3 Home Remedies For Tennis Elbow

Are you suffering from tennis elbow? Do you have pain on the outside of your elbow? And does it bother you with certain motions and certain things that you’re doing with your hand and arm?

Well, there’s a lot of questions surrounding tennis elbow, like why is it even called tennis elbow? And most people that have tennis elbow don’t even play tennis. So it’s a confusing thing for people in the medical field to treat. But here we know how to treat this problem. I’m going to share with you the top three home remedies that we give our clients for tennis elbow situations.

Real quick, my name is Dr. David Middaugh. I’m a specialist physical therapist here at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. And I help people with tennis elbow all the time. They come in, they point to this part of their arm hurting and we’ve figured out exactly what’s going on. There are three big things that usually affect people with tennis elbow, and we know what kinds of remedies they can be doing at home. So I’m going to go into that for you here next.

Some of the main reasons that tennis elbow comes up is number one, a joint problem at the elbow right here. You actually have three different joints that make up the elbow. One is the hinge joint, the one that moves the elbow back and forth. And then the second one, you’ve got a joint between one of the wrist bones here, the forearm bones in the in the upper arm bone that allows your hand to turn over, up and forward. Like where you can turn your palm up and palm down.

And then you’ve got a joint between that bone that rotates so that you can turn your palm up and down, and the other wrist bone. The other forearm bone right here, there’s two bones a radius and the ulma. So between those three joints, usually the joint that’s closest to the outside of the elbow right about where the tennis elbow hurts is tender. And if you can find the spot, right outside, the pointy part of the elbow, but kind of on the outside more so or it’s a little harder.

If you can poke a spot in there and find a specific spot where it hurts, that’s usually a joint problem in the elbow. It’s causing your tennis elbow situation. So that the joint is was frequently bothered in that in that spot.

Now they call this tennis elbow because oftentimes, tennis players get this, especially when they’re doing a backhand swing, whenever they’re reaching across their body and hitting the ball forward from the opposite side of their body with their arms that when the ball strikes the racket, the force of the ball hitting the racket over stretches the outside of the elbow, and if that happens repeatedly, like somebody might, whenever they’re playing lots of tennis, it irritates the outs of the elbow, and it’s just a matter of getting the joint happier.

There are different things to do for that. One is letting it rest and other one is aligning the joint properly. And then it could also be a strength issue that’s feeding into the joint alignment issue. So all that needs to be addressed and looked at and that tennis elbow problem will go away.

Another big reason for tennis elbow is a nerve problem. There is a big nerve called a radial nerve that passes right around that same area where the joint is. So if you can’t quite find a spot, if you’re feeling your elbow and you can’t pick a spot where it hurts, it feels more spread out. We call that in the medical field diffuse, it’s kind of all over the region. Usually that’s more of a sign of a nerve problem.

Another telltale sign that it’s a nerve problem is that that’s causing your tennis elbow issues. If you also have problems up in the shoulder and going down into the forearm or even into the hand. Oftentimes, that’s a sign that the entire nerve is actually fired up. It’s just most flared up on the side of the elbow. And your doctor might tell you that you have tennis elbow, or if you google stuff on the internet, anything that hurts on the outside of the elbow is generally called tennis elbow. They just call it that because of the whole tennis situation. But there are multiple reasons for it.

The third reason that you might be getting pain on the outside of the arm is muscle imbalance. Now in this part of the elbow, on the outside of the elbow, you’ve got a bunch of muscles that overlap that area and attach to the end of the upper arm bone. They’re the extensor muscles of the wrist enhance are the muscles that open your hand and allow your wrist to move up, like above the back of your hand move up towards the ceiling, if you’re going to lift it. those muscles all help to stabilize the joints there.

And if they’re irritated, you can definitely get what’s called tendinitis on those muscles. In order for that to calm down, usually it’s just a matter of resting the elbow. So if you’re a true tennis player, you’re having this problem. You might have to back off of doing so many backends you might have to practice using your forehand doesn’t mean you have to stop playing completely unless it’s super irritating can even swing the racket forehand, but you might just back off from doing so much backhand.

If you’re not a tennis player. Then you have to think of what activity is setting off your elbow if especially if there’s some sort of repeated activity, like oftentimes we see this in people that are doing construction, not necessarily construction workers, but people that are more so doing some construction on the weekend or evenings at their home some temporary construction work.

We’ve got clients in here that said that they’re building furniture at home, they’re making an addition there they’re hammering in a lot of nails are using a screwdriver quite a bit are using power tools that require a lot of stability from their arm, that can set off that outside elbow pain that they call tennis elbow, and it might just be one step projects over if they take a break from it that it calms down. If the project’s over or they’re still hurting, then they’re looking at potentially taking some extra steps to make sure this problem goes away for good.

Here are the three best home remedies that you can try at home for tennis elbow.

Number one, get a brace.

There are tennis elbow braces out there. Now, let me just tell you the caveat with this, it’s not going to fix it for good, it’s just going to allow you to stay in a little bit longer to do that activity a bit longer for it to not hurt so much as quickly. There are tennis elbow braces, and they usually just a strap to go around this part of your arm. Some are more like a sleeve where they actually cover the top of the elbow and the bottom of the elbow. It’s kind of like a knee sleeve, except it’s for the elbow.

Those can help in making your tennis elbow situation just come down a bit. But what I want you to know is that I wouldn’t want you to go get a brace and think this is going to fix my tennis elbow problem, like it’s going to go away for good, it’s going to be the best 20 bucks ever spent on this brace.

It’s just not reality, that brace is just going to diminish the pain a bit. And the cool thing about it though, is that it might prevent you from having to take pain medications if you’ve been doing that, which saves your origins, especially your liver and your kidneys and other organs. So you want to make sure that you just use this properly, but the braces can make a difference.

The second thing you can do is ice.

I haven’t had many patients come in and say, I think of one actually, that have come in and said that heat helps them. And what I typically tell patients is ice or heat might help different situations, but consistently with people that come in with tennis elbow, they say that ice tends to work best and that they try heat and it didn’t work for them didn’t do much. Not necessarily made it worse but it just didn’t help but I see a big difference.

My theory on that is the joint if it’s a joint problem or muscle problem is so superficial right here in this part of the elbow, that the ice the cold from the ice can penetrate a lot easier. So it’s just more effective. But all you have to do is get an ice pack, they sell them at the grocery store. You can get a bag of ice cubes from your refrigerator, your freezer, and maybe just put a thin cloth around it if you want and put it right on your elbow and leave it there for about 15 To 20 minutes generally until the skin goes a bit numb.

 That’s how you know you’ve had the ice on long enough, but be careful not to get any ice burns, that’s the thing, you can actually burn your skin with ice. And then actually did it for 15 or 20 minutes. So take it off for another 15 or 20 minutes and then put it back on and cycle back and forth like that four times.

Generally, about an hour and a half to two hours is what it should take you that usually calms it down a good amount so that you can sleep at night so that you can avoid taking pain medications, and maybe even skip a trip to the doctor where they might give you an injection.

The third home remedy, and this one I think is really more of the long-term fix, is grip strengthening. Go to a sporting goods store, even Walmart or a store that has a sporting goods department and find yourself a grip strengthener. The type that has a spring on it and you squeeze it and what you would do is what you would do is on that side that you’ve got the tennis elbow problem.

Squeeze it and hold it for 10 seconds and it should really put a lot of strain on this part of your arm. On the inside of your arm were the muscles that close your hand are. Hold it for 10 seconds and release. And I would be doing that hourly, if you can I do maybe five to ten grips where you just hold it for 10 seconds, every hour while you’re awake. Take it with you in the car, take it with you to work or school, and just squeeze the heck out of it.

The more you do that, generally it fixes a muscle imbalance problem that sets up the joint to be in a better position and those muscles that are possibly you have tendinitis and then it’ll allow them to calm down.

Now if you are gripping that gripper and it’s actually hurting the elbow, reduce the intensity, some of those grippers are adjustable and just reduce the resistance down, or don’t grip it so hard, or do it less frequently as well. If you feel like the more you do it, the more it hurts. So find the right intensity for you. But generally, grip strengthening is excellent for tennis elbow problems.

If you’re an actual tennis player and you’re getting this issue, then increasing your grip on the tennis racket is generally going to help you whenever you’re performing those backhand. So once the tennis elbow flare down, and you’re getting back into doing your backhands, make sure that you’re thinking about tightening up your grip slightly on that tennis racket so that you can make sure to preserve the stability of your arm.

And outside of playing tennis, it’s going to be a good idea to go do some weightlifting especially with barbells or dumbbells because they have bars, kind of like a racket, and it’s going to strengthen your grip. The more weight that you lift with those barbells or dumbbells, so it’ll translate to better performance, more stability in the elbow joints whenever you’re playing tennis.

Hey there if you thought that this video was helpful for you, and you’re looking to get help for your tennis elbow. Here’s what you should do, go up to the top for a website and there’s a button or a tab up there that says cost and availability, click that tab, the webpage will open where you can leave us your details about your specific situation. Once you submit that form, it’ll take you less than a minute, one of my staff will call you back as fast as possible. And they’ll be asking you questions about your tennis elbow problem.

All they want to do is make sure that it’s a type of elbow problem that we can really make a good dent on that we can help fix for the long term. Because if it’s not one to make sure to not waste your time and send it to the right place so that you can get your elbow treated properly. If it isn’t the right type of problem that we can fix here. That’s great. We’ll let you know what steps are next so that you can get some relief for the long term. I hope that we can be a part of your recovery story real soon. Have a wonderful day.