By Lee Sung-hun
Nowadays, we Koreans enjoy more leisure activities than ever before.
With more sports being played by the general population, there has been an increase in the number of shoulder related injuries as well.
According to the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, the number of rotator cuff tears, a typical shoulder joint injury, has increased by almost 60 percent over the past five years.
It was also noticeable that while it was more common among the elderly, caused by degenerative damage due to aging, the numbers are increasing among the younger generations who play sports.
Shoulder joints are the most freely moving joints in our body.
Its range of motion is extensive and it is also one of the more frequently used joints.
On the other hand, shoulder joints are structurally rather unstable, making them prone to injury.
If you look at the anatomy of it, the joint resembles what is commonly known as a ball-and-socket shape, with the head of the humerus being the ball and the scapula the socket.
The structural issue is that the scapula is relatively small in comparison to the humerus, much like a golf tee and the golf ball, and thus the socket cannot properly protect the ball.
The four groups of rotator cuff muscles that surround the shoulders not only coordinate the motions of the joint but they also assist in stabilizing them.
Rotator cuff tears are one of the most common causes of chronic shoulder pain where one or more of the four rotator cuff muscles, namely supraspinatus, infraspinatus, subscapularis and teres minor muscles, are injured.
The most common symptom is pain in the arm and shoulder.
Other symptoms include weakened muscular strength in the affected joint, difficulty in raising the arm, snapping or crackling sounds from the joint and inability to sleep on the affected shoulder.
Another common shoulder condition mistakenly thought of as rotator cuff tears is adhesive capsulitis, commonly known as frozen shoulder.
Frozen shoulder is a gradually progressive condition that is caused by the degenerative changes in the shoulders.
The biggest difference of the two are that while patients find it difficult to raise arms in both cases, with rotator cuff tears, a patient’s arm can be passively raised with someone else’s assistance but with frozen shoulders, it is painful to do so even passively.
Also, weakened muscular strength is only observed in rotator cuff tears and not in adhesive capsulitis.
In most cases, patients with frozen shoulder will naturally experience a gradual recovery over the course of a year or two, making the condition a self-limiting disease.
Contrastingly, with rotator cuff tears, the injury can aggravate if left untreated to the extent where the tendons become completely torn requiring a surgery.
Therefore, it is crucial that patients are diagnosed early and treated accordingly.
As mentioned earlier, the range of motion that the shoulder joint can perform is very wide.
It is because the various muscles surrounding and near the joint, including the rotator cuff muscles, offer such functionality to it.
When there are issues in such muscles and in the alignment of the joint, the motion of the joint and upper arm becomes limited and damages the rotator cuffs.
This means that to properly treat rotator cuff tears, not only the affected tendons should be addressed but also the surrounding muscles should be treated for tensions and weakening, and the joint alignment adjusted.
Rather than focusing on the treatment just on the affected body part, the whole body and other relative causes should be addressed at the same time to better treat the illness.
Treating rotator cuff tears works in the same manner as well.
If you are suffering from shoulder pains, your local oriental medicine clinic can offer you holistic treatment options.
The writer practices Oriental medicine at the UN Oriental Medical Clinic in Hannam-dong, Seoul.