If you suffer from tennis elbow (lateral epicondylitis), listen up. A new, more effective, treatment may help you get faster pain relief. A study presented at the annual American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine meeting showed that adding one simple home-based exercise to traditional tennis elbow treatment resulted in immediate and significant improvement in tennis elbow pain. The results were so dramatic, in fact, that the researchers stopped the study because they wanted everyone in the study to get this more effective treatment.

Eccentric Wrist Extensor Exercise
The exercise that had this dramatic effect was a simple eccentric wrist extensor movement using a flexible rubber bar. The exercise involves twisting a rubber Flexbar with one hand and resisting the bar as it untwists using the injured arm. The result is an eccentric contraction (movements that cause muscle to contract while it lengthens) of the wrist extensor muscles on the injured forearm. Eccentric contractions increase tension on a muscle as it opposes a stronger force, which causes the muscle to lengthen as it contracts.

In this study, the patients performed 3 sets of 15 repetitions per day and increased the intensity at regular intervals.

If you have tennis elbow, ask your physical therapist to show you how to do this exercise at home.

Compare prices: Thera-Band FlexBar

_Source

Tyler TF, et al. Addition of a novel eccentric wrist extensor exercise to standard treatment for chronic lateral epicondylitis: a prospective randomized trial. American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine, 2009 annual meeting.

Do you have a favorite way to warm up, cool down, or prevent sports injuries? Share your injury prevention tips with other sports medicine readers.

Most pro and recreational athletes will have to deal with some aches, pain or other injuries over the years. Some injuries will require the care of a physician or another specialist for proper diagnosis and treatment. Choosing a provider is often one of the most difficult parts of dealing with an injury. These tips may help you decide who is right for you.

Over the counter sports creams containing salicylates as the main active ingredient are not effective and are, in fact, a waste of money. This is the conclusion of Oxford biochemist Andrew Moore, who lead a comprehensive review of all studies on the topic.

The review, published in the July Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, found little evidence that over the counter sports creams, such as Aspercreme, Ben Gay and Icy Hot have any effect at all on muscle aches and pain when compared with a placebo (sham treatment).

So, What Does Work?

According to Moore, some topical local anesthetics work. Topical capsaicin works, and some topical NSAIDs work for strains and sprains.

What Do You Think?

Are Sports creams effective? Are they a waste of money?
Share your opinion about sports creams.

Also See:

• Over-the-counter pain medication
• Sports creams
• Newwise Story about the study results.

_Source

_{Matthews P, et al. Topical rubefacients for acute and chronic pain in adults. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. Issue 3, 2009. [http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab007403.html].}