Many white-collar workers and sports enthusiasts often have shoulder pain problems, and most people think they have frozen shoulder. In fact, the most common cause of shoulder pain is rotator cuff injury, accounting for 40% to 60% of all shoulder pain patients, while the incidence of frozen shoulder only accounts for 10% to 15%, sports medicine experts recently reminded the public, shoulder pain do not blindly massage treatment, otherwise it may be counterproductive, the more you press the more pain. Mr. Chen, who is just over 50 years old, is a cadre of an institution and often works at a desk. In the past two years, he had recurring pain in his right shoulder joint when he moved around. At first, he thought it was caused by work strain and excessive exercise, but X-rays showed that he had “large nodular cystic changes and osteosclerosis of the shoulder joint”, so he was treated as “frozen shoulder”. After massage, physiotherapy and medication, Mr. Chen’s shoulder pain was getting better and worse, but lifting his shoulder was always weak, and the pain was even more unbearable at night, which seriously affected his normal life and work. How do you determine if you have a rotator cuff injury? Doctors say that the most obvious symptom is the weakness of lifting, no matter how hard you lift your arm up to the oblique front is not more than 60 ° ~ 90 ° this range, but with a good hand to help you can lift overhead, once these symptoms should be highly suspected of “rotator cuff injury”. Rotator cuff injury can be caused by acute trauma or repeated strain, while middle-aged and elderly people often suffer from degenerative changes in the rotator cuff and brittle texture. In addition, rotator cuff injuries have their own specific symptoms: recurrent or constant shoulder pain; increased pain at night, especially when sleeping on the affected side; decreased muscle strength, especially when trying to lift the upper arm; and possible limitation of joint mobility. Treatment requires a clear diagnosis by a specialist sports medicine or shoulder surgeon. How should a rotator cuff injury be treated? Rotator cuff injuries are more common in volleyball, gymnastics, and swimming athletes, and are also prone to occur in sports and fitness participants if the athletic load on the shoulder is too high or the movements are too violent. Rotator cuff injuries are often accompanied by long head biceps injuries. This is mainly due to the rotator cuff (composed of the supraspinatus, infraspinatus, subscapularis and teres minor) being repeatedly stretched and rubbed against the acromion and rostral ligaments when the shoulder joint is doing dorsiflexion, shoulder rotation, abduction and super normal range of strenuous activities. Common injuries include shoulder rotation in the bar and hoop, baseball pitching, and sudden back extension during weightlifting and snatching. The main symptoms of rotator cuff injury are: pain on the outside of the shoulder, and can radiate to the neck and upper arm; shoulder abduction, or do the shoulder from external rotation to rapid internal rotation of the whip action, such as tennis overhead snapping, will increase the pain; shoulder abduction to 60 ° ~ 120 °, the pain is obvious, and less than or more than this range of pain, when the shoulder to do external rotation and abduction resistance, the shoulder also appear obvious pain; rotator cuff injury When the rotator cuff injury is prolonged, there will be atrophy of the deltoid muscle. For acute rotator cuff injury, in the acute stage, it is required to rest the upper arm at 30° of abduction, reduce the amount of shoulder activity, perform appropriate shoulder flexibility exercises, local physiotherapy, acupuncture, massage, external application of Chinese herbal medicine or painful point closure have good effects; in addition, attention should be paid to strengthening the shoulder muscle strength and improving technical movements. If long-term conservative treatment is not effective, surgery can be considered. Frozen shoulder Frozen shoulder, also known as shoulder arthritis, is a chronic inflammation of soft tissues such as muscles, tendons, bursa and joint capsule around the shoulder, and is more common in people around 50 years old. However, it is not uncommon in people under 50 years of age because the muscles and ligaments of the shoulder are under tension due to the long-term ambulatory work of office workers. According to Chinese medicine, this disease is caused by wind and cold in the shoulder, and because of the stiffness of the chest and shoulder joints after the disease, the movement is limited as if it is frozen, so it is called “frozen shoulder” or “shoulder condensation”. The shoulder joint is the joint with the largest range of motion among all joints in the body. The joint capsule is relatively loose and the stability of the joint is mostly maintained by the strength of the muscles, muscles and ligaments around the joint. Because of the poor blood supply to the tendons and the degenerative changes that occur with age, and because of the frequent activities of the shoulder joint, the surrounding soft tissues are often subjected to friction and extrusion from various sources, making it susceptible to chronic strain injury. Currently, most scholars believe that the treatment of frozen shoulder can only treat the symptoms temporarily by taking pain-relieving drugs, but most of them will relapse after stopping the drugs. The use of surgical release methods can easily cause adhesions after surgery. Therefore, the use of Chinese medicine is considered to be the best treatment option. If patients can adhere to functional exercises, the prognosis is quite good. The following are eight kinds of self-preventive actions for patients with frozen shoulder: (1) Elbow bending and hand shaking Patients stand with their backs against the wall or lie on their backs in bed with their upper arms against their bodies, bending their elbows and using the elbow point as a fulcrum for external rotation activities. (2) Finger climbing The patient stands facing the wall and slowly climbs upward along the wall with the affected finger, raising the upper limb as high as possible to the maximum, making a mark on the wall, and then slowly going back down to the original place, repeatedly, gradually increasing the height. (3) Posterior hand pulling The patient stands naturally, and in the posture of internal rotation and backward extension of the affected upper limb, the healthy hand pulls the affected hand or wrist, gradually pulling it toward the healthy side and pulling it upward. (4) Arm extension stand The patient’s upper limb naturally drops, arms straight, palms down slowly abducted, lift upward with force, stop for 10 minutes after reaching the maximum, then return to the original position, and repeat. (5) Posterior extension of the spine The patient stands naturally, in the posture of internal rotation and posterior extension of the affected upper limb, bends the elbow, flexes the wrist, and touches the spinal spinous process with the middle finger, gradually moves upward from the bottom to the maximum and then stays still for 2 minutes, and then slowly moves back downward to the original position, repeatedly, gradually increasing the height. (6) combing the head The patient can stand or lie on his back, the affected side of the elbow flexed, forearm forward up and rotate forward (palm up), try to rub the forehead with the elbow, that is, sweat wiping action. (7) Head and pillow hands The patient lies on his back, crosses the fingers of both hands, palms up, and puts them on the back of the head (occiput), first making both elbows inward as much as possible, and then outward as much as possible. (8) Shoulder rotation The patient stands with the affected limb naturally hanging down, elbow straight, and the affected arm circles from the front upward to the backward, with the amplitude from small to large, repeated several times. Please note that the above eight movements do not need to be done every time, you can choose to exercise alternately according to your specific situation, 3-5 times a day, usually about 30 times for each movement, no limit to the number.