Shoulder pain affects our upper arm movement due to a combination of issues with muscles, tendons, ligaments and nerves. It can be in one place or spread. It can be more than one issue, or one that leads to another.
Shoulder pain ranges from an annoying niggle that comes and goes, to severe pain when you try to lift your arm, one of the signs of “frozen shoulder”
Sometimes shoulder problems resolve with time, rest or exercise. More often the problem doesn’t get better properly and feels stiff, painful or vulnerable so that you are afraid of getting back to normal activities. This is when a professional opinion and treatment is really helpful.
Untreated, these pains can go from short easy to fix problems, to long term and harder to fix problems. Nobody likes taking pain killers or contemplating surgery. It’s important to choose a treatment which is safe, effective and proven thousands of times over all over the world.
We've already dealt with some of the common causes such as trauma and posture. However, let’s dive in a little deeper to see which shoulder conditions Osteopathic care provides a safe non surgical solution for:
Frozen shoulder often starts innocuously, and builds up over time to something quite bad. There is typically pain in the tip of the shoulder which radiates to the upper arm, worse for lifting the arm up or reaching backwards. Without treatment this can last for a long time.
The arm is stuck in a loop of pain and stiffness, often made worse by exercise.
Arthritis of the shoulder joints often happens after accidents earlier in life, which leads to uneven wear.. It is quite common, building as you get older, but Arthritis is not a one way street and with careful treatment can improve significantly. Pain killers mask the pain and can actually make this condition worse as you overuse irritated tissues in your shoulder...
Sometimes there is specific pain in the front of the shoulder, perhaps after lifting or gym training. There will be specific tenderness and perhaps swelling where it hurts. This must be rested!
This is often muscular, from posture issues, overtraining, or trouble with the neck or upper back on that side. This can lead to “referred pain” into the shoulder.
Trapped nerves in your neck can lead to pain in your shoulder. We can do tests to check for this. It will be aggravated by neck movements.
An Osteopath will only use their hands and brain to skilfully and logically assess your symptoms. We train for many years to feel what is normal and what is in trouble, and Osteopathy is a fantastic method for getting your body back in tip-top shape again.
We don’t use machines or ask you to do endless exercises that you find difficult and don’t help. In fact many people have been given exercises which just prolong the problem and make it worse! We just get your body working properly by aligning everything, and getting the parts talking to each other. Treatment is typically very gentle and relaxing. Healing comes naturally without drugs or surgery. Because it is very hard to rest a shoulder, recovery is often not instant, but your Osteopath will give you a care plan with what to expect as recovery progresses.
This means you can be well in a truly natural way, by in the end the miracle of your body healing itself.
And here's the best bit... By fixing the root cause of your problems, frequently people find that related issues that are connected also show drastic improvement, so you get help with all sorts of issues you didn’t even realise were connected, like tennis elbow or tingling in the fingers.
