| Author |
 Topic  |
|
|
wrldtrv
666 Posts |
 Posted - 05/26/2011 : 15:17:24
|
I managed to ignore this from the time it started about 6 months ago until about 2 weeks ago. It started when I was doing some extra heavy weights in the gym while I was recuperating from a running injury. It's not tennis or golf elbow, but more where top of the forearm where it meets the upper arm (brachio-radialus). It usually only hurts when I externally rotate my elbow, espec when carrying weight, like taking a plate out of the microwave. It hasn't gotten any better or worse all these months, it seems, but gets better/gets worse/gets better...
Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I started paying attention to it and started icing it, doing mild exercises for it, etc, and now it actually seems a little worse, though that could be just from paying attention to it.
I don't know what to think about it. On the one hand, too-heavy weights seemed to initiate it, but it's not healing in the normal way.
Any ideas? |
|
|
art
1903 Posts |
Posted - 05/27/2011 : 05:23:11
|
You're in your fifties wrld, right? I can tell you that I've got at least half a dozen, minor but chronic over-use injuries now. I've a permanently injured bicep tendon for just one example. It happened 5 years ago when I bought a pull-up bar. For weeks I ignored the growing pain, having decided it was TMS. Woops. It's healed substantially, but it's definitely weaker and won't ever be right. I've a bunch more, but too tedious to list.
At a certain point I've had to realize that aches and pains, little nicks and tics, are just part of getting older. If you worry about EVERYTHING, you won't have time left over to enjoy life. It's not interfering with anything in particular right? Your elbow? Forget it is my advice.Maybe it will get better. Maybe it won't. Maybe it's TMS. Maybe it's not...
But you will get older, that I can promise.
|
Edited by - art on 05/27/2011 05:26:36 |
 |
|
|
Javizy
United Kingdom
76 Posts |
Posted - 05/27/2011 : 05:49:51
|
Have you had it checked out? In case you tore something or did some sort of damage that can be treated.
I'm only 25, so I can't speak much about the effects of ageing from experience, but the main idea of Thomas Hanna's book Somatics is that the ideas surrounding ageing are bogus. Giving in to them is like giving into TMS pain - it just makes things worse.
quote:
If our muscles are not regularly used in challenging and skilled activities, they become weaker and less responsive. If our brain cells are not systematically involved in a wide variety of voluntary activities, they deteriorate...Those who believe that they should take it easy as they become older are deluded; they are persons who are surrendering their life functions bit by bit.
How did you treat your arm following the injury? Resting can quickly lead to the brain forgetting how to use the muscles effectively. When this happens, it can stay that way for the rest of your life. In fact, during your experimentations with movement as a toddler, you may have learnt an inefficient way of functioning from the start! Many cases of scoliosis and "one leg shorter than the other" syndrome are examples of this.
The book presents a mindbody approach that allows you to retrain your brain to efficiently use muscles throughout your body. It's well worth a read just for the section on stress. I've only done 3/8 lessons so far, and I've already taken about 10 degrees of spinal arch that contracted muscles in my back were causing.
I really think Sarno should promote this sort of stuff. Solving your mental problems restores homoeostasis, but there's only so much your nervous system can do unconsciously. A true mindbody approach should see you being as conscious of your body as you are of your emotions. |
|
|
|
wrldtrv
666 Posts |
Posted - 05/27/2011 : 20:16:27
|
Hi Art & Jazivy. Art, I generally agree with you about the inevitibility of little aches and pains with aging, but with a nod to you, Jazivy, on your point about people carrying this idea too far. I think that much of this is conditioning. We are led to expect this decline so we don't bother fighting it and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sure, decline is inevitible, but I don't think it has to be as fast as pampered, over-medicated, Americans expect.
Regarding my elbow, I do think that there might have been a real injury, but there is also a heavy dose of TMS. For example, the left elbow was the injured one, yet, yesterday out of the blue, the right one started bothering me! And I can go days w/out even thinking of my elbow and then it becomes an issue again. Yesterday, it was my elbow, today my hamstring. There is rarely a day w/out some symptom. The truth? I think many of my injuries are either completeley psychosomatic, or start out as real injuries and become psychosomatic. I say this because symptoms so often come out of nowhere or after a very minor exertion, and then illogically change in intensity even from minute to minute. Throw in hypochondria, throw in FEAR and catastrophizing about symptoms, and the result is a sloppy, never-ending mish-mash of "injuries" that completely capture my attention and postpone real living. |
|
|
|
art
1903 Posts |
Posted - 05/28/2011 : 08:34:32
|
Sounds like you've got good insight wrld. Now you only have to apply it.
All I know is I've been 60 and I've been 50. 50 was MUCH better :>)
40 seems like an impossible dream. I was literally never hurt in those days. I don't think I had my first running injury until I was 45 or so. |
|
|
| |
Topic |
|
|
|
Elbow Question
