The health of your rotator cuffs free from injury is crucial to your life. If you know about shoulder injury either from personal experience or from information from a friend who has suffered from it, you know how painful it is. Also because it prevents you from exercising or indulging in other social activities, hence hindering you even as it takes a while to heal. This qualifies it as quite a concern, especially to athletes and even exercise enthusiasts. Here are the types of injury to your rotator cuffs.
1. Impingement
This is one of the most common rotator cuff injury and is quite easy as compared to other to occur. It happens when a rotator cuff swells and cramps the space between the arm and shoulder bones, resulting in a pinching and swelling.
Muscle strain or overuse or even bone spurs also causes swelling. The rotator cuffs also being responsible for the movement of your shoulder when your acromion and rotator cuffs narrow. When your arm moves to your shoulder level, as the acromion impinges on the tendon and bursa you will feel the pain and irritation.
2. Tears
The tears basically refers to a tear of one of your rotator cuff from where it should be. The tear however, is less common than that of the impingement because of what not everyone engages in extreme activities that can cause your rotator cuffs’ tendon or muscle to get torn
Most of these tear injuries do not really need a surgery, since many of them are not severe. Note on some occasions they require surgery due to the degree of severity of some tears. For the degree of severity to be known, doctors measure the depth i.e thickness of the tear.
3. Wears
Sometimes your rotator cuff muscles are worn out. This can happen with the repetition of a motion with your arm e.g shoulder height, swinging etc. This is why many athletes like baseball pitchers, goal keepers etc. Get shoulder injury. Also a terrible fall onto your arm can cause a wear down of your rotator cuff muscles.
Note that the risk of experiencing a tear and wear of your rotator cuffs increasing with in increase of age. However, there are some exercises that will prevent this as they strengthen your rotator cuffs.
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