Sometimes the cause lies elsewhere than expected.
That was my first thought after seeing a patient in the practice for the first time on June 15 with pain on the inside of both elbows. The complaints had arisen about a month earlier, after a lot of heavy lifting.
With complaints such as tennis elbow or golfer’s elbow, the tendons around the elbow are often involved. Reduced drainage of fluid and tension from the arms also regularly play a role, for example at the level of the first rib. But with this patient, something else seemed to be going on.
Although the pain was located around the elbows, the examination pointed more towards nerve-related complaints. In addition, tension was noted in the area between the shoulder blades and around nerves under the left collarbone.
These types of tension patterns sometimes arise after an old fall or an accident. When I asked about this, the patient spoke about a nasty fall during his student days. After a night out, he was riding a borrowed bicycle over a dirt path, with his own broken bicycle over his shoulder. He suffered an unfortunate fall and likely made a significant twisting motion in his back and shoulders.
It is possible that the body adapted to this injury at the time, without immediately causing complaints.
Why then did the complaints emerge right now? Shortly before the onset of the elbow pain, the patient had fallen down the stairs during a move while carrying a microwave. That moment may have strained the body again and activated old tension patterns.
This is precisely why, within osteopathy, we do not only look at the location of the pain, but at the functioning of the body as a whole. The cause of complaints is not always located where the symptoms are visible.
