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Torn Rotator Cuff Treatment - Exercise or Rest - What's Best?

By: Nick Bryant

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Both is the right answer but not in the same order. It also depends on how much damage you have done to it. Most cuff tears will respond to rest and exercise but any serious partial tear or full thickness tear may need surgery before any therapy will help.

What is important with any type of torn rotator cuff treatment is to rest and let the injury start to repair itself. Working through the pain of a rotator cuff is likely to leave you needing surgery as you do more damage to the muscles, so rest is the first thing that you need to do.

At the same time as rest, you need to reduce the inflammation before you can think about beginning any kind of exercise. The rotator cuff is a group of four muscles that help to stabilise the shoulder joint by pulling the head of the humerus into the socket of the shoulder joint. They are small but important muscles that surround the shoulder joint forming a cuff of muscle that helps to support it, in doing so they run over and sometimes under the shoulder bones.

Any inflammation to these muscles can cause pain as the inflamed tendon can impinge or catch on bone. A classic example of this is the supraspinatus muscle which runs under the collar bone and the acromion of the shoulder blade. When this muscle swells it can catch on the channel of bone and start to wear or fray. Worst case scenario is that you could end up with a snapped tendon that would leave you needing shoulder surgery.

So you must let the muscles rest. This means avoiding any of the movements that are painful. If your work involves a lot of overhead movement you might need to modify how you work. If you sit at a desk, you might need to change the setup of your desk to avoid reaching or stretching movements with the damaged arm. You might even need to take a few days off to rest the arm properly.

At the same times start to reduce the inflammation. This could be by using non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like Ibuprofen and also by using ice packs on the damaged muscle to help to bring down the swelling. If symptoms persist you may need to have a steroid injection into the muscle to combat the inflammation. Your doctor should be able to do this for you.

Once the muscle has started to settle down you can start simple exercises designed to strengthen your rotator cuff muscles. Do not rush off to the gym thinking that any kind of exercise will do the trick. It won't. Pushing weights before the muscle has healed properly is likely to cause more damage.

Rotator cuff exercises use little or no weight when recovering from an injury. They will start with gentle exercises that should not cause any pain. If you do feel pain or discomfort when exercising stop straight away as this is a sign of further damage being done. It may be that you started exercising too soon.

And don't forget, when your shoulder is fixed and back to its full pain free movement, don't just give up on the exercises. Rotator cuff injuries are common but a lot of them can be avoided by keeping the rotator cuff muscles healthy so just take five or ten minutes a day to keep them happy.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

If you want to know how torn rotator cuff treatment stopped me needing surgery check out my story at my blog myrotatorcuffcure.blogspot.com

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