Golfer's Elbow Relief

Transcript

Welcome And What I Treat

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back to the hand to shoulder solution where pain meets its match. I'm Carl Petito. I'm an occupational therapist and a board-certified hand therapist. I specialize in the rehabilitation of orthopaedic conditions that affect the fingertips through the shoulder. Let's talk about golf cruise elbow. It's springtime where I live. A lot of people are raking their lawn, lifting, carrying things, and they're not used to it because it's been a long winter. All of the muscles that close your fingers into a fist, bend your wrist toward your palm, and turn your hand palm down are anchored in to the inside part of your elbow. If you feel the inside part of your elbow, and by the way, if you're listening to this on a podcast while you're driving or doing something else, be sure to watch the video so that way you can see these demonstrations. So if you feel the inside part of your elbow, you'll feel that bony knob right in there. That's called the medial epicondyle. Pete, if you don't mind, it's called the medial epicondyle. And that's that bony knob right there on the inside. That's the anchor point for those muscles. So when they're when the anchor point is getting pulled on and pulled on in the ink ton because you're lifting and you're squeezing, you're raking, and you're shoveling, you're doing all these things, it starts to aggravate the bone itself where the tendon is anchored in, and it also starts to aggravate the tendon. It starts causing tendinitis and then tendinosis, it just starts to become a worse and worse problem. Now, as with anything else, the sooner you can get into the clinic and get it adequately, very thoroughly evaluated, and I do orthopedic tests and find out exactly what muscles are involved, and then really make a tailored home exercise program for the patient. I'm going to show you today some things you can do. Um and this does a sub-substitute coming into the clinic, but here's some easy kind of first aid things that you can do to help yourself decrease your pain. So let's talk about the muscles and the basic mechanics of this. So because those muscles are involved and it's aggravating the bone and the tendon on this side, you want to avoid your really tight grip. If you if you have to cut a wire or pick something up, you know, always try to use two hands or use the opposite hand, just make do the best way you can to not aggravate it too much and keep your pain relatively down low. And then also when you're lifting, most of the time we're lifting palm up when we're lifting real heavy things, that really isolates the problem on the inside part of the elbow. If you can lift more in a hammer position, um that is a little bit better, and that will help this to heal because it will take off some of the stress. So try to lift with your thumb side of your hand facing upward. Now, what you can test on yourself at home is just bend your elbow a little bit, bring your elbow in by your side with your hand palm up and your fingers open. You can put your other hand right on top of your palm and bend your wrist, push your hand down toward the floor. And if you're feeling a firm stretch up through the palmer surface, the palm side of your forearm, then those muscles are really tight and they need stretching. You should stretch 20 seconds, a couple of repetitions, relax again for 20 seconds, three or four times per day. And that will lengthen the muscles in this area. If you lengthen the muscles, now they're not pulling too hard on the cord or the tendon that inserts into the bone at the anchor point, that allows the area to rest. Because you can imagine that if these tendons get really, really tight, it's just simply tugging too hard on where they're anchored into the bone. Now, we don't want to put ice on tight muscles because cold shrinks, and cold will shrink the muscles, which makes them tighter. So let's expand the blood vessels, bring more blood and nutrients to the whole area, and let's loosen up the muscles, literally expand the tissue. We don't want to be aggressive, okay? So I like an electric heating pad on the lowest to medium setting for 15 minutes, two to three times per day. And as a general rule, you can put the heating pad on your muscles two to three times per day for not longer than 15 minutes and not have an inflammatory response. You can overdose on heat, and that will increase inflammation. Always pay attention to the after effect. If you take the heat off, and now, oh, it's more sore, it's more irritated. You're just having an inflammatory response. You're increasing the inflammation. You have to step away from the heat a little bit, you have to uh decrease that. Now, where can we use cold? Because wow, that bony inside part of the elbow is really sore. When I touch it, uh, it's sore even if I'm not touching it. Just stick that under the cold running faucet right there. And a lot of people, I've I have people come into the clinic where they are so painful, so inflamed that they can't even lay an ice pack on there, it just hurts too much. The soft, cold running water right on that will whisk away the inflammation, the irritation, it'll shrink that down nicely, and it only takes 10 to 20 seconds. Cold running water for 10 to 20 seconds, only until deeply cold, and I you'll see me repeat this a lot in my videos, uh, is more effective than an ice pack for 10 minutes. It penetrates better, it's quicker and easier, etc. When should you do that? You should do that midday at a minimum, you know, lunchtime after dinner, before bed. It's quick and easy. Just zap down under the cold running faucet. Also, of course, it goes without saying, make sure you're not resting on your elbows anywhere. If you have armrests on your chair, your work chair, or any other chair, if just look under the chair. There's usually bolts, you can just take them off. I take off all my armrests. If they don't come off with bolts, I cut them off because I've I've had cubital tunnel syndrome, which I talk about in other videos, where I've none this and tingling in the pinky side of my hand. I didn't realize how much I was resting my my cubital tunnel on my armrests of my chair. Also, if you're sitting, let's say you're sitting in your furniture at at home and you find your elbows rubbing on it, it's just sore. You can fold the cloth and stick the cloth underneath your the muscles of your forearm, so now the inside the bone is is not touching anything but air. That that relieves it uh expertly really well. Counterforce straps. So now let's talk about the mechanics of this. So just like the tennis elbow video, which where the muscles are anchored on the outside part of the elbow, on the golfer's elbow, they're anchored on the inside part of the elbow. I like the bandit counterforce strap. And I'll put a link to this on uh uh Amazon uh in the description. So you would put this on and you'd make it pre-firmed. I tell people to just put it on um snug plus a little extra. You don't want to choke off your blood flow and all that and cause problems. Push the skin under there. There you go. So it should be snug. So now more of the I changed the anchor point. So without the strap, all of the all of the tugging is happening here at the inside part of the elbow with the strap on. Now more of the I changed the anchor point. So no more of the pulling is coming from where the strap is and it's allowing this area to rest. So if I have uh you're treating welders and plumbers and construction folks and uh movers and you know, all kinds of people are doing a lot of heavy heavy work, which I'm probably saying. I used to work as a welder and a machinist and an aircraft mechanic, all those things. Cleaner. I've done a lot of different things. So you would put this on only at work to protect the elbow, then when they're done with work, just take it off. Whitest point of the forearm where the muscles are at their widest, that's right where it goes. Easy, and that works as a nice little splint. I don't use this on everybody again. Every situation is different. I people come in, they've been having it for years. We just have to lengthen out the muscles, get this to calm down. It's you know, not it's not you know, cookie cutter, so you you really need an evaluation in the clinic. Uh, check out my website, CarlPotito.com. A lot of good good information on there. Watch other videos, share them with people. There's so many people deal with this. I repeat this stuff all day long in the clinic. And arthritis, tendinitis, you know, what you name it, all this stuff is going. Pete, you know too. All this stuff is going on. Uh, so many people have these things. Share these videos, like it, subscribe. You don't need a whole bit. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.