doesn’t right off your car, you may assume that you’ll just have some soreness and whiplash but nothing serious in terms of injuries, especially if they don’t appear straight away. The pernicious thing about car accidents is that even accidents that occur at low speeds can result in injuries that don’t become apparent right away. You may not have immediate symptoms other than bruising and soreness but that doesn’t mean that you’re in the clear.

According to prominent whiplash expert Dr. Ruth Jackson :

“Motor vehicle collision injuries to the cervical spine often go unrecognized or ignored for many months.”

We cannot stress enough the importance of being correctly diagnosed for any injuries and getting it treated. But it’s also important to see a chiropractor and soft tissue specialist as soon as possible after a car accident to ensure problems don’t linger for years on end.

What to expect on your first visit

When you come into our clinic, you’ll be assessed to see where the pain is coming from and what muscle weaknesses need to be dealt with. After that assessment, we may send you for imaging so we can see exactly what’s happening inside the injured area or we may start your treatment plan immediately.

Treatment is customized to the patient’s needs which means we’re able to directly treat the specific injuries you have and we can get you out of pain and feeling better as quickly as possible.

If you’ve been in a car accident, please come visit us to get checked out as soon as possible. There may be injuries that you don’t realize you have just yet and when they rear their ugly heads in the coming months, the pain will be worse than if you treated them immediately.

Yes!

Let’s use this scenario to explain more:

A 45-year-old runner walks into a chiropractic office with pain in her hip. She’s been diagnosed with bursitis and tendinitis and wants to manage her pain.

She recently began running longer distances, and due to changes at work, she spends more time sitting. The two factors have exacerbated injuries to the tissues in her hip.

This is a textbook example of inflammation – the body’s natural way of protecting itself. Chiropractors manage inflammation the same way they manage pain – by looking for the cause and identifying ways to manage symptoms.

Chiropractic treatment for inflammation can include increasing flexibility and strength, adjusting form, and increasing the body’s resilience to workday stressors. For example, in the case of the 45-year-old runner, our recommendation was to reduce the distance she was running every day, as well as her sitting time at work. We manually treated the injured muscles in her hip and introduced hip strengthening exercises. After four weeks, her pain had decreased, and she was back on track to her fitness goals.

“This type of inflammation has a mechanical source,” explains Sarah, “You can use ice, creams and medications, but that doesn’t change the mechanical load on the body. You can’t easily change a mechanical problem with a chemical solution. Increasing her hip strength to smoothly absorb each step meant safer loading on those tendons, less damage and less inflammation.”

Manual chiropractic treatments for inflammation

Chiropractors start by looking for swelling, redness, heat, pain, and sometimes loss of function (such as difficulty walking) in these cases. Treatment options they could recommend could include one or more of the following:

• Low intensity ultrasound, which can have a powerful anti-inflammatory effect on joints.
• TENS (transcuatenous electrical nerve stimulation), which involves applying a low strength electrical current to a particular area to relieve acute and chronic pain such as osteoarthritis.
• Spinal manipulation, which can reduce inflammation in the joints of the spine that may cause back pain.

If the inflammation comes from an underlying condition such as rheumatoid arthritis or psoriasis, a chiropractor will write a referral to a family doctor, a rheumatologist or other specialist. While chiropractors are trained to recognize the signs and symptoms of these conditions, it is outside their scope of practice to diagnose them. However, once diagnosed, a chiropractor can help manage pain or disability that may result from such inflammatory conditions.

Do you have concerns about inflammation? Contact us for more information.