When you have a tennis elbow injury, the last thing you want to do is make it worse. You already have so much pain in the area of the lateral epicondylitis whenever you:

• Brush your hair and your teeth
• Lift grocery bags
• Mow the lawn or push a grocery cart
• Hold a coffee cup
• Drive

Why waste time and create more pain for yourself? After all, you are not a masochist!

So with this in mind, let’s look at the most common worst mistakes that someone with a tennis elbow injury makes and how they can stop some of that pain that they already have.

#1 Mistake : Using Heating Pads On Areas Of Pain

When you have lateral epicondylitis, there’s a lot of inflammation in the tendons of the elbow. Sometimes the inflammation extends down to the wrist.

If you touch the elbow, forearm, and wrist, you’ll feel heat. This is a sign of inflammation.

Adding heat to an area that is already inflamed only makes it worse. It’s like feeding a small fire. Before long, the fire becomes a bonfire.

The correct treatment for the inflammation of tennis elbow is cold packs, not heat. Cold packs will quench the fire of the inflammation going on in the elbow joint and in the tendons.

If the idea of adding cold packs to your elbow sends a shiver up your spine, it’s probably because you are thinking about adding the cold pack directly to your skin. This is not the right way to apply a cold pack!

The application of a cold pack should not ever be felt as a shock to the body. Instead, the cold pack should be placed on top of at least 5 layers of towels.

When placed like this, the coldness diffuses gradually into the inflamed tissues. The cold pack should remain in place for 10 to 15 minutes.

#2 Mistake : Letting The Problem Go Too Long Without Doing Anything About It

It’s easy to overlook an illness or even soreness in the elbow, thinking that it may just go away on its own. The body does heal itself in many cases, but tennis elbow can last for months or even years.

As soon as you have a diagnosis from a medical doctor, you will get a treatment plan. And as soon as you get the treatment plan with the home instructions, you can take action.

Tennis elbow exercises will be included in your treatment plan. As soon as you take some action and follow the doctor’s instructions, you can get relief.

For example, your doctor may prescribe a tennis elbow brace that rests the area and gives you a period of relief. As your lateral epicondylitis is being cured, you will find that these periods of relief are longer and longer.

#3 Mistake : Wearing A Brace And Continuing To Do Normal Activities

A tennis elbow brace is great for support of the elbow joint so that you don’t put any extra stress on the tendons that surround the lateral epicondyle. Adding extra insults to tennis elbow injury obviously won’t help you heal.

But when you have a tennis elbow injury, you can’t expect that you can still perform all your normal daily activities just because you are wearing the tennis elbow brace.

Believing this would be similar to thinking that you can put a shield on the front of your car and then smash the car into a wall and nothing will be damaged.

There are many physiological things that are happening when you have a tennis elbow injury.

Along with the inflammation of the tendons, lateral epicondylitis or inflammation of the joint itself, there are thousands of white blood cells rushing to the area, each with their own individual functions.

New proteins are being made to replace the old ones in the tendons and surrounding tissues. The joint is being remodeled.

Nutrients are trying to get into the area to heal it. And your lymphatic system is trying it’s best to pump out the wastes and detoxify the area.

A tennis elbow brace isn’t given to you for the purpose of allowing you to “crash into the wall”. Instead, it’s to calm the area down so that all the activities involved in healing will actually occur.

Be gentle on yourself and take it easy. Allow your body to recover.

#4 Mistake : Eating Plenty Of Sweets And Processed Foods

What you eat becomes your body’s tissues. Thus every food and beverage you consume can help or harm you.

Sweets and sugars interfere with your body’s ability to heal. There are studies that show that within minutes of putting a sweet in your mouth, the white blood cells become paralyzed and unable to fight infection.

Processed foods are high on the Glycemic Index and cause high levels of blood sugar.

This high blood sugar level is a stress on the body, and it causes a big burst of insulin to be released from the pancreas. This completely changes your body’s biochemistry.

It will actually make you store fat… and since your tennis elbow injury has already slowed you down from normal activity and workouts, it can become easy to gain weight.

The big problem with sweets, sugars, and processed foods is that they create AGEs or advanced glycation endproducts, which interfere with healing in every part of the body.

Don’t resort to giving in to foods for consolation during this time of healing. Just don’t.

Find out more about how to eliminate tennis elbow by reading the ebook, Tennis Elbow Secrets Revealed. It’s bound to accelerate your healing.

Why not heal tennis elbow and put this lateral epicondylitis behind you? There is a way. It will take a little effort on your part, but you can do it.

Read up on healing tennis elbow fast right here, and then follow the 7 steps as soon as possible. Then set your clock, mark your calendar and countdown to healing!

7 Steps In Healing Tennis Elbow

Here are all the steps, so copy and paste them on your refrigerator, bedroom door, and bathroom mirror to help you remember what to do.

1. Make sure you have the right diagnosis.
2. Use ice to calm down the lateral epicondylitis, or inflammation of the joint.
3. Wear your brace during the day and night according to the doctor’s instructions.
4. Stop eating sugar and sugary desserts or snacks.
5. Take your multi vitamin/mineral tablets.
6. Get some rest.
7. Do your lateral epicondylitis exercises.

Step 1. Make Sure You Have The Right Diagnosis

Have you been to the medical doctor, osteopath or chiropractor for a diagnosis? If not, pick up the phone and make your call now to schedule an appointment.

You can’t guess at something that is wrong with your body unless you are trained in diagnosis.

Some people take an extra step and get a second opinion just so that they don’t get caught in a situation where a doctor was wrong. Since doctors are human, they will make mistakes, you know…

Countless people suffer because there have been too many times when doctors have misdiagnosed their condition. So if you feel motivated to get a second opinion, do so.

Most doctors will get the lateral epicondylitis diagnosis right, but you never know for sure…

Step 2. Use Ice To Heal Tennis Elbow

Using ice is like adding water to a fire. It quenches the fire of lateral epicondylitis. This one step can dramatically increase your tennis elbow healing.

Step 3. Wear Your Tennis Elbow Brace

A brace for lateral epicondylitis is like a crutch that crippled people use to walk. It helps. So don’t work against it and schedule all your usual activities! Take it easy, and wear your brace.

Step 4. Stop Eating Sugar

It can be difficult to stop eating sugar without tennis elbow, let alone with tennis elbow. When you’re down for the count, do you eat for emotional reasons? If so, you better think about this one.

Some people have tennis elbow for months or years. You don’t want to be asking the question, how long does it take tennis elbow to heal next year!

So in other words, you know that healing is in your future but when? Not even a psychic could tell you that.

If you don’t know when you will be healed but know you will be healed, then will emotional eating really help you or hurt you? It will hurt you.

Most people eat sugar and processed foods for comfort. Be comforted by the fact that you will be healed and do everything you can to stay on track. Eating sugar will harm your progress.

5. Take Your Multi-Vitamin/Minerals

Since you won’t be cooking as much as before, it is imperative that you get enough of the vitamins and minerals you need to heal.

Vitamin/mineral tablets contain antioxidants that decrease the inflammation and speed up tennis elbow healing.

6. Get Some Rest

Whenever you are trying to heal any disease, extra rest is called for.

Don’t try to be a martyr or a superhero and think you can beat the odds and heal tennis elbow fast by running on a few hours sleep each night. It’s not going to happen.

7. Do Your Lateral Epicondylitis Exercises

When you have an injury that involves tendons or ligaments or even muscles in the body, you must do specific exercises to help rebuild and retrain those damaged areas.

Tennis elbow is no different than other health issues that involve tendons and ligaments, and muscles. There are specific exercises that have been performed by those willing to go the extra distance in their healing.

And those who do these exercises are ones that learn how to heal tennis elbow fast. They are also the ones who don’t end up asking the question, how long does tennis elbow take to heal, simply because they are healed in less than 60 days.

To learn more about what specific exercises to do when you have lateral epicondylitis, get the ebook, Tennis Elbow Secrets Revealed. You’ll be glad you did.

One of the treatments that almost every health practitioner recommends for tennis elbow relief is the use of ice to decrease inflammation and decrease pain. Because ice seems like such a simple type of treatment, many people assume they can figure out how to use it.

Below is a little test to see how much you truly know about how to use ice for tennis elbow.

How Do You Use Ice For Tennis Elbow?

1. True or false: When you use an ice pack for tennis elbow relief, place the ice pack on the part of your elbow closest to the body.

2. True or false: If you don’t have an official ice pack, take an ice cube out of the freezer (or a few ice cubes and wrap in a washcloth) and use that.

3. True or false: If you don’t have an official ice pack, take a thick frozen steak out of the freezer and use that on the elbow for tennis elbow pain.

4. What do you do with the ice pack after you get it out of the freezer?

5. What is the purpose of the towels in ice therapy for tennis pain relief?

6. True or false: It’s okay to rub an ice cube right over the elbow joint to get elbow pain relief.

7. True or false: Nowadays, there’s a new type of cold pack made out of buckwheat that can be used for a cold pack. To use this, place in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes prior to use.

8. Multiple answers. How long should you leave a cold pack on your elbow?

1. 5 minutes and no more
2. 10 minutes and no more
3. 15 minutes and no more
4. until you freeze the elbow
5. until your elbow feels the cold without freezing it
6. until your elbow gets cold, then it’s done
7. none of these

9. What should you do after icing your tennis elbow?

10. If you are going to exercise your elbow, is it better to ice it before or after the exercise and why?

11. How many times a day should you use ice for tennis elbow pain relief?

Tennis Elbow Treatment Test Answers

1. False. Tennis elbow affects the outer part of the elbow, not the inner part. The ice pack should go on top of the outer part of the elbow, not the inner part.

2. True. But don’t use it directly on the skin.

3. True. A steak may be substituted for an ice pack if you really are in dire straights for tennis elbow relief.

4. After placing 3 to 4 single layers of towels on your elbow, place the ice pack on top. Then cover the ice pack with another towel layer.

5. The towels prevent the freezing of the skin and allow the cold to diffuse into the area slowly. It’s more effective this way.

6. False. Rubbing an ice cube directly over the elbow joint may seem effective, but it is the wrong application of ice. When you do it this way, you subject the tissues to too much cold at one time. Ever hear of frostbite? Frostbite can leave a body part sensitive to cold for the rest of one’s life.

7. False. The buckwheat cold packs should be placed in the freezer, not the refrigerator. When using the buckwheat cold pack, you may still use one towel layer in between the cold pack and your elbow.

8. B and E are the correct answers.

9. You may follow ice treatment with heat. This will bring new circulation to the area.

10. If you are planning on exercising your elbow, icing it before the exercise would not do you much good because it will numb your elbow so that you are unable to feel pain. This can result in creating more damage inside the elbow joint and on the tendon. Ice your elbow after the exercise.

11. As often as you need to. Even once an hour is fine.

How did you do? No matter what you scored on this test, you are now, no doubt, ready to use ice for tennis elbow relief.

But don’t forget that you can’t keep icing your elbow until doomsday. Sooner or later you’ll have to strengthen the tendons and muscles in the elbow region.

What exercises will you do? Probably the easiest way to find out is to get the book, Tennis Elbow Secrets Revealed.

How will you be able to evaluate tennis elbow exercises, and decide whether or not they are tennis elbow exercises you should avoid?

Let’s Start With Tennis Elbow Anatomy

To learn what types of exercises you don’t want to do, you have to understand what tennis elbow is and what’s going on in your shoulder, arm, elbow, forearm, wrist and hand.

This is actually quite simple.

Your elbow joint is somewhat complicated if you were to dissect it, but by looking down at your elbow right now, you’ll see a crease marking the skin between your arm and forearm in the front of your elbow. Find it?

The part of your elbow closest to the body is called the medial elbow. One good way to remember it is to think that it’s closest to “me”.

The opposite part of your elbow is the outside of the elbow, or the lateral elbow.

Why Tennis Elbow Has Another Name

Tennis elbow is also called lateral epicondylitis. Usually the disorder starts out with just the tendons inside the elbow joint becoming inflamed. But the longer the tendons are inflamed, the more the inflammation spreads to involve the muscle and the joint itself.

The name “lateral epicondylitis” gives you an idea that the disorder involves the part of the elbow that is lateral. If you thought that, you are correct. This area is where some muscles originate, and it’s the ones that are associated with tennis elbow are troublesome.

What Muscles Are Involved In Tennis Elbow

The muscles that originate here are responsible for extending your wrist, extending your fingers and for gripping objects.

If you stroke your arm from the lateral elbow area all the way down to your wrist, you’ll feel a meaty muscle towards your lateral elbow that thins out towards the wrist. This is the primary muscle affected during tennis elbow.

It’s called the extensor carpi radialis muscle. There are other extensor muscles in the same area.

These muscles aren’t strengthened very often in exercise programs. When you go to the health club, you’ll never see a weight machine that is very specific for wrist extensors and finger extensors!

By strengthening these muscles, you can start to decrease the pain of tennis elbow. To strengthen these muscles you would simply close your hand tightly around a ball, open your fingers wide and move the open fingers toward the outside of the body.

When health practitioners give you a rehabilitation plan for tennis elbow, you get exercises that make you extend your fingers and wrist. Sometimes the exercises will be ones that ask you to turn your hand from a palm down to palm up position, and back again.

Tennis Elbow Exercises To Avoid

Any exercises that don’t focus on extending your wrist and fingers would not help you eliminate tennis elbow pain or put tennis elbow in your past.

Thus, if someone tells you to move your right upper arm across your chest to grab your left shoulder, you know that this wouldn’t help your tennis elbow at all.

Here are some additional exercises that really won’t help you at all:

1. With your arms at your side, press your elbows behind your back as far as they will go. Return to the original position. Repeat.

2. Extend your arms out to the side, palms upward, and bring your hands to the elbows, then back to the extended out position.

3. Clasp your arms behind your neck, then lean backwards in a stretch. Repeat.

4. Touch your elbows together in front of your body. Hold them there while a friend or family member tries to pull them apart.

5. Sit calmly in a chair. Shrug one shoulder, then another. Repeat several times.

As you are doing some of these exercises, you may find that they create a little pain. This pain is simply from movement, not from stressing or strengthening the extensor muscles that are important in tennis elbow.

Why These Exercises Won’t Create Tennis Elbow Relief

Did you see how some of the exercises focus more on the shoulder, not the elbow? If an exercise doesn’t focus on the right body part, you won’t feel any relief of pain from the exercise.

You could repeat the exercises until doomsday and still, no relief would be in sight. It would be in the category of tennis elbow exercises to avoid.

For tennis elbow exercises to be fruitful – strengthening your extensor muscles – you must target the right muscle group.

For more insight on which types of exercise to do to improve tennis elbow and eventually get tennis elbow relief, get the ebook, Tennis Elbow Secrets Revealed.

This ebook will make a lot of sense to you now that you know the information presented in this article!

He said that there was quite a bit of evidence that the substance could be used as a painkiller.

When you have tennis elbow, you don’t just have pain. You have loss of the use of your arm and hand, which seriously interferes with daily activities. It’s a big problem.

So if you hear that something is a painkiller, you’re on to it like a police dog tracking a criminal.

What Is DMSO?

DMSO is a short term for dimethyl sulfoxide. It’s a chemical that has been used for dozens of industrial uses, including a chemical solvent. That means that other things dissolve in it.

DMSO is a byproduct of the paper industry. Rumor has it that it was discovered by someone in the paper industry who noticed that his arthritis cleared up after reaching into a tank of DMSO.

Other sources say that a Russian scientist discovered it all the way back in the 1800s, while some say its uses were discovered at University of Oregon.

Consumers Loved DMSO

Whoever discovered it doesn’t matter. By the mid 1960s, thousands of people had tried DMSO for arthritis and even strains, sprains and tendonitis. It’s found in practically every health food store in a jar, and the label usually boasts that it’s over 99% pure and low toxicity for adults.

For kids, DMSO may cause neurotoxic effects, interfering with brain development. So keep it away from the kids, as it doesn’t take much – just a touch – and it’s inside the body.

The unique property of DMSO that makes it attractive to those with tendonitis or with tennis elbow is that it penetrates the skin and tissues.

Ask some people who have used DMSO in the past and they’ll probably say, “DMSO for lateral epicondylitis? Hell! Why not try it?”

How DMSO Works

DMSO decreases inflammation, and whenever you have inflammation for long periods of time, the body can’t heal itself.

Whatever you dissolve in the DMSO will go right into the body along with the DMSO. If you rub it onto your elbow, within a few seconds, it’s in the bloodstream. You’ll know because your breath will taste and smell like garlic.

By the way, it’s because of this taste that researchers can’t perform any double-blind studies to test for its efficacy in tennis elbow or any other medical disorder. Scientists have experimented with using DMSO along with chemotherapeutic drugs and what they expected happened: the DMSO made the drugs more potent.

Still, the FDA won’t approve its use for cancer treatments and some people think that’s because DMSO would reduce the number of chemotherapy treatments needed. Thus there would be a loss of income for the cancer industry.

Even though thousands of people have used DMSO and found few side effects other than headaches, skin rash, and hives, the FDA hasn’t approved its use for anything except inflammation of the bladder.

This hasn’t stopped veterinarians for using it on horses. And it’s still in the health food stores.

Heck, I have a jar in my medicine cabinet waiting for times when I might have inflamed joints or tendons and nothing else works. I used it when I had rotator cuff syndrome.

Should You Use DMSO For Lateral Epicondylitis (Tennis Elbow)?

The goal here is just to tell you about it, to provide lots of options for what to do about tennis elbow on this site. DMSO isn’t officially tested so no one can say use it.

We’re just saying that people have used DMSO for tendonitis and some no doubt have used DMSO for lateral epicondylitis but no one has tallied the results.

You’d have to investigate it yourself and make a decision, along with your own intuition guiding you. Intuition will never steer you in the wrong direction.

But there is something that is quite safe and proven to work for tennis elbow. It’s a specific plan of exercises for tennis elbow. You can find them in the ebook, Tennis Elbow Secrets Revealed.

But as you age, you begin to realize that your body really isn’t indestructible. It’s susceptible to breakdown. Suffering a bout of tennis elbow pain is a way to learn this hard lesson!

Now your health depends on the addition of other healthcare practitioners to your team. Who will you add to your team?

Add A Spinal Expert To Your Team

One possible practitioner is a chiropractor, who is a specialist in the spine, bones, muscles and tendons. And since tennis elbow is a tendon-related medical issue, it behooves you to get a chiropractic consultation.

Here are some other reasons why going to a chiropractor will help:

1. A chiropractor will never prescribe you painkiller medication that has side effects. Instead, he or she will introduce you to non-medication types of therapies that decrease pain.

Some of them include:

• Ultrasound

• Electostimulation of the muscles

• TENS unit, which stimulates the nerve to fatigue it so it reduces your tennis elbow pain

• Laser therapy, which is the latest modality that can reduce your tennis elbow pain while it uses the wavelength of light to heal the tissues

2. A chiropractor already has a proven treatment plan in his head for how you can best heal from tennis elbow. He’s already seen it work dozens of times before.

3. A chiropractor will also check your back and spine, just to make sure that you don’t have any back issues that need to be addressed immediately.

4. A chiropractor is a licensed health provider (physician) who can address your posture, your nutrition, and your lifestyle habits, thus preventing you from getting sick or injured in the future.

5. A chiropractor is well trained in exercise physiology and can advise you on what exercises to do for your tennis elbow, or for other issues. He can also set up a rehabilitation plan for you to gain total recovery.

Chiropractors Don’t Think About Tennis Elbow Like Medical Doctors Do

Chiropractors are unlike medical doctors in these ways:

1. They have a belief system that you can use natural methods of healing to improve any condition that is a medical challenge. You won’t ever hear a chiropractor tell you that you only have 30 days to live!

2. They spend a lot more time with you at your office visit. You can talk to them as if they are one of your friends.

3. Because they are more holistically-oriented, they will tell you about natural remedies, natural techniques or even simple new ways to think about things to get remarkable progress.

For example, every chiropractor knows about the research study where the basketball players were injured and unable to practice for at least 4 weeks. A traditional medical doctor would say to that basketball player, “Do no practice for 4 weeks or you will have irreparable damage.”

A chiropractor will say, “Did you know that there was a study with injured basketball players which compared those who did nothing to those who imagined they were out on the court practicing. Do you know what they found?

The ones that imagined they were practicing didn’t lose any of their skills and when they got back out there on the court, it was like they never left.”

Tennis elbow patients will have an additional story told to them that helps them realize that by training the un-injured body part, the injured body part heals faster.

As you can see, chiropractors are taught how to inspire their patients, and they use effective methods that speed up recovery in the process.

4. Chiropractors will do anything possible to bring results that insure you won’t need surgery or other invasive techniques. That’s not to say that chiropractors won’t refer you if it’s necessary for your tennis elbow pain; they will.

Many health insurance companies now include chiropractic medicine. Do check with your health insurance to see if you can benefit from a chiropractor for your tennis elbow pain.

While you wait for them to get back to you, start reading the ebook, Tennis Elbow Secrets Revealed, which will give you a headstart on your healing – and amaze your chiropractor about your dedication to get better.

It may be difficult to believe that tennis elbow acupuncture treatment is something that the entire world is interested in. But it’s true.

The World Health Organization is the health authority for the United Nations. Its goal is to step in and be the leader on all global health matters, especially public health matters.

The WHO determines health trends, decides on standards for how different disease should be treated and researched, and is supposed to help out countries when their health needs exceed their resources.

Tennis elbow is a tendonitis disorder that isn’t limited to just America. People of every culture have tendonitis, and tennis elbow may be one of the types prevalent in their society.

The people may not be hitting a tennis ball repetitively but even the act of repetitively carrying water on top of one’s head may be enough to cause a type of tendonitis.

Because the WHO is globally minded and open to other cultures, they realized that the treatments of acupuncture for tennis elbow and acupuncture for tendonitis are performed in over 10 different countries.

After evaluating the studies on it from different cultures, they accepted acupuncture as a valid treatment for tennis elbow in 2003.

How Many U.S. Doctors View Alternative Medicine

This was a good view for the WHO, compared to the view that many U.S. doctors take on alternative medicine of any kind.

You see, the U.S. is pretty snobbish when it comes to medical research. U.S. medical doctors sit around at their conferences discussing only the research studies that are from “peer-reviewed” journals.

If you’re a scientist and you go through all the effort it takes to complete a study and then publish it in a scientific journal that isn’t peer-reviewed, your research won’t mean a thing to U.S. doctors.

They’ll snub you and walk away. The nice doctors may listen to you first, then snub you.

And there’s a problem with this bad attitude. As the scientific community gets larger and larger with scientists collaborating from all around the world, the research from other countries is often not included into these peer-reviewed journals.

The medical docs here in the U.S. don’t believe that anyone in other countries could truly have the upper edge on medicine, or could do research that found something significant.

On the other hand, the American public doesn’t care if research is peer-reviewed or not. All they care about is what works and what could help them get healthier.

Tennis elbow and tendonitis sufferers are open to someone else’s treatments or natural remedies if they’re in another country.

You see, most Chinese research isn’t from peer-reviewed journals which meets the U.S. medical doctor standard.

And this doesn’t make them idiots and their research worthless. They’ve been practicing Chinese acupuncture for over 4000 years. That’s 350+ times longer than the American Medical Association has even been in business.

Acupuncture is used to treat over 200 different medical conditions. Acupuncture for tendonitis is a commonly used treatment – and it works quite well.

Acupuncturists don’t care what the U.S. doctors and scientists think of them.

In fact, this snobby U.S. doctor attitude is really an opportunity for other scientists to excel in the fields of each branch of medicine. It can help make acupuncture for tennis elbow the #1 most sought out treatment worldwide.

Acupuncture For Tennis Elbow Works!

Acupuncturists say that out of all the medical disorders to treat, tennis elbow is one of the easiest to treat. They also report up to a 90% success rate.

In one U.S. study of 22 patients who received acupuncture for tennis elbow, it’s a shame but none of the peer-reviewed journals will ever be able to enlighten their doctor readers about the results.

The study was coordinated by Christine Deignan, M.D. at the Work Fitness Center in Bettendorf, Iowa. She wanted to see if they could save money for insurance companies by using acupuncture for tennis elbow patients.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, when an area of the body is overworked such as the elbow in those with tennis elbow, the person’s energy levels or chi are also overworked.

This causes malnutrition in the area of the tendon and muscle. The same thing is true for any type of tendonitis caused by repetitive use.

The Chinese practitioners increase chi (energy) in the body and nourish the tendons and muscles to get a complete body healing.

Cookbook Medicine Is Always A Problem

In Dr. Deignan’s study, they simply used the acupuncture needles without the nourishment aspect of Chinese medicine. This could be because the WHO guidelines on how a practitioner learns acupuncture are somewhat lame.

The WHO suggests that doctors take an abbreviated course on acupuncture so that they can start using it right away in their practices.

The doctors learn cookbook medicine in order to start making money from acupuncture, in the format of “If the patient has xyz disease, treat these points.”

This is a sure way to deny the physician any insight into how a treatment plan is even created; it doesn’t give them the skills to practice acupuncture with the highest degree of effectiveness.

This same attitude of “If the patient has xyz disease, treat it like this” is what is causing many doctors to leave the field of medicine once the Obama health care plan is initiated.

Acupuncture For Tendonitis Is Generally Successful

Despite the lack of thoroughness in treating the tennis elbow patient, her study showed that 86% of the patients resolved their condition or showed improvement.

Improvement was defined as a patient that didn’t complain about the tennis elbow and also didn’t need painkillers anymore.

The type of acupuncture that was done in this study was with standard needles and electrostimulation of the needles.

But there’s something else you should know about this study. Most of the patients with the tennis elbow were ones that had no relief from any other method. And that alone tells us that acupuncture really does have great merit.

The beauty of acupuncture for tendonitis is that someone doesn’t have to miss work for extended periods of time as they would with surgery.

If your health insurance won’t allow you to see an acupuncturist for your tennis elbow or tendonitis, you may want to get the book, Tennis Elbow Secrets Revealed. This book will show you the home exercises you can do to self-correct your tennis elbow.

Treatment usually consists of cortisone injections that can help relieve the inflammation. Another treatment is a topical ointment made of nitrous oxides. The disadvantage of using either one of these treatments is potential side effects.

The Type of Tennis Elbow Treatment That Works Well

Another part of tennis elbow treatment includes physical therapy emphasizing stretching, massage and ultrasound. And there’s always the standard care of using ice and heat, as well.

One big component of your recovery plan is to strengthen the tendons that are so inflamed. This is done with tennis elbow exercises.

Known Positive Results From This Type of Treatment

In 2009, a study performed in New York City at the Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma found that one way to strengthen the connective tissue in those with tennis elbow was to use a large rubber band that cost very little. This rubber band was more like rubber tubing than a rubber band you place around a stack of papers.  The researchers called it a rubber pad.

When used with standard physical therapy and standard medical care of ice and heat, the band was enough to add increased strength and decrease pain so much that the researchers decided not to let the rest of the control group suffer anymore. They let them know the rubber tubing worked.

photo credit: nismat

Elbow Tendonitis Exercises Will Eventually Relieve Pain

Exercises for lateral epicondylitis won’t work overnight. They must be performed during the day at least a few times. You will have to incorporate time into your busy schedule to overcome tennis elbow!

However, after a few weeks, you will start to notice that you can do things that you really couldn’t do before. You will clearly see a change occurring.

And although it’s difficult to notice the absence of pain, if you really pay attention to pain and even rate your pain during different activities such as brushing your teeth and hair, gripping cups, tennis balls, and a golf club on a weekly basis, the results will become obvious to you.

Wrist Exercises are Included in Lateral Epicondylitis Exercises

When you have tennis elbow, it’s important to use wrist extensor exercises, such as the one below.

Wrist Extensor Exercise 1

With your right hand, clasp the top of your left hand and push the left hand in towards the elbow. You will feel a stretch in your wrist.

Hold the position for a few seconds at first, working up to 10 to 15 seconds. Then let go. Repeat 3 times at one sitting, then another 4 times during the day.

Wrist Extensor Exercise 2

One of the most difficult actions for someone with tennis elbow is to hold a weight in your hand. Think about this for a minute – what is the motion you need for holding a weight in your hand? It is one where your fingers clasp around an object.

You can perform a very similar exercise to strengthen the wrist extensors in your hand and wrist.

Grab a ball with your hand. Make sure your palm faces down towards the floor. Next move your wrist upward as if you were getting ready to throw the ball. Move it upward as far as it will go. Then hold this position for a few seconds.

Next lower the ball slowly towards the original position. Repeat 3 times and then do an additional set of 3 exercises four more times during the day.

Wrist Extensor Exercise 3

Grab a broomstick or a dowel about 5 feet long. Standing, hold the dowel in your hand with an outstretched arm. Your grip should be about halfway on the dowel.

Move the dowel down towards the ground slowly and then up again as if you are pointing the dowel outwards. Repeat about 10 times.

A little bit of pain in this exercise is good, but if the pain is great, do however many repetitions you can and then stop. Later on in the day, try again.

Don’t Just Focus on One Type of Exercise for Lateral Epicondylitis Exercises

There are other muscles besides the wrist extensors that need to be addressed in epicondylitis exercises.

For example, you can’t ignore the wrist flexors, supinators and pronators, and muscles that move the wrist to the left and to the right.

The good news is that when you do wrist extensor exercises, you also do wrist flexion exercises. When you extend your wrist, eventually you have to flex it to get back to a resting position. The same thing is true with supinators and pronators.

Common Sense about Exercising

Whenever you perform elbow tendonitis exercises, make sure that you follow the rules for common sense about exercising:

1. Don’t overdo it! Overdoing any exercise tears the body up. It also creates free radicals that can damage the bones, muscles, and already inflamed tendons in the body.
2. Take it easy on yourself when starting. It’s better to proceed slowly with exercises for your tennis elbow and use the beginning time to give your elbow the message that you really won’t compromise it. This way, your body won’t fear exercise.
3. If you happen to create a lot of pain after exercising, don’t do nothing. Instead, ice the area and take a little extra vitamin C. The vitamin C has been linked with decreased lactic acid after exercise.

There’s a lot more to exercising your body, and to lateral epicondylitis exercises that you should know.

The book I seriously recommend is Tennis Elbow Secrets Revealed which has helped so many people!

Is it something that limits calories? No! Something that eliminates the foods you love? Well, that depends on the type of diet you are eating right now.

What’s On Your Fork is a Cure – or a Killer

If you’re a junk food junkie, the truth is that you are interfering with any attempts you are making to improve tennis elbow. If you are eating three good meals a day but binge on sweets at least a few times a week, again, you are interfering with tennis elbow recovery.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t have an occasional dark chocolate dessert, but it does mean that the excess is far too much to handle when you have lateral epicondylitis.

Chocolate Treats Could Be Devils in Disguise

The reason why is that with tennis elbow, there’s a lot of inflammation. Sugar contributes to inflammation and causes more inflammation in the body than what you had before you eat it.

So what happens is that little chocolate bar that looks so innocent is really like a villain who is stealing your recovery and preventing you from golfing, playing tennis, brushing your hair and teeth, and a lot of other daily activities.

Insidiously, that little chocolate bar is sneaking into your body and causing chaos when you think it s calming you down and making you feel good. It’s a devil in disguise.

By the way, chocolate itself is not a bad thing. Dark chocolate is full of polyphenols that are helpful to the body.

What’s bad about chocolate is that the chocolate manufacturers want to please the masses. And the masses have a sweet tooth. So they add plenty of sugar into their chocolate bars or chocolate delicacies  – and it’s that sugar that is the devil in the chocolate!

If You Love Fried Foods, Do It Right!

Fried foods are another culprit. Take them out of your diet now if you want your diet to help you recover from tennis elbow.

Fried foods – especially those foods fried in restaurants where the oil becomes rancid fast and is used sometimes for a week or more – will create more inflammation in the body.

Whenever something comes into the body that is not good for us, it ends up being broken down in the digestive tract. Little fragments of the bad food do not lose their negative attributes. They are then transported throughout the body and head for the weakest part of the body.

When you have a raging inflammation in your elbow and forearm muscles and tendons, these areas are your weakest part of your body. The chemical fragments from the food will cause MORE inflammation.

How to Fry Foods So They Don’t Harm You

There’s something else that you should know about fried foods:  not all fried foods are bad. Here is a list of guidelines to help you decipher what to eat to help your tennis elbow:

1. It’s the instability of vegetable oils that makes them so dastardly. The chemical bonds within the food create free radicals that damage body parts that are healing.
2. Oils such as butter and coconut oil can be used successfully to sauté and even fry foods. The bonds in saturated fats won’t break down during cooking.
3. To use butter for frying, clarify it. This means melt the butter in a sauté pan, then let it cool. Skim off the lighter yellow part of the butter off the top and discard. This lighter yellow part is what burns during cooking.
4. Fried nuts are probably one of the worst foods to eat. Go for raw almonds, raw walnuts, and pecans instead.

Add the Healing Foods from the Fruit Category

In your diet for tennis elbow, you must introduce the healing foods. These include fruits such as:

• apples, oranges, and other citrus fruits
• apricots, cantaloupe, watermelon, and Crenshaw melons
• star fruit, pomegranates, plums and cherries
• blackberries, blueberries, strawberries and logan berries
• pears, fresh figs, nectarines and peaches
• lemons and limes

Add the Healing Foods from the Vegetable Category

And vegetables such as:

• spinach, kale, and other dark leafy greens
• onions, garlic, leeks, and green onions
• carrots, green beans, broccoli, and cauliflower
• artichokes, okra, parsley, and cilantro
• green peppers, red peppers, and yellow peppers
• chili peppers and hot peppers
• Romaine lettuce, bibb lettuce, red and green lettuce
• tomatoes, eggplant, parsnips and ginger

These fruits and vegetables nourish your body with hundreds of carotenoids as well as vitamins A and C, the primary antioxidant vitamins.

With antioxidants, you can quench the free radicals that contribute to more swelling and inflammation and degeneration in your elbow joint and tendons.

Use Diet as a Primary Treatment for Tennis Elbow

When you want to improve tennis elbow, using diet as a primary mode of healing is often not given any credit. When people look for tennis elbow treatments the last thing on their mind is to eat a certain diet to get better.

In fact, it is one of the most important things to be concerned about. By contributing to inflammation and free radical production by what you eat three times a day, you are attacking your own elbow joint and forearm with every forkful.

Diet AND exercise is a strong component of improving your tennis elbow.

For the exercise part of the treatment, do read Tennis Elbow Secrets Revealed.

Tennis Elbow Existed Before the Turn of the Century

Women and their families learned what to pick from the fields for infections, recovery, strength and endurance, and better memory power.

Back then, it was imperative to know what to do when a family member had sun burn from being out in the garden for far too long or when a child fell off a swing and had gaping wounds.

And they also had to know what to do when the men came back from the fields with tendonitis from repetitive hoeing, raking or chopping down tall plants in the field. Men and women had tennis elbow back then as well as now.

What Do Anti Inflammatory Herbs Have to Do with Tennis Elbow?

Without topical agents sold over the counter, they had to concoct their own remedies from the field. Certain plants had anti inflammatory properties, and as you probably already know, decreasing inflammation is key to healing tennis elbow.

Inflammation brings thousands of inflammatory chemicals into an area that has been damaged, such as your elbow and the tendons surrounding it. With all the extra congestion, it becomes difficult for arterial blood to get into the area with nourishment.

Also, it becomes difficult for blood containing all the waste products – called venous blood – to get out of the area. This is why inflammation interferes with healing.

However, it’s the beginning phases of inflammation that help the body heal. The key point is not to remain in the inflammation phase for too long. If your elbow is inflamed for weeks or months or even years, then your healing is prolonged.

Anti-Inflammatory Herbs Come To the Rescue

Two herbs that have been used for centuries as anti inflammatory agents are turmeric and ginger.

Turmeric (curcumin) can be found in curries used to flavor foods, but to really get the anti inflammatory effects out of the plant, you will need larger amounts than what can be eaten in curries. Read on and later the way to take turmeric for tendonitis will be discussed.

Scientists have agreed on turmeric’s anti inflammatory effects. In one review of the literature that was reported by Oregon’s Health & Science University in March 2011, two doctors did a review of the literature on the effectiveness of turmeric for inflammation.

It’s the Polyphenols in These Plants That Brings the Goodness In

Plants often contain polyphenols that are the active ingredients for the human body. For example, resveratrol found in red wine is a polyphenol.

Capsaicin, helpful in reducing pain even in topical ointments that can be used for tennis elbow, is found in chili peppers. Green tea’s polyphenol is epigallocatechin.

The scientists found that polyphenol curcumin, the active ingredient was found in other studies to be effective for the following disorders:  inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, eye diseases that were associated with inflammation, IBS (Crohn’s disease), polyps, and kidney transplants.

At the end of their report, they commented that curcumin was not beneficial for those with HIV, as if to try to dismiss all the good things that curcumin did.

If this little turmeric plant is so full of anti inflammatory compounds that can help erase the inflammation in the joints of those with rheumatoid arthritis, this is something to shout about and something that gives hope to those with tendonitis.

The inflammation that occurs in rheumatoid arthritis and in tendonitis is the same.

Turmeric Is Of Benefit to Those with Joint Disorders

Another research study, found in the journal Current Drug Targets in March 2011, reported that curcumin has not only anti inflammatory effects but also anti arthritic effects, antioxidant effects, antiviral effects and anti cancer effects.

Curcumin works to decrease inflammation through the cyclooxygenase and lipoxygenase pathways, similar in some ways to omega 3 fats.

So what we have here is plenty of proof that if you take the right amount of curcumin, you just might reduce the inflammation in your elbow.

The right dosage is anywhere from 400 to 600 mg three times daily for two months.

Ginger’s Anti Inflammation Activity Discovered in the 1970’s

Another botanical agent that is helpful for the pain and inflammation of tennis elbow is ginger. Ginger is known for its anti inflammatory effects for decades. The plant works through the cyclo-oxygenase and lipoxygenase system, just like curcumin does.

The connection between ginger and anti inflammation is so good that researchers say it acts similarly to the NSAIDs, (non-steroidal anti inflammatory agents). But without the side effects of the NSAIDs.

In a very interesting study that appeared in the October 2010 Journal of Advanced Nursting, scientists looked at what would happen if ginger was used in a topical compress on arthritic joints of adults.

Ginger had an anti inflammatory effect and also brought heat, pain-killing properties and stimulatory effects as well.

With ginger, the effective dose for those with tennis elbow is 500 to 1000 mg twice daily for at least two months.

Now that you know how to eliminate the inflammation, you are ready for the strengthening of your tendons and the real healing to begin.

Find out how in Tennis Elbow Secrets Revealed.