advice on shoulder injury

[scotty green]

Hey guys, wandering how anyone here has delt with rotator cuff injuries. Hurt mine 9 days ago and pain is still bad even with codein the doc gave me. I know rest is best but this sucks, havnt trained upperbody since how long before it heals and do you think deca would help with healing. Advice please on your experience..

 

[Zyglamail]

First off avoid anti-inflamatory meds, sure they will make you feel better but at the expense of healing. They can and will greatly increase if not totally delay the healing process. The pain is from inflamation which is essential to healing in the case of injuries like yours. Use heat to encourage blood flow and promote healing, avoid ice. If possible (ie the pain permits) frequently use the arm as much as possible without causeing pain once again this will encourage blood flow and help promote healing. Unfortunatly there is no fast fix but a little time.

 

[buffdoc]

First off avoid anti-inflamatory meds, sure they will make you feel better but at the expense of healing. They can and will greatly increase if not totally delay the healing process. The pain is from inflamation which is essential to healing in the case of injuries like yours. Use heat to encourage blood flow and promote healing, avoid ice. If possible (ie the pain permits) frequently use the arm as much as possible without causeing pain once again this will encourage blood flow and help promote healing. Unfortunatly there is no fast fix but a little time.

Yes! I concur. Zyg is the man on this soft tissue healing thing.
Some exercise is essential during the healing phase (but sub-maximal!) You will wind up w/ stronger healing and be less likely to have a chronic problem grow out of this injury, by following this advice.

 

[muslhead]

Scotty -
I just went through rotator surgery so I have first hand experience. My doctor is one of the preeminent orthopedic sports doctors in the country (he is team Dr for Giants, Sharks and Raiders).
This is the regimine I was told to follow ...
Take Ibuprofen 800mg , 3x per day to decrease inflamtion. Take them until the pain went away or until I started puking blood (his words).
Ice regularly (try 2-3 times per day).
Avoid heavy lifting and find yourself a good PT who can show you the proper exercises to build up the surrounding muscles (helps take the strain off the injured one).
Do not apply heat. Blood flow and better circulation will be accomplished with PT (physical therapy).
A cortisone shot may help (if it is truly caused from inflamtion). An MRI will easily identify the extent of the damage.

The standard answer given by all orthopods to these types of injuries is RICE
Rest
Ice
Compression
Elevation

If the injury requires surgery then the inflammation medicine and icing will be of little help. It is critical to find out the extent of the injury to know what and where the problem is. Your shoulder/rotator area is made up of many anterior, posterior and lateral muscles so you need to identify which one(s) are affected.

Either way if surgery is needed or not a good PT and frequent, high rep, low weight exercises will help to strengthen the supporting muscles.

Good luck

PS - It took almost a year to recover from the surgery so my recommendation is to take it easy and let it recover otherwise you are setting yourself up for bigger problems in the future

 

[Zyglamail]

Scotty -
I just went through rotator surgery so I have first hand experience. My doctor is one of the preeminent orthopedic sports doctors in the country (he is team Dr for Giants, Sharks and Raiders).
This is the regimine I was told to follow ...
Take Ibuprofen 800mg , 3x per day to decrease inflamtion. Take them until the pain went away or until I started puking blood (his words).
Ice regularly (try 2-3 times per day).
Avoid heavy lifting and find yourself a good PT who can show you the proper exercises to build up the surrounding muscles (helps take the strain off the injured one).
Do not apply heat. Blood flow and better circulation will be accomplished with PT (physical therapy).
A cortisone shot may help (if it is truly caused from inflamtion). An MRI will easily identify the extent of the damage.

The standard answer given by all orthopods to these types of injuries is RICE
Rest
Ice
Compression
Elevation

If the injury requires surgery then the inflammation medicine and icing will be of little help. It is critical to find out the extent of the injury to know what and where the problem is. Your shoulder/rotator area is made up of many anterior, posterior and lateral muscles so you need to identify which one(s) are affected.

Either way if surgery is needed or not a good PT and frequent, high rep, low weight exercises will help to strengthen the supporting muscles.

Good luck

PS - It took almost a year to recover from the surgery so my recommendation is to take it easy and let it recover otherwise you are setting yourself up for bigger problems in the future

No offense intended here, but your injury took a year to heal because you followed yur docs advice. Did you know that tendon/ligaments take 300-500 days to be replaced by the body? Did you also know that inflamation causes a cascade of healing to occure which greatly reduces the turnover rate of these cells? In other words what I am saying is I dont care if your Doc is god in disguise, his advice of ice and ibuprofine does nothing but line his pockets with money. I have been donw this road and you will find that more often than not people who have surgeires to cut away cartiledge etc are NEVER the same again because post op treatment prevents proper healing and often times lead to arthritis etc. The underlying problem of so many sports injuries is extremely simple and it is strained/sprained tendons/ligaments and surgery will not fix them. For all of you people contemplating sugery, when and if you go through it tell you doc you want the removed tissue tested to see if it is in a proliferative state. I would bet 90% of the time it is and that means its trying to repair itself so if thats the case you need to ask yourself if its in a state of healing, why hasnt it healed? The answer is in the way you have been dealing with the injury (ie ice and anti-inflamatories).

Inflamation is treated as the villian in todays society and it simply blows my mind how many doctors forget their 7th grade biology teachings about the aspects of inflamation and the importance it plays in healing. Docs nowdays treat pain, NOT INJURY. They want you to feel better fast because that is how they guage their success.

muslhead, just an FYI studies have shown cortisone to cause long term damage to tissue and an overall reduction in healing ability, sure it makes you feel better but also leaves you in a weakened state and more prone to injury. Also if you think MRI's are the see all do all of determining an injury I have some news for you, there have been studies done (universtiy of florida study rings a bell) where they took a whole bunch of people who were not complaining of pain and subjected them to an MRI, nearly 35% of them showed damagaed tendons or ligaments in the shoulder and I beleive 15% of those were complete tears which means they would not only be in sever pain but unable to move the limb in certian planes of motion. Now, I call that far from accurate and I sure as hell am not going under the knife for something that inaccurate.

 

[Lift Chief]

Wow that's good info zyg... i'm going to make a mental note of that in case i ever get injured (God forbid).

 

[nuh_mizer]

Docs nowdays treat pain, NOT INJURY. They want you to feel better fast because that is how they guage their success.

a-men brotha

 

[Zyglamail]

My goal is to writeup a very thurough post covering the healing process and why so many treatments today are flawed or at least not geared toward the athlete. We simply have to face it some injuries simply take time to heal and the absence of pain is one of the worst indicators we have for healing. Hell, I could dope someone up on morphene, lidocaine or what have you and drive a nail through their hand, does that mean they arent injured?

Long term health and wellness should be your goal and beleive it or not, no matter how many people think sugery is the fast way, they are sadly mistaken. Now dont get me wrong, certian injuries (ie like complete tears) need surgury to reattach them but oftem times post op advice has them loaded up on anti-inflamatories which slows healing and often times the tendon/ligament is never 100% leaving the joint lose and sloppy which means months or years down the road you have calcium buildup to take up the slack and before ya know its full blown arthritis and now its to late to do anything. Aside from smart lifting, smart healing is the next best thing we can do to take care of ourselves.

 

[scotty green]

Thank very much Zyg. for the advice, now I know why my doc told me to stop my voltaren and deel with the pain

 

[scotty green]

How long before I should try some light rehab?? Should I wait till the pain subsides durring everyday activities ex.. brushing teeth, taking shirt off ect...