by Andre Sanchez

I am sure that there are many golfers out there just dying to know how to cure golfer’s elbow. This is a condition that can be very serious to golfers and can take a long time to overcome, and the best way to overcome it is to give up playing golf!

Medial epicondylitis sounds like a very serious condition, and it is indeed a serious condition for golfers. It gives rise to great pain when you squeeze your hand in a way that causes the tendons in your forearm to move: even shaking hands is painful.  The cause is a bony lump on the inside of your elbow where the tendons attach to the muscles that move your hand.  Hence the pain with the handshake.

This bony bump is called the medial epicondyle, and golfer’s elbow has the posh name of medial epicondylitis. The bony lump can get painful itself, but the main problem is the pain in the tendons that go all the way down your lower arm into the wrist and to the fingers that they control. If you hold your wrist tight, the clench your hand, you can feel these tendons move.  These are the ones attached to the medial epicondyle, so explaining the pain.

It is a bit like repetitive strain injury (RSI) and is basically caused by overuse of the tendons of the forearm, but can also be brought on by a sudden jerk to the arm, such as striking a rock or tree root with a full blooded shot. You can also get it by chopping wood and hammering nails that involve repetitive use of the tendons, and sudden and abrupt stopping. It is a very similar condition to tennis elbow, brought about by continual hitting of a fast moving tennis ball with a racquet, and the resultant stresses placed on the tendons and the epicondyle that have to absorb the impact. It is a combination of a repetitive strain injury and an impact injury.

It can affect your whole arm that feels very stiff and very painful, and all you can do is stop the activity that has caused it. First aid treatment such as rapid cooling with ice packs can help, as can anti-inflammatories such as aspirin since it appears to occur as a result of the immune system reacting against the damage and activating the inflammatory response. Cortisone injections can help, but the best remedy is to take the anti-inflammatories and rest.

It is possible that a diet rich in vitamins A, C and E could help, but this has yet to be proven.  These are antioxidants that can help to relieve inflammatory symptoms. However, the traditional treatment is to strap up the elbow, give the game up for the season, and rest until the next comes along. Surgery can work, but it involves shaving the bone and removing any of the affected tissue.  You want to avoid that and luckily it is needed in less than 20% of cases.

You can also find some treatments online for golfer’s elbow, and you might be tempted to try one or two if you are desperate.  Whether they work or not only you will know when you try them, but it would be surprising if there were any miracle cures out there that the medical profession were unaware of (unless they are trying to hide something from us).  Were I a physician I would buy a few on expenses to determine if they were effective or not, and then publish my findings.

Once the pain has gone, you should start exercises to get you fit for golf again.  Don’t throw away the sling and rush to the course, because you will cause even more damage to your body.  You have to get back to the game slowly and use some stretching and strengthening exercises to get you fit enough to play again. Golfer’s elbow takes a long time to recover from, so don’t try to rush it or you will be off the game for longer than you should be.

When you start playing again, the condition can be so traumatic to a keen golfer that you might be afraid of it recurring.  However, if you take the right steps then you should be fine.  These involve getting stronger in the arms and improving your rotational strength.  You should also improve your over-all game so that you hit less divots, strike fewer trees and don’t get into the heavy rough where you might find all these rocks that you keep hitting.

Follow all of that advice, and you won’t need to know how to cure golfer’s elbow because you won’t have it again.  Do these things before you get it, then you will be unlikely to suffer the pain of being unable to play for several months – the pain of the actual condition is nothing compared to that!

How to Cure Golfer’s Elbow was originally published at http://www.golfplayernow.com