Rotator cuff tear: Will it get better by itself?
Waiting until a problem disappears is like ignoring your dog, eventually, they will climb on top of you and force you to attend to them
Hello There
One of the things we realize from working with so many people who are in pain is that they wait too long for things to get better. Usually, by the time they get to us, the problem is not simple and easy to fix anymore.
I think it is for two reasons.
1. A wait and see approach.
2. If we give it a couple more weeks, it will heal on its own.
Let us look at reason two and see how well that works for a rotator cuff tear.
Muscle tears are a common injury for anyone that plays sports or works a physical job. They tend to happen for two reasons.
1. Sudden overloading of the muscle that leads to the tear.
If we think of a muscle being the part that moves and controls the body. We can think of it as having two jobs. Moving the joint so you can perform a task like packing away dishes.
Controlling the movement of those joints.
With a muscle tear what happens is the muscle is asked to control a movement of a joint that is been loaded. This load is too much for the muscle to handle.
Think of that classic movie scene where the actor is dangling over a cliff and the rope slowly starts to tear, building suspense to see if the hero will make it out alive. With a muscle tear, the tear happens amazingly fast. Too much weight too soon too fast overloads the muscle and it tears under the force.
The good news about this is that the body has an incredible ability to heal itself. It can allow you to recover from some terrible injuries to almost back to perfect.
I am going to break it down for you in three phases of how the body heals here.
1. Bleeding and inflammation.
This happens immediately after the injury. You are injured. You bleed because the muscle is torn. This is a good thing because this allows all the cells and building blocks to rebuild the torn muscle to go to the injured site. At the same time, the body triggers all the cells responsible for healing and fighting off infection to head to the torn muscle to start the healing process.
Think of a building site. This is the stage where all the materials and workers are brought to the site and everyone is given a part to rebuild and fix.
This happens for the first week or so.
2. Proliferation
This begins where the cells lay down scar tissue and new blood vessels to fill the gap caused by the tear. At the same time, all the other parts that were injured are rebuilt and any parts that were damaged beyond the body’s ability to repair is replaced.
This part is where everyone on the building site starts to build. Laying down the foundation, building the walls, putting in the electric cables, the plumbing and roof so that at the end you have a shell of a house. You can move in because everything works but it is not a home.
This takes about 25 days.
3. Remodeling phase
This is the final phase of healing where the body breaks up the scar and trying to return the damaged muscle to like it was before it was injured.
This is the part of the building where it is painted, the garden is planted. It goes from a house to a home. Well, more like your wife’s home where you live.
For your muscle, this takes between a month to 2 years. If we were honest with each other, the wife is never quite done making the house her own.
How long have you been waiting for your shoulder to come right?
Now on to the second.
2. The chronic overuse injury
This is the type of muscle tear that never heals. It could have started in the past as a brand-new muscle tear but it is not that anymore.
This is caused by two things.
1. Constant overloading of a muscle so it is unable to heal.
2. Bad movement that constantly insults the muscle.
When it comes to the shoulder, we must remember it is an intricate joint that needs a lot of muscles to work well so it can move well.
The problem with it is that when it does not move well it causes so many problems like constant overloading and repeated reinjuring of a muscle. Usually, that shows up as a rotator cuff tear that never heals.
That is because it is constantly being pulled too hard in the wrong direction and rubbing against other parts of the shoulder that damage it more.
Think of our movie hero, dangling over a cliff by a rope.
As the rope moves over the rock it is cut by the sharp surfaces of the rock and at the same time being pulled apart by the weight of our hero.
Unless our hero escapes but taking the tension off the rock and stop it from scraping against the sharp surfaces of the rock, it will continue to fray until it snaps.
The same goes for our rotator cuff muscles in the shoulder.
It is only going to get worse; it will not heal on its own because the problem is no longer “you went too hard in the gym that one time”, it is the shoulder is not working properly, pulling the rotator cuff hard and tearing it just by drinking your coffee.
If it could have healed by now it would have.
The only way this is going to come right is by getting a professional to fix the cause.
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Stop waiting.
Jason
