Treat Tennis Elbow Yourself !
In order to treat tennis elbow with conservative treatments, the first essential step is to
Manage Your Pain !
The principle of P.R.I.C.E is widely applied to relieve musculo-tendinous pain:
⭐ Protection
* Activities Modification: Try to modify the intensity, duration and techniques when using your arms for any activity.
* Tennis Elbow Brace can be useful to restrict the contraction of your wrist extensors, which protect it from aggravating tendon inflammation.
* Make sure the gel pad is about 1 inch below your pain spot, not directly on it!
** However, elbow brace may worsen your symptoms if you have radial tunnel syndrome at the same time!
⭐ Rest
Rest or alternate your arm whenever you feel muscle soreness. It’s usually too late if you only rest until the elbow is hurting!
* Wrist Brace can be used to keep your wrist in an optimal resting position, which is helpful to decrease the pressure over your wrist extensor tendons!
⭐ Ice
Ice bag is always helpful when you are suffering an acute inflammation, make sure you do it after work or exercise program within 6 hours.
* Add a layer of facecloth in between your skin and ice bag, direct contact may cause frostbite or nerve damage! ❄
⭐ Compression
Compression sleeve provides decent support for your elbow, it is more practical for people who already recovered to a certain point, not so much for acute pain stage.
⭐ Elevation
Elevation is critical when you have a swelling elbow, make sure you elevate it above the heart level, also sleep with a pillow under your elbow to make swelling control more effective.
Lastly, how about pain killer? Why it isn’t the first choice for pain management?
Medication alone does not promote healing !
Medication should only be introduced when the pain too severe to start any exercise program. It enables you to get comfortable enough to proceed to the rehabilitation or healing phase of treatment.
Over-relying on pain medication can cause more damage to your tendon, and surgery will be inevitable!
(This article mainly focuses on Home Therapy for your tennis elbow, cortisone injection and surgeries won’t be discussed here! For people who’d love to know more about cortisone injection for tennis elbow, please refer to Dr. Howard J. Luks‘ informative article!)
Now let’s see what’s The Best Tennis Elbow Therapy Program!
Andrew believes rehab-related knowledge should be easy to learn and follow at home, because "knowledge is power only when we can share it" !
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