What Is A Rotator Cuff Tear

Do you think that you might have a rotator cuff tear? In today’s video, I’m going to explain everything that you need to know about rotator cuff tears, including the things that doctors forget to tell you and the stuff that isn’t common knowledge in the healthcare industry today.

My name is Dr. David Middaugh. And I’m a specialist physical therapist, and I’ll pass on manual physical therapy. And this channel specializes in helping people stay healthy, active, and mobile. while avoiding unnecessary surgeries, injections and medications. Please subscribe to this channel so you don’t miss any videos that we put out every week to help you stay healthy.

So let me tell you exactly what the rotator cuff is and why it gets torn and why it causes so many problems. So I’ve got my skeleton here to help me out. And what you need to know about rotator cuff muscles and tendons. They’re both together, the muscles are the part that that squeezes and creates movement and the tendon just connects the muscle over to the bone.

The muscles of the rotator cuff are all around the shoulder blade, and they send tendons out that pull the ball this top part of the arm up against the shoulder blade. So that motion can occur there smoothly and controlled. The rotator cuff muscles are stability muscles, which help to create good stable motion of the ball against the socket, so that you can do all the everyday motions that you have to do.

Now there’s bigger muscles besides the rotator cuff muscles, the deltoids and the trapezius muscles, the ones that are up here and on the front that are in the area as well. But those rotator cuff muscles are a big deal. Because if you lose them, then it can cause some very bad motion at the ball and socket joint over the shoulder.

If that joint is not stable than if it doesn’t hurt, because in some cases it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t cause pain, it will eventually cause arthritis in the joint over the course of years because of the motion that’s happening at the ball and socket joint just isn’t good motion, like it should be you have four rotator cuff muscles, they’re called the super spin eight is the infraspinatus, the subscapularis and the teres minor. And these four together have the ability to rotate the ball on the socket.

But that’s not their primary motion. So it’s kind of a misnomer. There, they’re named incorrectly, they should really call the stability cuff muscles and that the rotator cuff muscles, because all those other big muscles that I mentioned, are muscles that more so contribute to rotation, the actual rotator cuff muscles are mainly pushing the ball against the socket, so that when those other big muscles move the shoulder when you raise your arm up, return or reach, do any of the motions that your shoulder does, that ball is seated well into the socket, and you don’t have any motion that shouldn’t be occurring inside the ball and socket joint.

Now the rotator cuff muscles tear often because they’re being overused, or you’ve lost strength in some of those muscles. And you’ve got an imbalance that pushes the ball off the socket slightly not dislocation, but it’s just not centered where it should be. And over time, it starts to tension one of those tendons a bit too much and can create a tear.

Of course it can be traumatic injuries. But if we’re talking about somebody who started to have shoulder pain eventually was diagnosed with a rotator cuff tear and never had an accident, then we have to assume that there’s some muscle imbalances in there that set them up for that rotator cuff tear. Now I’m going to tell you next three things that just are not common knowledge and your doctor probably won’t be able to tell you about rotator cuff tears.

The first thing is that rotator cuff tears and overnight editing cases can heal without surgery. We have this documented in our research today. And if you go look in the medical research, if you know anybody that can do that for you, if you Google it, you can go to Google Scholar comm and type in shoulder surgery, rehabilitation or surgical versus non-surgical rehabilitation for shoulder surgery for rotator cuff problems.

And you’ll find that there’s more and more research articles showing that it is possible to heal a rotator cuff tear without surgery. And number two, the other thing that you’ll find if you look in the research is that people that get rotator cuff surgery versus healing without surgery, the people that go through conservative treatment, as they call it, which is usually physical therapy, they do about the same after surgery.

This is why it’s been recommended less than less to do a rotator cuff repair surgery. Now, let me I don’t want to throw surgery under the bus because there are definitely some situations where a surgery is recommended. And you know surgeons do fantastic work and if it’s necessary shoot og we’ll be seeing a surgeon for my shoulder if I need to. But what we know is that surgery isn’t always the first go to thing that we should be doing for rotator cuff tears.

So if you’re out there and you think that you might have a rotator cuff tear, you’ve just been diagnosed with one, even if it’s extremely painful and you can’t move your arm very much, there’s actually an excellent chance that you can improve naturally without surgery if you’re doing the right kind of treatment.

And the third thing that’s super important for you to know, and I’m going to hang on this one just a bit because it’s probably the most terrible advice that people get from doctors whenever they get first diagnosed with a rotator cuff tear, not just doctors, anybody in the healthcare field physical therapists themselves will even tell patients not to do this.

Oftentimes, people will tell patients with rotator cuff tears or even just general shoulder pain to avoid doing anything overhead. In other words, don’t pick up your arms because typically, it hurts to do that, when people have a shoulder injury, especially a rotator cuff tear, and they lost ability because those rotator cuff muscles have stability cuff muscles are not working the way they’re supposed to. reaching up can become quite painful.

If that ball and socket joint is that center where it’s supposed to just the mechanics at the joint, the way the ball moves on the socket doesn’t happen the way that it’s supposed to. And so reaching at the end range of certain motions just gets very uncomfortable. And reaching up overhead can be one of the most painful things.

So it’s often advice is given to patients with shoulder problems rotator cuff tears, is to not do anything overhead, because that aggravates the pain. And at the first glance, superficial level that that seems like good advice, because you’re avoiding the thing that hurts. But what needs to happen in reality is we need to learn how to reach up overhead without pain. And that may not happen if you’ve got a fresh injury, and it’s just irritating no matter what you do, it’s going to hurt.

But once that irritation level has come down, in the natural course of rehabilitating a rotator cuff tear without surgery, eventually, when the timing is right, we need to get to doing some sort of overhead exercise and eventually adding weights to it even so that we can properly fix that rotator cuff and allow it to heal all the way so that we can have normal shore mechanics and be able to use that rotator cuff tendon and the rotator cuff muscles the way that we’re intended to as time goes on.

So the advice I need you to take the third point is if you have a rotator cuff tear, or you suspect you have one, and you go see the doctor, or physical therapist or a trainer or anybody, maybe even a relative who also had a tear, and they share with you don’t lift anything up over your head, don’t reach up overhead. take it with a grain of salt, maybe you do need to do that for a short time, just to let the irritation come down.

But eventually you need to be doing it. And if you’re going through physical therapy, we go through some sort of treatment for your rotator cuff. Worse yet, if you’ve had a rotator cuff repair, especially recently, and you’re avoiding lifting anything up overhead, you’re destined to have another rotator cuff tear at some point soon, because you’re never going to get the strength, the knowledge of how your shoulder should work to reach up overhead.

Without paying if you’re just avoiding reaching up overhead the muscles that help you do that. And some of those of your rotator cuff muscles are never going to gain the strength they need to so that they can tolerate you doing simple stuff, like taking your shirt off and on or reaching for the top cupboard in the kitchen or the bathroom or just doing some yard work at home, you have to be able to reach up overhead at some point in your life.

So we can’t just avoid it altogether and assume that your shoulders are going to be healthy the rest of your life, you’re destined to have another shoulder injury at some points. It’s the equivalent of saying, Well, if your knee hurts, just don’t walk, you have to walk. And if you’re hurting your knee, nobody’s going to tell you don’t walk or stand crutches the rest of your life for a wheelchair, you got to go eventually use your legs so that you can do all the things you need to do. So you got to learn how to reach up overhead.

Now if you’re looking for exercises on how to do this, we’ve got some on our YouTube channel here. In fact, I’ll link an exercise down here it’s called a wall show that you can begin to do at home. If you’ve got a shoulder injury, especially rotator cuff tear, you got to start this exercise. And watch out we’ve got some more videos coming soon on rotator cuff problems so you can learn more about how to diagnose it and other exercises that you can do to start fixing a rotator cuff tear.

Hey, have you thought this video was helpful for you and you’ve gotten that advice of now reaching up overhead or you’ve been told that you’re destined to have a shoulder surgery because you have a rotator cuff tear. Then I want to invite you to apply for a complimentary discovery visit with us so that you can get checked out and see if it’s possible for you to heal this rotator cuff tear without surgery injections or having to rely on medications.

All you got to do is scroll to the bottom of this page and find the button that says complimentary discovery visit a request to discovery visit a little formal pop up leave us your details, hit submit and my staff will get that information and give you a call as fast as they can so that you can get the next steps on setting up a discovery visit. And what this discovery visit is it’s a 20 minute appointment with a specialist physical therapist where we listen to your story about your shoulder problem either in person here in the clinic or virtually through a call.

And we’ll get to look at your shoulder moving if you’re here in the clinic will feel your shoulder and we’ll see Are you all the ins and outs of this problem, and we want to give you a diagnosis by the end of this visit and explain everything about the injury so that you can leave our clinic here, leave this video call and have a thorough understanding of what’s going on.

That’s in terms of you understand, and so that you can make the best decision about your shoulder moving forward, we’ll explain everything use the anatomy book and the skeleton. And we’ll give you a chance to ask all the questions that you need, so that you have no doubt about what you need to do next.

So go ahead and scroll down to the bottom of the page and apply for one of those discovery visits. We only have a limited amount available and want to make sure that you’re a good fit for our treatments and we’ll let you know if we just aren’t going to be able to help you out so that we can send you to the right place that can help you out with your shoulder problem. I hope that we can be a part of your success to a real soon. Have a wonderful day.