Tennis elbow or lateral epicondylitis is infamous for seriously debilitating the forelimb movement of millions of people. It has also been the reason why many athletes had to cut their athletic career short, some of which had just peaked in their career. The term is a misnomer though, as less than five per cent of the people diagnosed with this ailment were professional tennis players.

The tennis elbow gets relieved if we give complete rest to the arm and the elbow. However, this remedy is not possible for persons whose livelihood depends on their hands e.g. manual workers, sportsmen etc. Doctors have performed considerable amount of therapeutic research to find credible therapies to relieve this pain and make people suffering from this condition more mobile. All these research has shown that alternative therapy for elbow pain is acupuncture.

In acupuncture it is believed that tennis elbow is caused by liver imbalances. This is a different understanding of the condition as taught to sports physiologists. The sports physiologists thought tennis elbow was caused by overexertion, resulting in shearing of tendons attaching muscles to the bone at the elbow joint.

An imbalance of Chi, the fundamental life force, in the liver is believed, by practitioners of acupuncture, to lead to dehydration of the tendons. With the addition of over-exertion, this dehydration can lead to shearing of the tendons. This shearing of the tendons results in tennis elbow. Acupuncture, as a natural treatment for tennis elbow, rebalances the Chi to keep tennis elbow from recurring.

When you go consult an acupuncture therapist for tennis elbow treatment, he will observe, enquire about you, look at your tongue, feel your pulse, and will also perform palpation. He will then insert needles on particular points of the body or "ashi" on the channel to decongest the channel to facilitate free flow of Chi.

Millions of people have successfully rid themselves of the painful condition of tennis elbow using traditional Chinese therapy. There have been many surveys that have been conducted to prove the effectivness of acupuncture in the treatment of pain.