The shoulder is a ball and socket type joint and is built with muscles and tendons that make up a cover for the arm bone.
These muscles and tendons are called the rotator cuff.
The rotator cuff is the part of the shoulder that makes it possible for you to rotate your arm in a full circular motion, raise it over your head, or raise it straight out to the side of your body.
The tendons in the rotator cuff protect the top of the arm bone and keep it in place in the shoulder socket.
Whether young or old, in good shape or not, when a person starts to experience shoulder pain, you can almost bet that they have an injury to the rotator cuff.
This injury may be very minor or it may be a very serious injury.
Inflammation in the shoulder joint can be a source of serious pain, or it may also indicate that a tendon or ligament may be torn.
This tear can be very small or it can be a complete tear from the bone.
Even small tears can escalate into serious ones if not attended to properly.
Once your physician diagnoses you with an injury to the rotator cuff, he/she will probably recommend that you begin a course of physical therapy that includes exercises to rehabilitate the rotator cuff.
To begin with, the physical therapist will only have you do exercises to stretch the tendons and muscles in the rotator cuff.
Later, after you have shown some improvement with the stretching exercises, you will move on to exercises to strengthen the muscles and tendons in the rotator cuff.
Remember that rotator cuff recovery must be a very slow process.
Moving too fast means taking a risk of damaging the rotator cuff even worse than it already is.
Resting the shoulder, applying heat and applying ices are all things that your physician will recommend that you do in addition to physical therapy.
The heat and ice will work to reduce any swelling or inflammation in the shoulder joint and to soothe the pain caused by the physical therapy.
If the pain is bothering you, you may also take some anti-inflammatories.
They will also help to reduce inflammation and swelling.