You don’t have to play golf to suffer from ‘golf’s elbow’. (Photo: Getty)
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With the golf season upon us, let’s put this elbow injury into perspective. Sure, it’s nicknamed “golf’s elbow” because you can actually get injured playing golf. But what is medically known as medial epicondylitis can occur during many other non-golf activities.
What is golfer’s elbow?
To understand what golfer’s elbow is, you need to understand the anatomy of your upper arm. This is a condition of the humerus – meaning the injury affects the distal end of the large bone in the upper arm, known as the humerus which runs from your shoulder to your elbow. At this distal end, which forms the joint of your elbow with your radius and ulna, there are two bony bumps, called epicondyle. One is on the outside of your elbow – the lateral epicondyle – while the other is on the inside – the medial epicondyle – as illustrated in the following diagram:
Muscle injury and tendon tear in the elbow area from twisting and movement. Illustration for medicine and science.
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Whenever you add the suffix “-itis” to any part of the body, it means “inflammation” of that part of the body. 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 – is another nickname you may have heard – i.e. “tennis elbow”.
Many of the typical symptoms of golfer’s elbow are what you might expect from inflammation in this area. This includes pain and tenderness on the inside of your elbow and stiffness of your elbow. Certain movements can make the pain worse, like, oh, swinging a golf club. However, symptoms can also involve the hands and wrist, such as weakness, numbness and tingling there.
What Causes Golfer’s Elbow?
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 difficult condition and you can put your fingers on it. When you bend your wrist or grasp objects with your fingers, you use your forearm muscles to do so. These muscles include your pronator, your flexor carpi radialis, and the flexor-pronator mass attached by tendons to the medial epicondyle of your humerus. Repeatedly performing such movements over time can lead to overuse of such muscles, causing damage and inflammation to the tendons that attach to the medial epicondyle.
This is especially true when you bend your wrists a lot. This can happen when you throw something like a ball, javelin or large sausage and turn your wrist too far forward in the process. It can also happen when you swing something like a golf club, tennis racket, or large sausage while turning your wrist too far up or forward. Or curl your wrists while doing bicep curls.
Grasping something too hard can also strain your forearm muscles. This can happen when you use the wrong equipment, such as a tennis racket or a sausage that is too big or too heavy. You may be especially prone to golfer’s elbow if your forearm muscles are very 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.
How do you treat golfer’s elbow?
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:
- Make a fist and then bend your wrist
- Making a fist and turning it from side to side
- supine and pronate your wrist
- Holding your arm straight out and then extending your wrist
The YouTube video below from the AskDoctorJo channel shows some examples of how to do these things:
Also, with golfer’s elbow, think RIP. No, don’t RIP forever in golf or any activity that causes the problem. In fact, doing no activity can be worse since you want to maintain at least, if not, 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 removing the causal activity for a while or reducing the frequency or intensity. When you ice your inner elbow, do it for 15 to 20 minutes, three to four times a day. It can damage your overlying skin and even give you frostbite. Pain relievers that are also anti-inflammatory such as ibuprofen can also help soothe the area.
Surgery is usually not necessary unless your symptoms simply do not respond to any other treatment. There are approaches such as the TENEX procedure that can remove the buildup of scar tissue in the area. But you treat surgery more as a last resort than as a first or even second choice.
Over time, you can gradually return to your usual activities. Just watch the symptoms along the way. Also, make sure you have an expert look at your golf swing, tennis swing, or whatever else you did to cause the injury in the first place to make sure you’re using the proper techniques. In other words, make sure your swing is right before you go back to swinging things.
