Help please, severe tendonitis
Hello my fellow Steemians!
I have a bit of a problem which I hope you can help with.
As you may know, I am a welder, carpenter and furniture fabricator. Whilst making my most recent commission I had to spend a great many hours grinding welds. About half way through the project I began to sense growing ache in my elbow and realised that my old enemy tennis elbow had come to visit me once again.
I am now in a bit of a pickle. The furniture/welding/carpentry business is my primary source of income and with this tennis elbow I am unable to work. Any of you who has experience of this condition will know that even brushing my teeth results in stabs of severe pain.
I have conducted an internet search and the most prevalent advice is to rest; good advice you might say, and I agree. However, I have only one arm and live alone so am completely unable to rest my arm 100%.
I bought a strap specifically designed to help with this condition but I haven't yet found a way to put it on, or take it off myself. A friend of mine has put it on for me once or twice but this is not a viable solution long term.
What I would like from you lovely people is information about any home remedies or techniques you may have come across in your varied lives.
I leave you with well wishes and hope that you can help
Reference: Images courtesy of Google
Upvoted and resteemed in case someone else can give more input. I'm terribly sorry to hear of what happened and I apologize for this comment without a suggestion. (I will try and gather information when I get the pc tomorrow - I'm on my phone). And beautiful work. I love the furniture you made. Best wishes. Hang in there
Thank you @unspeakableme
I suffer from constant muscle pains and tendon pains (I've been on steroids for almost a decade) and I've tried yoga stretches to ease some pain. I used a combination of yoga stretches as I can't do most of them. I looked up some videos specific for tennis elbow though I found that this one (
Oh wow. it didn't include what I wrote but only put the video :| I mentioned I have been on steroids for a disorder and I've been on it for about a decade. I have tendon and muscle pains which prompted me to find ways other than massages (I can't tolerate those because of the meds). I found yoga to be helpful. I can't do a lot of the poses so I only do the stretches and I found that this video is almost similar to some of what I do. I also included another video from a PT (checked out her site and it's not bogus) and the one she did in the 2nd half of the video is something that I actually also do. I hope these videos help a bit and do keep us updated with your condition. Get well soon!
Hi again. I appreciate the thought but most of these exercises/stretches simply don't work for me. As I wrote in the post; I have one arm!
Oh! I misinterpreted it as your other arm being the one injured hence only one arm! I'm terribly sorry for my being thoughtless. I will try to find the video I followed before where it can also be adjusted using one arm at a time.
Please think nothing of it my friend :D
Do you know how to do Qi Gong shaking? I've found that it's fixed a reoccurring shoulder injury (tendon, ligament and rotator cuff) and joint issues in my hands. I'll make a post about this since I"ve been meaning to anyway, but here is a link for you in the meantime.
every morning I would suggest slow movements /rotations of your whole body, as we need the body to wake up from 8 hours sleep. starting with your ankles working your way up to your head rotating every part 6 times each. This is called a wake and bake, My mate had heaps of improvements on a similar injury as he was a glass fitter. Drinking more water is essential and also having a lifestyle that promotes healing. one of my blogs I go into fasting and how they can help us with health problems of all areas. let me know what you think as adopting fasting has improved my life significantly all the best.
https://steemit.com/health/@tybow/fasting-and-the-benefits
Hi there! Thanks, I'll take a look.
excellent advice @tybow
First, I like to say the strap that you brought will only help temporary. In the long term...it will make your muscle weaker. What you are having is muscle imbalance. You are ultizing too much of your gripping motion (forearm muscles). To off-set it...you have to do this particular stretch.
In this picture.....I am placing my left hand open and flat onto the wall (Use your arm that is hurting) Make sure your elbow is straight. Then you take your right hand and grab your thumb underneath your arm. I took a picture with my right hand hold camera and not able to hold my thumb. :) Make sure you grab your thumb away from the wall while your other fingers is still flat onto the wall. This will help to balance your muscles. If you can...avoid gripping your hands as much during the days. Also, buy fresh ginger roots (slice it) and boil it with water to drink it. It is an anti-inflammation will help to reduce the swelling and pain. If you like...buy fresh pineapple and eat it. Its great to reduce inflammation as well. Good Luck!
My friend, as I wrote in the blog..... I have one arm!
I appreciate the effort you took to respond all the same.
I do consume ginger every day too, it is great stuff
Thank you
Above is a Qi Gong video showing "shaking medicine" which seems indirect but the way it unblocks the lymphatic, immune and circulatory systems can work wonders. I'm going to do a post on this to highlight a few important points, I've been meaning to and now I have reason! I'll try to do it tomorrow or Monday latest.
Many thanks :D I'll check it out. I just watched the video and am now off to give it a go.
Great stuff, I had a feeling you'd be able to help. So good!
Have a great day
well later in the day than I'd hoped but the post is up and I hope it helps!
https://steemit.com/health/@natureofbeing/my-solutions-for-muscular-skeletal-injuries-fundraiser-for-handsolo
I had a very severe problem with tendonitis in my fingers/wrists while typing/using mouse (I have a desk job) and thought I would have to find a new job. Around the same time I was seeing a naturopath and we happened to do the finger prick food sensitivity test. Came back half the foods I was eating I was sensitive to. One morning I had to do some blood testing which required fasting and went to work without eating. Fingers felt great! Then I had some chocolate (which I tested sensitive too) and shortly after my fingers got inflamed. I cut out chocolate and my usual breakfast and fingers went back to normal! I was shocked. I worked back in the foods and if fingers felt bad again I knew I couldn't eat that food. Later discovered that I probably had leaky gut and what I think caused it: taking iron supplements. Yes iron can do a lot of damage including cause leaky gut. After taking iron supplements, I now get tendonitis when eating chocolate and developed a severe sulfur sensitivity, plus iron feeds pathogens and I have some chronic infections, plus while taking the iron my thyroid started going bad, stopped it and thyroid got better. Long story short, iron is very damaging in pill form, best to get it from grassfed beef liver and sometimes tendonitis is caused by food that is causing an inflammatory response in the body. Also men tend to accumulate iron as they age as they don't have a monthly cycle to get rid of iron. Not saying free iron is necessarily what is causing every case of tendonitis but perhaps some tendonitis (definitely mine) is caused by leaky gut/food sensitivities and in my case I believe caused by damage caused by the wrong kind of iron (damned pills dolled out by damned doctors). Perhaps you could see if you have some particular foods that are driving up the inflammation in your body. P.S. I still can't eat chocolate, but hoping that will change.
Hi @cath.
Thanks for taking the time to help. It is interesting, and logical that what we eat has a direct effect on our health. I generally stay away from supplements and have a pretty healthy diet.
P.S. I do love my chocolate... from time to time of course :D
Yes, you can get a sensitivity to any food, just depends if you have had leaky gut (can be caused by stress, candida, or in my case iron pills which is the toxic form of iron I found out the hard way), then whatever food leaked out whole and got recognized by the immune system now will trigger inflammation (as the blood is not supposed to see whole proteins leaking out from the gut, just digested amino acids). In my case it was chocolate that was causing tendonitis in my hands, but I also noticed when I eat kelp my arms get sore, so I think there is something in chocolate that resembles the proteins in tendons and my body became sensitized to chocolate as it leaked out and now thinks it should attack tendons and I think there is something in kelp that looks like ligaments in arms, now when I eat kelp my body wants to attack that... After stopping my daily chocolate my tendonitis went away completely. I bought a 1/2 liter of chocolate ice cream a few years later and the after eating it 3 days in a row the pain was coming back. I'm doing NAET treatments and maybe it will desensitize me to it.
I would suggest advil. It won't hurt your body if you take two pills for twice a day for a week or even two weeks. The stories you hear about people hurting their kidney and liver are from people who take 8-10 pills/day for months and months. Also drink plenty of water to stay hydrated.
You can also try icing it down.
Thanks for the input. The reason I am against simply using medication is that doing so hides the body's messaging system telling you to rest and as you may have read in my post, using pills meant that I didn't rest and did more damage to the tendons in my elbow.
Well as a future MD I must add something. Taking advil everyday will most likely result in developing Gastric ulcer or duodenal ulcer. So I would suggest taking it up to the month. Take care! xX Karolina
Hi there @xxvjs.
I am in complete agreement with you. I took anti inflam's for a while but knew that it was not a long term solution. The purpose of writing this post was to see if anyone out there had knowledge of ways this condition can be treated without medication.
Best of luck with your studies xx