Nothing emulates summer better then going out to the ball park and watching your favorite team, slug it out against a rival. I mean, how much better can it get than watching a ball game and sampling the hotdogs, hot-fresh-peanuts, or cracker jacks? Well, the obvious answer is Playing the Game Yourself!
The crack of the bat, the sound of that ball, nesting in your glove as you catch it, there’s nothing better to someone who loves the game. Except when you feel a few muscle aches and pains that you don’t remember experiencing last year when you played. Well, we are all getting a little older and as your body ages, so comes the realization that our bodies aren’t as limber as they were, once upon a time.
There are a couple of injuries that crop up with people who play the sport of baseball. One of the most common for pitchers is the Rotator Cuff injury, but we’ve already covered that in a previous post.
The next most common injury is the UCL Injury:
The ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) is another area that is commonly injured in baseball pitchers. The UCL acts as a stabilizer for the elbow, preventing the joint from bending sideways, and is often stressed with repetitive throwing motions. A UCL injury can cause pain and tenderness on the inner portion of the elbow. The elbow may also feel stiff, making it difficult to fully straighten the arm. In some cases, a UCL injury can cause numbness or tingling in the ring and little finger, and grip strength may be affected.
In some cases, a UCL injury can be treated with nonsurgical methods. According to John Hopkins, the UCL injury can be treated without surgery if your work or leisure activities do not require much strain being put on your elbow. The most widley non-surgical related treatments are:
Rest and Ice Treatment, combining Anti-inflammatory medications with monitored Physical therapy to strengthen the elbow muscles and improve the range of motion, will help speed the recovery process.
Again, by using the cooling bandage by Physicool, it greatly reduces swelling and inflammation, reducing pain, while helping speed up the recovery process. The application of Physicool’s Cooling Bandage reduces the tissue temperature around the injured site resulting in constriction of the local blood vessels; therefore reducing blood flow and swelling, treating the injured area. Reducing the amount of swelling early on will reduce the pain as the nerve endings at the injury site will not be as compressed. Therefore, the sooner Physicool is used to treat a baseball injury, the greater the benefit and the speedier the rehabilitation.