The Causes Tendon Pain and Tendinitis

Have you ever woken up to find your knees too sore and stiff to move around a lot?  Or perhaps you injured your elbow or shoulder and there are no indications of a break or sprain.  Chances are good that you have what is known as tendinitis, inflammation of the tendon, or tendonopathy, an injury to the tendon itself.

A tendon is a sheath of hard, fibrous tissue that connects muscle to bone.  This connection is essential for movement, and if it becomes inflamed or damaged in the slightest bit, it can make movements of that joint, or joints, very painful.  Although any joint on your body can fall victim to either of these conditions, the most common areas for them to occur are the Achilles tendon, knees, wrists, thumbs, elbows, and shoulders.  Regardless of the area, the pain can feel like a minor inconvenience, much like arthritis or a muscle strain, or it can be excruciating and almost debilitating.

The causes of tendonopathy and tendinitis are many and varied.  The most common way for either condition to occur is from repetitive movements.  Whether you are jumping around a lot, lifting, swinging your arms, or even running, if you the same movements often and strenuously enough, you run the risk of inflaming the tendons in that particular joint.  Basketball players, tennis players, golfers, skiers, and runners are just a small list of athletes whose jobs greatly increase the risk of these injuries.  Other people who have the potential to suffer from these injuries are those with physically demanding work.  The more your joints move in the same movement, the greater the risk of tendon inflammation.

A second cause of tendinitis is doing physically demanding work you are not accustomed to doing and do not prepare for.  Exercising without stretching or warming up betters the chances of suffering a tendon injury or some sort.  Also, if you are someone who saves their exercising for set times, such as weekend warriors tend to do, you increase the likelihood of tendon related joint pain.  So would an attempt to do too much too soon for your joints to handle instead of easing into the movements over time.

The pain can also be totally unrelated to physical activity.  Diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, gout, thyroid diseases, diabetes, and some medicinal reactions can create inflammation, not just to a person’s joint, but to the encompassing tendon areas as well.  Infections are also known to cause tendon pain at times, as are poorly placed joints and length differences in appendages, such as one leg being longer than another.

While there are a few different ways you can develop tendinitis and tendonopathy, some things you can do to help prevent it are:  stretching and warming up before exercising, easing into the activity when just  starting out, and varying your movement routine as much as possible. Masri Sports Medicine offers Tenex Health TX as a minimally invasive and safe treatment for chronic tendonitis of the shoulder, elbow, knee, ankle and foot. The more you do to protect your joints, the longer you can remain relatively pain-free.