New Tennis Elbow Paradigm for Treatment

(Newswire.net — May 27, 2015) Darien, CT — Summer finally arrives after a brutally long hard winter. Time to get the raquet out and start playing tennis. Or is it too painful?

 Many players develop a condition called lateral epicondylitis or more commonly referred to as tennis elbow. The number of players afflicted is around 39%. The muscle tendon that is most likely involved is the extensor carpi radialis brevis. If you move your index finger all the way back you are activating the muscle involved. When your hand grips the raquet during the swing phase you initiate the motion associated with the ecrb.

 Now that you know what it is you should know why it is so painful. There is a tendinous sheath that is called fascia. Try to think of fascia as a protective covering that has many nerve endings. The numerous nerve endings make the fascia sensitive.

 The fascia is supposed to be smooth so that tendons and muscles glide over each other without friction. Overuse or repetitive strain causes the normally smooth tissue to become pocked with adhesions. Adhesions are changes in the fascia that increase friction thereby causing pain. So when the painful motion is repeated over and over their is more pain and restriction of normal motion.

 An English Osteopath by the name of Graston borrowed an idea from Oriental Medicine and named it for himself. Graston uses a stainless steel tool to remove adhesions topically. The tool glides in different planes to first irritate the tissue then allow it to heal without adhesions present. It is a little painful. Quite often people can feel an immediate difference in pain levels associated with their tennis elbow.

 Now if you really want to get fancy then you would apply a low level laser to fire up the cells so they heal faster. This part is virtually painless and can really make a difference pretty quickly.

 Once the fascia returns to a normal state sans adhesions the pain is pretty well gone. It seems as if two therapies are more effective when combined in relieving pain from tennis elbow.