Million of people are affected by a debilitating injury of the forearm know as lateral epicondylitis, or tennis elbow. Tennis elbow has cut short many athletes careers, sometimes at the peak of their careers. Even though the ailment is know be the name tennis elbow less the five percent of all the diagnoses are for professional tennis players.

Complete rest relieves tennis elbow. But it is difficult for manual workers and sportsmen to remain on rest for so long. All over the world a lot of therapeutic Researches are going on to find a suitable remedy for tennis elbow. Alternative therapies are also being looked into as a way to address this issue. Acupuncture is one such alternative therapy for elbow pain which promises a way out of this.

Acupuncture gives a different reason for tennis elbow. When imbalances in the liver is held responsible for tennis elbow by acupuncture sports physiologists were surprised since they have been of the opinion that overexertion resulting in shearing of tendons which attach muscles to the bone at the elbow joint is the reason for tennis elbow.

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.

An acupuncture practitioner will perform diagnosis of the symptom and the underlying balance to being an acupuncture treatment. Acupuncturists use palpation, questioning, physical examination, auscultation and olfaction for arriving at a diagnosis. As per his or her diagnosis, he will then insert thin, rounded metallic needles at various "ashi", or pain gates of the relevant channel to remove the imbalance by allowing free flow of "Chi", the life energy.

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.