With spring in the air and warmer temperatures, many of us are getting outdoors and participating in our favourite sports, such as tennis, golf, and baseball. These activities can be associated with overuse of our elbows causing pain and discomfort.
Most elbow pain results from overuse injuries. Many sports, hobbies and jobs require repetitive hand, wrist or arm movements. Elbow pain may occasionally be due to arthritis, but in general, your elbow joint is much less prone to wear-and-tear damage than are many other joints.
A few of the common causes of elbow pain include the following:
1. Tennis elbow – a painful condition that occurs when tendons in your elbow are overworked, usually by repetitive motions of the wrist and arm.
The pain of tennis elbow occurs mainly where the tendons of your forearm attach to a bony bump on the outside of your elbow. Pain can also spread into your forearm and wrist.
Despite its name, most cases of tennis elbow occur in people who don’t play tennis. People whose jobs feature the types of motions that can lead to tennis elbow include plumbers, painters, carpenters and butchers.
2. Golfer’s elbow – a condition that causes pain on the inner side of your elbow, where the tendons of your forearm muscles attach to the bony bump on the inside of your elbow. The pain may spread into your forearm and wrist.
Golfer’s elbow is similar to tennis elbow, but it occurs on the inside, rather than the outside of your elbow. And it’s not limited to golfers. Tennis players and others who repeatedly use their wrists or clench their fingers can also develop golfer’s elbow.
3. Pitcher’s elbow – an injury mainly affecting children and rapidly growing adolescents involved in throwing sports such as baseball, football and javelin.
Overhand throwing places extremely high stresses on the elbow. In baseball pitchers and other throwing athletes, these high stresses are repeated many times and can lead to serious overuse injury.
When athletes throw repeatedly at high speed, the repetitive stresses can lead to a wide range of overuse injuries. Problems most often occur at the inside of the elbow because considerable force is concentrated over the inner elbow during throwing.
In many cases, overuse injuries develop when an athletic movement is repeated often during single periods of play, and when these periods of play – games, practices – are so frequent that the body does not have enough time to rest and heal.
The pain of elbow injuries doesn’t have to keep you off the court, course or field, or away from your favorite activities. With rest and appropriate treatment from our therapists, you can get back into the swing of things.
Call our office at 403.556.9911 to book an appointment with one of our skilled therapists to help you get back to your active pain-free lifestyle.
