Home | Fitness | Exercises

A Rotator Cuff Repair Could Be Easier Than You Think

By: Nick Bryant

Read More About Exercises

Rotator cuff injuries are one of the most common shoulder problems. Eight million people in the USA will visit their doctor with a shoulder injury this year and most of them will be for rotator cuff problems. These could be anything froma strain to a full thickness tear.

The good news is that for most people a rotator cuff repair will not involve any surgery. Surgery is usually thought of as the last resort unless your shoulder injury is getting in the way of work, you are keen on a sport or you have a full thickness tear. There is recent research that shows that there are a number of people walking around with torn rotator cuffs without exhibiting any of the usual symptoms. The number could be as high as thirty percent in the over fifties who have a rotator cuff tear that shows no symptoms. This figure could be as high as seventy percent in the over eighties.

Physical Therapy is now the number one treatment for shoulder problems and most cuff injuries respond well to it. The theory, confirmed by recent research, is that a rotator cuff tear does not have to heal completely to become rehabilitated. With twenty two different muscles involved in moving our shoulders there are plenty of muscles around to help a damaged rotator cuff.

The aim of shoulder physical therapy in shoulder injuries is to strengthen all the muscles so that the shoulder works more efficiently. This way other muscles will take the load and allow the cuff to heal.

Therapy for a shoulder injury will include a period of rest to let healing start, treating inflamed tendons with ice and anti-inflammatory drugs at the same time. If you manage to control the inflammation in shoulder injuries you will control the pain. If off the shelf anti-inflammatory drugs are not effective then steroid injections administered by your doctor will kick start the process.

Once the injured muscle has started to settle down and movement has started to return you can start a shoulder specific physical therapy programme to facilitate the rotator cuff repair. This will usually start with simple stretching exercises to improve mobility gradually moving on to low resistance or low weight exercises to start waking up weakened shoulder muscles. The most important thing is that you do not rush things as you need to avoid any painful movements.

Gradually over the next few weeks you can increase the level and variety of exercises to strengthen the shoulder. This in turn, supports the injured rotator cuff tendon and allows it to heal.

These exercises do not involve pushing weights at the gym. Gym work will probably cause more damage. Shoulder rehabilitation exercises focus on flexibility and control before moving on to strengthening exercises. Some will focus on individual muscles and some on groups of muscles but the end result is to strengthen the whole shoulder to support the healing and avoid future injuries..

So if you are worrying about a rotator cuff repair, stop, it is probably a lot easier than you think.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

If you found this article useful and would like more information on rotator cuff repair then check out my site at myrotatorcuffcure.blogspot.com

Please Rate this Article

 

Not yet Rated

Click the XML Icon Above to Receive Exercises Articles Via RSS!
Additional Articles From - Home | Fitness | Exercises
Sign Up for a free account.
Our other websites
All about SEO
Beauty Tips Forum
Submit Articles
Member Login
Link Us
Submission Guidelines
Ezine Notifications
Article RSS Feeds
Sitemap
New Stuff
About Us
Developer
Good shopping portal
Link to Us
Contact Us
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service

counter easy hit

Powered by Article Dashboard