Effective Natural Treatments for Bursitis Relief

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Alternating Heat/Ice Therapy
Posted by Javagenie (Central, Vt) on 05/11/2010
★★★★★

This cure worked for me and I hope I can help someone else. The method is called alternating heat/ice therapy. I suffered for 2 weeks with this awful pain in my right shoulder. I was finally told by a friend what it was. I had never even heard of bursitis before. He said he had it once and the dr gave him a shot of cortisone. After doing some research, I was not going to a Dr. for that. But, on the 3rd week, I could not rotate my shoulder enough to get dressed. I tried heat and cold packs. It hurt so much I was taking 800mg ibuprofen 6 times a day. That's every 4hrs. on the dot. It would wake me up at night when I needed another dose.

Finally i read about this alternating heat and cold therapy. Apparently there are a lot of different ways to do it. Basically, you place ice on the affected area for 10min. and then switch to heat for 5min. You keep alternating back and forth for an hour or even longer if you want. The idea is to create a pump within your joint/muscles. Cold pushes blood out and heat pulls it in. Allowing the infection inflmation to be pumped right out of the joint. This made sense to me. So, I got started.

I honestly didn't keep track of time... when it felt like it was aching from too much cold (5-10min.) I would swap to heat until it felt nice and relaxed. Then switch back to cold. Important thing to remember: always end with cold. You want to remove the inflamation at the end. I used ice packs wrapped in towels and an electric heating pad. I would do this for up to 2hrs a night watching tv or reading before bed. Every morning it felt better... so, I kept doing it. After 4-5days, my shoulder was almost completely healed. I had some minor pain when over extending the range of motion. Like reaching high above my head (eg. reaching for a dish on the top shelf). But, within a few days that was gone. I suffered miserably for 3 weeks... and in only a few days this relieved it. I'm sure it would've only taken 1 or 2 treatements to cure this if I started sooner. Anyway, It's been about a month, and no pain still.

Can you imagine how powerful this technique would be with the right herbal remedies? Combining this with a natural antibiotic/anti-inflamatory would be great. Unfortunately, I had no idea what to take so heat/ice was all i used.



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