Beating Tendon Pain

Have you ever had tendon pain? These disorders can occur in many tendons around our body including the Achilles, knee, hip, shoulder and elbow (golfers or tennis elbow). They can be very painful and disabling, but how do we treat them?

WHAT DOESN’T WORK?
Anti-inflammatories may be beneficial in the early stages to settle pain and bursitis but long term use of anti-inflammatories including cortisone injection has very limited evidence. Because tendon pain, also known as tendinopathy is not an inflammatory process it is hard to justify use of anti-inflammatories and in fact repeated cortisone injections may weaken the integrity of the tendon.
Stretching used to be a common treatment for tendon pain but in actual fact may be counterproductive in the natural healing process of the tendon and may cause more pain.

WHAT DOES WORK?
Exercise!! As usual exercise comes to the rescue. The most important thing you can do for your painful tendon is to use appropriate exercise. This might mean temporarily pausing irritable exercise and instead doing specific rehabilitation to improve the integrity and natural healing of the tendon. It may also be necessary to address biomechanical factors that are putting additional load or compressive load through the tendon.
For more information about tendons book in to talk with one of our friendly and experienced physiotherapists.