The following information has been gathered and compiled through personal experience, while traveling, teaching T’ai Chi, Qi Gong, Chinese Herbal medicine, martial arts and other health related subjects. The article also contains feedback from students and anecdotal information from readers of my columns. The following are my opinions and deductions from those sources.
Bursitis literally means, inflammation of the bursa. So, what’s a bursa? Bursas are little sacs filled with a lubricating fluid that located in areas of the body where a muscle, tendon or bone rubs against another muscle, tendon or bone. Bursitis is when there is excessive friction or rubbing and the bursa becomes inflamed.
Bursitits can also be caused by an infection or be involved with rheumatoid arthritis. Doing an exercise, working to long in the yard, washing windows or any physical chore that we’re not used to, can cause bursitis. If we’ve been sedentary for a long period and then over extend and overwork our muscle, joints or tendons, we can suffer from bursitis. Under normal circumstances, bursas do their job unnoticed but if we overdo, like being a weekend warrior after not doing much physical exertion for a long time, they’ll tell us exactly where they are. Vitamin V with bioflavonoids and vitamin K, (see my article on colds, flu and vitamin C for more information) can help with relief and produce more of the lubricating fluid. As we age, most of us tend to produce less of the lubricant but a regular exercise regimen will stimulate the body into extra lubricant production.
There are hundreds of bursas in the body but there are only a few that us problems. The one most likely to cause problems is in the shoulder. After doing any repetitive chore, like washing and waxing the car, cleaning windows or dusting furniture, can make moving the shoulder extremely painful and sleeping on your side next to impossible.
I experienced a pain in my left shoulder for years, after building and plastering our house, inside and out. My help all evaporated when the labor got tough and I built about ninety percent by myself. Our home is strawbale construction and the walls, inside and out, are plastered. I’m right handed and holding the mortar board stationary in my left hand, pulled on my left shoulder. For seven years, I couldn’t rotate my left arm to the rear and then overhead, I had to go forward and then overhead. I had all the symptoms of bursitis until one evening, about a month ago, when I was sitting at the kitchen table doing some research. Something “slipped” back into place in the thoracic section of my back. It didn’t hurt and I only felt it, I didn’t hear anything. Since that time, I’ve been able to rotate my arm in either direction, sleep on my side and there is no numbness in the left side of my chest. What do I attribute my miraculous recovery to?
My wife has been a yoga instructor, and a very good one, for twenty-five years. She’s tried to talk me into taking her classes for years but I’ve always found some reason why I couldn’t. My hours at the computer have increased geometrically and, even with the exercises I do, I felt I needed something to stretch me out. I’ve been taking her classes for about three months and feel a lot more flexible than before. Plus, if that was a contributing factor in putting whatever has been out of place for seven years, back where it belongs, I should have started taking her classes sooner. There are various other forms of bursitis which I’ll cover in another article.