The Truth About Bursitis

The Impact Of Bursitis

Bursitis is a very common ‘inflammatory’ disorder of the body’s bursa. But what’s a bursa? Well, bursa are small fluid filled sacs  that cushion the spaces between bones, tendons, muscles, and ligaments. 

The pain and misery associated with bursitis often goes way beyond inconvenience. For many, bursitis badly impacts performance of essential tasks, exercise activity and general quality of life. Hip and shoulder bursitis can be particularly punishing, because of how much we use those joints during daily activities. 

Yet, despite how common and how debilitating it is, bursitis remains widely misunderstood. And many get stuck with bursa pain simply due to a lack of real understanding.

In a significant minority of cases bursitis can be caused by an infection. So it’s very important to get it checked out by your preferred healthcare professional. With a view to antibiotics. But if you can establish that there is no infection, there is a riddle to solve. Why did my bursa become inflamed?

 

The Body’s Airbags

Understanding and resolving bursitis starts with acknowledging the job bursa were designed to perform.

Bursae are the body’s airbags. They are designed for protection. Protection from impacts and mechanical stresses.

In the same way a vehicle deploys airbags to save its passengers. Bursa ‘blow up’ to prevent wear and tear occurring between neighbouring structures in your body. Like airbags this is a form of ‘emergency cushioning’. When bursae blow up like this, medicine calls that condition ‘bursitis’.

Like airbags, bursa stay pretty well concealed when things are going well. But when there’s mechanical stress around joints like the hip, shoulder, knee and elbow, the bursa expands as a protective measure. Just like airbags in a car, only much much slower.

 

The Real Cause Of Bursitis

So if you don’t have a raging infection and you haven’t fallen down really hard, your bursa will have become ‘inflamed’ due to repetitive strain. In she shoulder this is often due to overuse and bad posture. In the hip and knee it’s commonly caused by issues like flat feet and leg length discrepancies. Old injuries that didn’t heal properly are also a common cause of bursitis in my experience.

So, for those of us who care about the ‘true cause’ of our pain, bursitis is a mechanical disorder not an inflammatory disorder. 

In a sense when we throw anti-inflammatories and cortisone shots at bursitis it’s like focusing on the airbag after a car crash. If you want to understand a car crash, look at how the vehicle was being driven, the mechanics of the vehicle, and the conditions of the road. Not the airbag. 

Yet of course, relief from the pain of bursitis is the first step towards being pain-free in the longer term. So anything that helps with the pain should be considered.

 

The Reason This Matters

By shifting our perspective to understanding conditions like bursitis (and tendonitis for the record) as biomechanical challenges, we open wonderful new avenues for treatment. We start to seek the true causes of our pain. Which is just as valid as acknowledging that sugar is what causes tooth decay.

Truly understanding our pain brings us closer to a future where we see that pain is not a disease to be cured, but a vital signal helping us identify our bodies needs. But what are the practical solutions to bursitis? . 

Treatments like radial shockwave therapy and LLLT laser can bring great relief from ‘bursitis’ cases, even in the short term. They help the bursa to heal. This frees bursitis sufferers up mentally and physically to resume living a normal life, but also to ‘look under the bonnet’ of the vehicle to identify why the bursa became ‘inflamed’ in the first place. This usually reveals patterns of weakness and compensation in the body that can be resolved with gentle home based strength exercises. For bursitis around the knee and hip arch supports can also sometimes be extremely helpful. 

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