Tennis Elbow and the Use of Cortisone Shots

One recommended treatment for tennis elbow that does more harm than good is the use of cortisone shots. While these shots will offer an almost instant pain relief in most case, the long-term outcome is not always that positive.

Cortisone shots have a less positive side-effect and physicians often fail to share this with their patients. These shots can actually slow down tissue healing and weaken tendons long-term, which is of course the opposite of what we want to achieve.

However there is another downfall to using cortisone shots in the case of tennis elbow injuries. Once the patient has received these shots, they will feel an instant pain relief and while you might think this is positive, it is actually a negative thing.

Our bodies naturally are designed to do what is best for us and pain symptoms should not be taken lightly. In the case of tennis elbow pains our body is telling us that the associated muscles are not prepared enough to deal with the daily stresses we put them through.

So when using cortisone shots you actively ignore these signals and put more stress on your forearm muscles while what they really needed was a period of rest. More stress is what makes the problems resurface as soon as the effect of the cortisone has worn off and in most cases these symptoms not only return, they will return in a heavier form, causing even more patient to the patient.

Now that you have seen why you should stay clear from cortisone shots, what to do when you still suffer of tennis elbow pain?

Instead of trying to hide symptoms by pain medication, the real solution is to look at the cause of the problem, in this case the state of the muscles in your forearm. If these muscles are not prepared for the daily stress, the best thing you can do is to make sure they are prepared for the work they need to do and the one way to achieve that is by doing some simple tennis elbow exercises that you can do in the comfort of your own home.

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