This week’s article will discuss one of the more prevalent injuries in the arm. It is called lateral epicondylitis but is commonly known as “tennis elbow.” During physically challenging tasks at home or at work, the muscles in your forearms can be exposed to more physical stress than they are accustomed to. This can lead to problems, particularly if specific movements of the forearm are done repetitively.

Imagine it is the weekend and the weather is just right to finally get started on painting your house. Knowing that our weather can be unpredictable at times, you want to get as much accomplished as possible. You soon realize that there is a lot more area that has to be painted with a brush than expected.

After a few hours of repetitively stroking the paintbrush up and down, the outside part of your elbow starts to fatigue and burn slightly.

However, the weather is still nice and you wanted to get as much done as possible, so you keep going.

The end of the day comes and you are proud that you finished over half of the entire house all by yourself.

Exhausted after a long, hard day, you go to bed. That night, you roll over in bed and feel a sharp pain at the outside of your elbow. You then notice that your wrist can’t fully bend backwards because the muscles at the back of the forearm are very tight and sore.

While massaging these muscles, you touch the bony bump at the outside of the elbow. This produces a very sharp pain and makes you jump. All night long, the elbow, forearm, and sometimes even the upper arm ache.

The next day, the pain and weakness are even worse and you can’t use the forearm at all. You already had an appointment that afternoon with your chiropractor for the low back injury you were just getting over from shoveling improperly and for too long on the weekend prior, so you ask him to have a look at it.

After a quick examination of your arm, he asks what you were doing when this started. You show the stroking motion you were doing with your forearm all the previous day and he cringes. He tells you the pain and weakness is from lateral epicondylitis.

Lateral epicondylitis — or tennis elbow, as it is commonly called — is an irritation of the tendons of the forearm where they attach to the outside of the elbow.

Each muscle in the body ends by forming a tendon. The tendon is what attaches firmly to the bone. When a muscle contracts, it pulls on the tendon, which in turn pulls on the bone. This is how we move all our limbs.

If the muscles of the forearm are repetitively contracted, as when you are painting, the tendons are also being pulled repetitively. If done long enough, the end of the tendon that attaches to the bone experiences microscopic tears. The muscles become very tight and the actual spot where the tendon attaches to the bone will be very painful to touch. This can occur from even just holding your wrist back in one position for long periods of time, as when using the mouse on a computer incorrectly at work each day.

If you think that you have lateral epicondylitis, do not ignore it. See your chiropractor right away before it becomes chronic.