“When will my Tennis Elbow go away?”
“How long will it take to heal?”
The answer, unfortunately, is that it won’t just go away, and it will never heal back to 100%. That’s just not the way the body works.
Most people notice some ache and pain, but forget about it when it goes away. Then it returns, but goes away again. Then it comes back, and stays a little longer. This happens a few times until the ache and pain become a constant issue.
And for some reason we continue to think that the pain will just go away eventually, that we will ‘heal’. Even though the pain has constantly gotten worse, we still think that our Tennis Elbow will eventually just go away.
There are two very important reasons to stop ignoring your pain and start doing something for it.
Important Reason #1. If you keep ignoring the pain up by your elbow, it will continue to get worse, either quickly or slowly.
While the human body has an amazing ability to heal from trauma and injury, it can only do so much. Tennis Elbow is an ongoing, progressive mechanism that comes on over time. The nervous system fights it off as long as it can, but then fails and you start to feel pain. Then it wins again for a while, you feel better….until you start to feel pain again. Your nervous system tries as hard as it can, but will eventually lose.
The thing about this kind of pain that is confusing to us is that Tennis Elbow is not an actual injury.
Unless you have severe tendonitis of the Lateral Epicondyle or a rip or tear, there is no real damage. So there is no injury to heal, and the body doesn’t know how to successfully deal with the pain. It needs the RIGHT kind of help.
If you continue to ignore your symptoms and your problem, you will continue to have more and more pain.
Important Reason #2. If you keep ignoring the pain up by your elbow, your physical structure will change more and more in a negative direction.
The real problem with Tennis Elbow is one of increasing muscle and connective tissue tightness, and increasing and chronic Inflammation.
Due to using our forearm muscles over and over, whether from Repetitive Motion or Repetitive Strain at work, or from a sport or hobby, our muscles get tight. Eventually, they stay tight. This means they get less circulation thus less blood and nutrition. The entire ecology of the structure becomes less and less optimal. Then the nervous system decides that there is a problem, so it tightens the muscles up even more and kicks in an Inflammatory response with the intention of protecting you.
Unfortunately, that just makes everything worse, slowly over time.
Do you want your structure to slowly become like a dry, crunchy, half squeezed, sponge. Do you want to have more and more pain from your Tennis Elbow? Then you may want to stop ignoring it, stop hoping that it will just go away, and start doing something about it.