hello my name is Michael Palfrey and I'm an osteopathic field well-being center I'd like to talk to you about tennis elbow otherwise known as lateral epicondylitis tennis elbow is a pain that's experienced on the outside of the arm and can also include some stiffness and weakness in the forearm it's often caused by repetitive actions or overusing the muscles in the forearm things that can cause turns over include playing tennis or gripping objects work too tightly or having too small a grip on the object that you're gripping for instance a screwdriver or a tennis racket one of the things you can do to alleviate tennis elbow is purely and simply to modify the activity that you're doing so either do less gripping grip this tightly or do less of it in any one time or on occasions I suggest that people make the thing that they're gripping slightly bigger so wrapping an extra bit of tape around it the the racquet handle all the screwdriver to make it slightly bigger often alleviates the pain if that doesn't work then there are exercises you can do you can apply ice to the affected area or you can have some Osteopathy or physiotherapy which can be very effective in alleviating the symptoms if these things fail people are often then advised to maybe have a steroid injection into the affected area before you do that I would advise anyone to consider using shock wave therapy shock wave therapy has been extensively researched and there is quite good evidence to suggest that it can be highly effective in alleviating tennis elbow certainly I've had experience of treating a number of patients with tennis elbow who in conjunction with the program of exercises and maybe a specialist support on the arm do experience a significant reduction in their symptoms so if you have tennis elbow please call feel well-being center and we'll see if we can help [Music]