Elbow pain is often referred to a ‘tennis elbow,’ though it is suffered by tennis players, baseball players, golfers, and fishermen. It is also experienced by people who do a repetitive motion while at work like computer operators, hair dressers, line workers and meat packers. Though these injuries occur at different points in the elbow and involve different structures, the basic concepts for treatment and exercise remain similar.
As with most other injuries that start small and grow to be nagging pains, elbow pain is often caused by scar tissue which has formed at the injury site. This web-like material is less elastic and more fibrotic that normal tissues, thus causing surrounding muscles to shorten and gradually lose their ability to stretch. And when your muscle is shortened, it is weaker and is more prone to injury.
In addition to being less elastic and more fibrotic than normal tissues, scar tissue attaches itself wherever it can. That means that muscles or tissues that were intended to glide over one another are stuck together in spots, causing pulling, tugging and pain.
An elbow is an elbow, but the treatment for its injury is dependent upon how the injury occurred. For example, a golfer may experience pain at the inside point of the elbow. The first point of treatment, then, would be different than that of tennis elbow, where the pain is at the outside point of the elbow. We then will watch you repeat the motion which causes you pain and determine through biomechanical analysis and through palpation where the inflammation and adhesions exist in your elbow.
Specific ART procedures are used to treat each layer of the injury. These ART procedures release the restrictive adhesions that bind these soft-tissue layers together, and allow the tissues to once again move smoothly over each other.
Once your pain and inflammation is resolved, we will prescribe specific exercises to strengthen your weak muscles to lessen the chances of reinjury.
