Tennis elbow can be extremely disheartening to deal with; especially when it’s having a dramatic impact on your daily activities or favourite hobbies. Also known as lateral epicondylitis, tennis elbow is an inflammatory condition that affects your elbow’s lateral aspect tendons.
It happens when the muscles that extend your wrist and fingers get consistently pulled and strained over time, and this overuse of your wrist extensors causes the affected tendons to degenerate and become inflamed. If you’re constantly gripping or squeezing your wrist around something, it will inevitably lead to tennis elbow eventually.
Activities like swimming, hockey and sports that involve racquets (i.e. tennis, badminton and squash) are the most common culprits for causing tennis elbow – hence the name – but it can also occur from repetitive work-related duties, or the combination of poor form and weaknesses in the forearm and shoulder muscles.
There are a number of things you can do to alleviate the symptoms of tennis elbow, including resting the affected area, taking pain relief medicine like ibuprofen, and applying an ice pack to the area for 15 minutes several times a day.
Of course, it’s also important that you’re not making the matter worse by using incorrect technique in repetitive activities moving forward.
However, an effective physical therapy that is often overlooked for tennis elbow is osteopathy. This involves loosening the forearm muscles and connected areas through a variety of soft tissue techniques. Osteopathy for tennis elbow also aims to reduce inflammation and swelling around the tendons.
At Essendon Natural Health, our qualified and experienced osteopaths will engage your forearm, elbow and (if necessary) shoulder, neck and upper back muscles in a series of soft tissue techniques with the goal to correct posture, biomechanics and function.
We may also provide you with helpful guidance on how to accelerate recovery from tennis elbow with useful stretches and exercises. And finally, dry needling in the elbow and forearm might also help to alleviate the symptoms of tennis elbow and promote a faster recovery.
To receive osteopathic treatment for your tennis elbow, please don’t hesitate to schedule an appointment at our beautiful clinic in Essendon.
As a team of friendly professionals dedicated towards inspiring, educating and supporting healthier and happier lifestyles; we also provide tailored acupuncture, naturopathy, massage, myotherapy and nutritional medicine advice.
B.C.M (Hons), C.Clin.Prac (China), C.Toyohari. Registered Acupuncturist and Herbalist. Integrative Natural Medicine Practitioner.
Robert is a passionate and warm practitioner who has an extensive knowledge of integrative and functional natural medicine. He is down to earth and has an interest in organic foods, gardening and sustainable living. With over a decade of experience, he is renowned for being very thorough by both fellow practitioners and patients alike.
