You don't have to play golf to suffer from "golfer's elbow." (Photo: Getty)
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With golfing season upon us, let’s “putt” this elbow injury in the proper perspective. Sure, it’s got the nickname “golfer’s elbow” because you can get indeed the injury from playing golf. But what’s known medically as medial epicondylitis can come about in the course of doing a whole lot of other non-golfing activities as well.
To understand what golfer’s elbow is, you have to understand the anatomy of your upper arm. It’s a humerus situation—meaning that the injury affects the distal end of your big upper arm bone known as the humerus that runs from your shoulder down to your elbow. At this distal end, which forms your elbow joint with your radius and ulna, are two bony bumps, called epicondyles. One is on the outside of your elbow—the lateral epicondyle—while the other is in the inside—the medial epicondyle—as depicted in the following diagram:
Muscle injury and tear in tendon at elbow area from twisting and motions. Illustration about medical and science.
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Whenever you add the suffix “-itis” to any body part, it means “inflammation of” that body part. So, medial epicondylitis or golfer’s elbow is, voilà, inflammation of the medial epicondyle. As a side note, lateral epicondylitis—or inflammation of the lateral epicondyle—sports another nickname that you may have heard of—namely “tennis elbow.”
Many of the typical symptoms of golfer’s elbow are what you might expect from inflammation in that area. This includes pain and tenderness on the inner side of your elbow and stiffness of your elbow. Certain movements may aggravate the pain, such as, oh, swinging a golf club. However, the symptoms can involve the hands and wrist, too, such as weakness, numbness and tingling there.
Why might you have golfer’s elbow symptoms in your hands and wrists? Well, you could say that golfer’s elbow is actually a very wristy situation and that you can put your fingers on it. When you flex your wrist or grip objects with your fingers, you use your forearm muscles to do so. These muscles include your pronator teres, flexor carpi radialis and flexor-pronator mass that are attached by tendons to the medial epicondyle of your humerus. Performing such movements repeatedly over time can lead to overuse of such muscles, causing damage and inflammation to the tendons that attach to the medial epicondyle.
This is particularly the case when flexing your wrists too much. This can happen when you are throwing something like a ball, javelin or large sausage and flip your wrist too much forward in the process. It can also occur when swinging something like a golf club, tennis racket or large sausage while flipping your wrist too much upwards or forwards. Or curling your wrists while doing biceps curls.
Gripping something too hard can overwork your forearm muscles as well. This may be the case when you’re using the wrong equipment like a tennis racket or sausage that’s too large or too heavy. You can be especially prone to golfer’s elbow if your forearm muscles are too weak or tight. This can be a problem if you don’t regularly work to strengthen your forearm muscles or don’t stretch or warm up properly before using your hands and arms.
The aforementioned causes of golfer’s elbow are clues as to how to treat the condition. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that forearm and wrist stretching exercises are key. Here are some examples:
The following YouTube video from the AskDoctorJo channel does show some examples of how to do these things:
Also, with, golfer’s elbow, think RIP. No, not RIP forever to golf or whatever activity is causing the problem. In fact, doing no activity can be worse since you do want to instead at least maintain if not build up the strength of your forearm muscles. If you need more support while doing activities, a brace could help.
In this case, RIP is an acronym for rest, ice and pain relievers. Rest can mean either stepping away from the causative activity for a bit or reducing the frequency or intensity. When you ice your inner elbow, do so at 15 to 20 minutes durations, three to four times a day. Any longer may damage your overlying skin and even give you frostbite. Pain relievers that are also anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen can help calm down the area too.
Surgery is usually not necessary unless your symptoms just don’t respond to any other treatment. There are approaches such as the TENEX procedure that can remove scar tissue build-up in the area. But treat surgery more as a last resort than a first or even second option.
Over time, you can gradually return to your usual activities. Juts monitor you symptoms along the way. Also, make sure that you have an expert review your golf swing, tennis swing or whatever you were doing to cause the injury in.the first place to ensure that you are using the appropriate techniques. In other words, make sure that your swing is correct before getting back into the swing of things.
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