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Rotator Cuff Exercise Saved Me From Corrective Shoulder Surgery. Should You Be Doing Them?

By: Nick Bryant

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At the beginning of this year I injured my shoulder by tearing one of the four muscles in my rotator cuff. Rotator cuff tears come in all shapes and sizes and can be caused by a variety of different things so I was fairly fortunate in that my cuff injury was only a partial tear not, a full thickness tear.

I lifted a piece of furnitire badly and put too much strain on my shoulder. I felt a sharp pain in the top of my arm and shoulder and fortunately had the good sense to put down what I was lifting. I rubbed my shoulder and carried on but this time I lifted I lifted properly. My shoulder seemed okay, until the day after.

The next morning my shoulder was agony. Trying to lift my arm straight up in front of me, reaching out for anything or even getting dressed all caused me pain. I couldn't even tuck in my shirt without feeling a sharp pain at the top of my shoulder. Over the next few days things gradually stiffened up and the same movements that had hurt became more and more uncomfortable. My shoulder was not only hurting during the day but I was struggling to sleep. When I lay on my bad shoulder I was kept awake by the pain. If I lay on my good shoulder, I had to balance my arm carefully along the length of my body to stop it dropping in front of or behind me as both those positions were painful Life was getting very difficult..

I resorted to sleeping on my back which did nothing for my marriage as I immediately started to snore like a trooper.

In the end, I was diagnosed as having a rotator cuff tear. I had managed to tear my Supraspinatus tendon which runs through a channel of bone just under my collarbone before attaching to the head of teh humerus (upper arm bone). Because it was torn it had become inflamed. Because it was inflamed it was getting caught against the bone every time that I moved my arm in a particular way resulting in the muscle gradually fraying. Surgery was recommended. The idea was to shave away a piece of bone to allow the damaged tendon extra room to move so that it could heal properly. As I was in the UK I had a pinful wait of three months before my surgery date.

I began looking into shoulder injuries and their various therapies and discovered that most rotator cuff injuries are treated without surgery. Allow the muscle to heal with rest whilst treating the pain and inflammation with anti-inflammatory drugs and ice packs and then, once the pain has reduced start simple low weight rotator cuff exercise to build up and strengthen the rotator cuff muscles.

Most important of all, let the muscle rest. If I had carried on using my shoulder normally, I would have been damaging it further every time that I used it. If I had managed to ignore the pain or worked through it I could have eventually snapped the tendon completely. Now that would have needed surgery!

As it was by avoiding any movement that caused pain and by carefully treating the inflammation I gradually improved until I could do very basic easy exercises without suffering any pain. As the exercises strengthened my rotator cuff I regained the strength and movement in my shoulder and now ten weeks on I am pain free with full movement returned.

I'm lucky in that I have an office job. Just by changing my desk layout I could avoid putting strain on the injured tendon. If you have a more physical job you may have to think a bit more about how to avoid using the injured shoulder, but it is vital that you do so as carrying on using it will simply make it worse and all the therapy in the world wont help if you manage to tear it completely. Rotator cuff exercise features in most shoulder therapy courses simply because the strength of the rotator cuff is fundamental to the wellbeing of your shoulders. Even if you have healthy shoulders it is worth spending a few minutes a day keeping these four muscles in good shape.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

Nick Bryant is an older dad to a young family who suffered a shoulder injury which he was told would require corrective surgery. After researching the condition he successfully managed a full recovery with just rest and rotator cuff exercise Read his full story at his blog www..myrotatorcuffcure.blogspot.com

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