Injury To The Elbow While Lifting Weights
March 7, 2011 by Dr. Marc Darrow, M.D.
Filed under Elbow Pain
Discussions from our Radio Show:
Question: I was lifting weights a number of months ago and felt a severe pain on the inside of my elbow. It’s getting worse, the pain is right on the bone.
Dr. Darrow: Pain on the medial or inner part (facing the body) of the elbow usually is called “Golfer’s Elbow” as opposed to “Tennis Elbow” which is pain on the outer side of the elbow. It’s called Golfer’s Elbow because golfers tend to flick their wrists a lot and the tendon that holds the muscles to the elbow joint gets worn out or stretched out.
When you do heavy weight lifting you are going to build up your muscles, but the tendons and ligaments that go along with those big muscles, that pull on the joints, don’t build up as quickly. So we have a huge muscle pulling on a “string,” that is these small ligaments and tendons and ripping them, we see this type of injury all the time.
What we do is use Prolotherapy around the elbow. We are trying to strengthen the tendon that attaches to the bone. There was a study done before and after Prolotherapy in the ligaments of the low back which showed a 50% growth of the ligament itself and a 200-400% strength growth. So that is what we are doing, growing more tissue, strengthening the area.
