Pain in Shoulders

Muscle Injury

Tags: Injury, Muscles
Posted in Uncategorized on May 11th, 2009 by Andreas Xavier

It does not take a tear in the tendons to define a muscle injury.  Muscle strain or muscle stress is one of the very common muscle injuries that could happen to anyone. Holding any one muscle at a particular position for an extensive time will indeed risk you to having muscle injuries.  A simple act of carrying your backpack to school everyday would be good enough to start the journey of muscle injuries. This continuous act would tire and strain the shoulder muscles.

Even slouching for long periods of time would cause the neck muscles to work harder in order to support the weight of the head. This act narrows down the space where the rotator cuff tendons pass through in the shoulder joint thus straining the muscles between the shoulder blades.

Muscle sprain usually occurs when the muscles are excessively pulled. Usually this occurs when the muscles are torn or damaged. This happens when extreme force is implied to the shoulder joints. Athletes are the common victims of muscle sprains. Baseball, tennis, basketball and weight lifting enthusiasts, just to name a few are those who would have a higher risk in suffering from this type of muscle injury. Repeated actions would cause repeated sprains in the same joint thus causing the joint to be less stable and more prone to future sprains.

A rotator cuff tear is a form of muscle injury. This happens when one or more of the four muscles that form a covering around the humerus are torn. Most tears occurred are due to overused muscles and tendons over a period of years. Rotator cuff tear is a common cause of shoulder pain amongst adults, usually affecting people over the age of forty.

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Rotator Cuff Injury

Tags: Injury, Rheumatoid Arthritis
Posted in Shoulder Pain on April 10th, 2009 by Andreas Xavier

The rotator cuff is made up of a group of four muscles that connect the humerus to the shoulder blades.  This connection helps in the movement of arm lifting and rotating of the head. This group plays an important role to the upper body movement however it is frequently easily injured. One of the symptoms to such injury is having pain in the shoulder.

There are 2 types of rotator cuff diseases. These diseases may occur alone or in combination. Bursitis is redness, soreness and swelling of the bursa sacs and tendonitis is an inflammation of a tendon.

Inflammation that is resulted from rheumatoid arthritis may cause both bursitis and tendonitis to occur. A bursitis is most often the victim of an overused shoulder, which affects the joints and related muscles. When a shoulder is overused, irritation to the rotator cuff would lead to inflammation and impingement. Scoliosis might also cause bursitis although it is considered to be an infrequent cause.

When infected by tendonitis, inflammation occurs to the tendon. The sac of fluid, which serves as a cushion to the tendon is then damaged and the rotator cuff would thicken and would cause a squeezing of the rotator cuff. Usually the tendon experiences a sensation of being pinched by the surrounding structures of the shoulder joints. Most often, the tendon is most easily injured due to its position between the bones.

The shoulder would also be inflicted by pain when the rotator cuff tears. This usually happens when an injury is inflicted to one of the tendons. There are many forms of injury to the tendons but one of the common occurrences is having a hole in one of the tendons. This usually happens when the tendons in the rotator cuff are overused or it could be a wear and tear from aging or accidents. Patients of rotator cuffs injuries will have difficulty even in raising their arms above the shoulder.

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