What is bursitis?
Are you wondering if your pain is caused by bursitis? Lachlan is diving into what bursitis is and what you should do about it!
Firstly, what is a bursa?
A bursa is a fluid-filled sac that acts as a cushion and gliding surface to reduce friction between muscles, tendons and bones. They are also awesome shock absorbers for your joints. In fact, you have about 160 bursae in your body!!
What is bursitis?
You may know that “itis” means inflammation, so bursitis is inflammation of a bursa. There are several causes for your bursa to become inflamed:
Repetitive strain - overload of the tendons/joints in contact with a bursa. Usually “too much too soon”, e.g. trochanteric bursitis (outside of your hip), subacromial bursitis (outer shoulder), retrocalcaneal bursitis (between your achilles and heel bone). Click each link to read about how to address this area specifically.
Pressure - prolonged pressure on elbows (olecranon bursa) from desk work, or knees (prepatellar bursa) from kneeling.
Trauma to the joint - impact on the bursa (knee hitting the dash in a car accident).
Bacterial infection - septic bursitis.
Other inflammatory diseases - (e.g gout, osteoarthritis).
Inflammation is your immune system trying to heal (read more about inflammation here). During inflammation of a bursa, fluid is drawn in to try to heal the bursa from whatever the issue is. The result can be redness, swelling, and pain!
You may feel all of these symptoms, or only one; trochanteric bursitis may present with no swelling but be very painful to touch; whereas olecranon bursitis swells up like a golf ball, but is usually painless.
In fact, we often see ultrasounds and MRIs reporting on bursitis, when bursitis isn’t actually the source of the pain. This tells us that sometimes bursitis is happening without any symptoms, and you probably don’t even know about it! This can lead to confusion in diagnosing some painful issues, and an over-diagnosis of bursitis. The main crossover is cases of tendinopathy that get diagnosed as bursitis. To read more about tendinopathy, read here. The main issue with this is the treatment for bursitis is very different to that of tendinopathy.
What should I do if this sounds like my joint?
You should speak with your physio, sports physician, or GP to confirm bursitis as the diagnosis (Dr Google is not very accurate, sorry 🙁). Your treatment will depend on which bursa is inflamed, and why.
The bursitis we can help with is caused by repetitive strain, or overload, which are the type associated/confused with tendinopathy. The treatment here is to reduce the compressive load on the bursa and use specific exercises to increase the strength of the tendon and muscle involved. This will vary depending on which bursa is painful, for example, laying on your side compresses a trochanteric bursa, while walking barefoot compresses your insertional achilles bursa, so our do’s and don’t’s will be very specific to you!
If you think you have bursitis associated with overload, give us a call 🙂