Video Transcript Below
Let's take a moment to talk about your elbow pain, your wrist pain, your hand pain. The kind of pains that tend to happen as a result of repetitive stress or repetitive strain injuries. You may know some of these terms.
You may have heard of something like tennis elbow pain and discomfort there on the outside of the elbow. Golfer's elbow on the inside of the elbow, carpal tunnel syndrome, which happens right in here, but can lead to things like coldness in the hand, tightness in the hands, sometimes numbness. All of these types of injuries are repetitive, stress or repetitive strain injuries, and they happen when you are doing an activity. A lot of it that maybe you haven't done much of in the past, or you already do it, but you're doing much more of it.
Or there's more strain, there's more activity and it could happen for any reason. It could happen because you are maybe getting back out on the disc golf course, like these folks are here again and maybe they haven't been out there in a while, but they're back and there's lots of flicking of the wrist and throwing this way, and that way, and your arm just isn't used to it or you could be somebody who is doing a DIY project around the house. Maybe you're working on putting in some new flooring in the house, or working on fixing a toilet, or a sink, or you're working on fixing your car, or you're a rower and you haven't been out on the water in a while and you're back and there's lots of flicking of the wrist .
As you get that blade out of the water and this type of pain, this type of discomfort can manifest itself in so many different ways, but it all comes back to discomfort. Why does this happen? Well, you know, there's a lot going on from here to here. A heck of a lot and if you have really big muscles that are supporting your big joints, like your shoulder, like your hips and even lots of muscles around your trunk. But when it comes down your arm, you have much smaller muscles that are much longer, for example, out of the wrist lots of these.
This movement here is actually controlled by muscles that start way up here, so you can imagine if you're doing something that requires a lot of repetitive turning like you're turning a screwdriver or maybe you're trying to lift and move something into an awkward place. You're placing a lot of strain across the elbow and over time as that muscle and those tendons, they work in a very heavy load. Maybe they're jumping over a bony bump that you have on the outside, or even one that you have on the inside. You know eventually, it's gonna start to get really uncomfortable.
When the fire starts in those muscles and tendons, it's hard to get it to go out. Now, let's move down to the carpal tunnel. And it's called the carpal tunnel because, as you have a bunch of tendons and some blood vessels and nerves that are working their way out into your hands, they actually have to go through this sort of square shaped tunnel, with a strap over the top, right out through there, that allows you to move your fingers and that's a lot of stuff. It's packed into a really tight little space, and so just like, with the elbow, if you're doing a lot of work, and it's very repetitive and there's some strain, that happens, because well it's a load that those tendons may not be ready for. Things are going to start to get a little bit inflamed, a little bit irritable and because you're enclosed in that tight tunnel right in here it may start to swell.
When things start to swell it doesn't move so well and if one thing is unhappy, everything is unhappy. What do you do about that? Well, the first thing that we want to do anytime there's any sort of a tendonitis or tendinopathy, or especially, if you're starting to get some numbness that feels like it's happening down here in the arm is we need to try and start to calm down and put out the fires, and what that means is from the activities that you're doing is we want to think about how can we actually modify the activities? That's the first thing we want to do.
Can we modify the activity to make it so you can still do it because you know you still may have a deadline or you really want to get out and continue to play and participate, or you know there's something in the house that needs to be fixed, so can you modify the way that you're doing it maybe choose a different tool or try and get leverage on the activity in a little bit different way so it just doesn't hurt as much? That would be the first thing we want to try and do.
The second is, is how do we do self-treatment, and what does self-treatment look like? Well depending on what it is that we're working with, whether it's tennis elbow, golfer's elbow, carpal tunnel syndrome. Maybe some burning at the base of the thumb. Self-treatment is about again trying to put out the flames, and we have some very simple, very straightforward things that you can do that involve maybe use of ice or heat. Some gentle stretching now keep in mind those two alone they aren't going to solve the problem. They may help to calm it down a little bit, but as soon as you start working again, it's going to start hurting.
So that's why we also want to include some very specific exercises that remind those tendons and remind those joints and remind those muscles and those nerves and their blood supply, the proper way to work. So that way, what you can do is, as you're retraining those muscles how to work, that is a natural anti-inflammatory, and each of these joints has a very specific way that you can do some of those exercises to help you feel better and help you move better now.
The last thing that you can use is some sort of a splint, so say, for example, we're talking about tennis elbow or golfer's elbow in particular. There are some straps that exist that allow you to actually place a little bit of compression, a little bit of pressure over the tendons, and what that does is that basically helps to divert the strain, change the way that it strains those tendons. So you can still use them, but it's going to be a little bit less aggressive, a little less painful on those particular tendons that are hurting really bad, and there are special ways that we can put those on and we're going to try this in the next video.