Hey guys, Dr. Axe here, doctor of natural medicine and founder of DrAxe.com. In this video, I’m going to teach you the eight steps to overcome tennis elbow. Tennis elbow is something a lot of people are struggling with on a regular basis. It’s not just tennis players. It can be baseball players, it can be pitchers, other athletes. So again, here are the eight steps you need to follow to overcome tennis elbow fast, including the best diet, supplements, and natural treatments for tennis elbow.

Number one, get more proteolytic enzymes. Now proteolytic enzymes are enzymes that reduce inflammation of the tendons as well as the rest of the body, and you can get this in your diet as well as supplement form. Here are the best foods that contain proteolytic enzymes. Figs contain ficin, which actually is a proteolytic enzyme that reduces inflammation of tennis elbow. So figs are high in it. Pineapples contain bromelain, so consume pineapple. Papayas contain papain. And the best of all is kiwi. Kiwi contains actinidin. So again, get those fruits in your diet on a regular basis, as well as ginger. What I would say would be the top two is buy some kiwis, consume two to three kiwi a day along with ginger. Drink ginger tea, add some ginger to a smoothie.

But again ginger and kiwi contain proteolytic enzymes that reduce inflammation of the entire body, but especially your tendon areas. The next thing here would be peppermint oil. Peppermint essential oil, you can use topically. It has cooling and cooling compounds, such as mentha, and you can mix peppermint oil with just a little bit of coconut oil. Also you could put a dash or two of clover black pepper oil, mix it together. But I would do peppermint and clove. I also love Cyprus oil. Rub those directly on the area of pain three times a day. But making your own sort of DIY pain reliever is a great thing to do. And you can find a recipe for natural muscle cream on my website DrAxe.com, that’s DrAxe.com, or just Google search right now, “Dr Axe muscle cream,” and you’ll find a recipe online there.

The next thing I would say is rest the area. That’s a big thing. A lot of times areas won’t heal because they’re not completely rested. So take some time off, let the area rest and heal. I would recommend two to four weeks, and do other exercises away from that area, things that aren’t going to be irritating the tendon in that area. You want to be really careful in staying away from doing things with your triceps especially can irritate, overhead presses with your shoulders. So again, take some time off. And that leads me to the next thing, do some different exercise, such as yoga, or Pilates, or barre class. I mean go and do something to where that you’re not going to cause more inflammation of that tendon.

Now the next supplement you want to consider taking is an omega-3 supplement, such as a fish oil or a fish roe supplement, something that’s high in omega-3 fatty-acids, EPA, DHA, and ETA that help really reduce inflammation. I recommend, again, taking probably two caps three times a day of a good quality omega-3 supplement that’s going to help reduce inflammation. The other thing I would really consider doing if you’re struggling with tennis elbow is getting something done called prolotherapy or PRP. That stands for “Platelet Rich Plasma.” These are known as regenerative injections. Now, what happens is in PRP is they’ll draw your own blood, they’ll spin it down to where it only contains your platelets and growth and healing factors. So think about this. When you, let’s say you sprain your wrist, and it swells up. What happens is your body starts sending growth factors to heal and repair the damaged ligaments, tendons, and muscular tissue, and heal the joint. Now what happens, though, is your body may only heal it by about 80%, so there’s still some damaged tissue there. It’s not completely regenerated. What happens with PRP and prolotherapy and PRP, for instance, they’ll reinject those growth factors, which will then help your body go from only that 80% total reconstructive healing to 90% or 100%.

So it really helps in regenerating tissues. That’s prolotherapy, PRP and stem cell are all in those areas, but specifically for tendinitis, prolotherapy and PRP are going to be the most effective. So you’re going to Google search PRP or prolotherapy. Let’s say “prolotherapy Nashville” if you live in the Nashville area or “prolotherapy Orlando, Florida” if you live in that area as well. Last couple things here. I recommend you see an acupuncturist. Acupuncturists are great doing things like dry-needling of areas, which are going to help reduce inflammation and tension in that muscular tissue. Also there’s things such as Graston and ART. Those are soft tissue techniques to relax the area. And last but not least, doing exercises. There’s an exercise program called Egoscue, where you do specific exercises to help balance out other muscles. One of the causes of things like tennis elbow, or jumper’s knee, or other sort of tendonitis issues within the body is the overuse of one area compared to another.

So what Egoscue would do is they would look and say, “Okay. We see you’re over utilizing the triceps and the brachial radialis muscle, but you’re under-utilizing maybe it’s the bicep and an area in the shoulder to where there’s pulling.” So think about this. You have one area too weak, one too strong. It’s unevenly pulling certain tendons and putting stress on areas. Egoscue helps even out the muscle. So they’ll have you do exercises to strengthen the area that’s not strong, which balances out the tissues. So Egoscue, you can look up “Dr. Axe Egoscue,” and we have a great article there which sort of explains what you can do. Or you can look up “Egoscue Nashville,” or “Egoscue Dallas, Texas,” or a different area, and you can find a Egoscue practitioner near you as well that can actually help you with sort of that muscular balance. I guarantee if you follow those steps, number one, consume a diet high in proteolytic enzymes, figs, kiwi, papaya, ginger root, pineapple, also lots of vegetables.

So a lot of those fruits I mentioned, a lot of vegetables, that’s going to reduce inflammation. Getting more omega-3s in your diet, wild-caught salmon plus taking a fish roe or a fish oil supplement, getting lots of those omega-3s. Remember the exercise soft-tissue technique, such as, Garston and ART, and then Egoscue. If you follow some of those tips I just shared with you, you’re going to see results with getting rid of tennis elbow fast. If you want more in-depth information on how to get rid of tennis elbow, you can go to my website DrAxe.com. That’s DrAxe.com. Or just look up “Dr. Axe tennis elbow.” You’ll find my article there on Google, which goes through these steps and a whole lot more on how to get rid of tennis elbow fast..

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