I see a lot of people come in with shoulder problems like frozen shoulder, shoulder impingement, painful motion in the shoulder, weakness of the arm, and numbness and tingling into the arm. Your shoulder is the most freely movable joint in your entire body, which is amazing, but because it’s so freely movable, it’s very susceptible to injury.
And one of the most important things to understand about a shoulder is most of the time it comes from the neck.
The Often Overlooked Cause of Shoulder Pain
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Is Your Shoulder Pain From a Pain In Your Neck?
So I’ve seen all types of shoulder issues and many of these people have seen amazing results with chiropractic treatment.
- Sometimes people suffering with years or even decades.
- People who are scheduled for surgery, canceling that surgery.
- People who couldn’t lift their arm up above their waist now with full motion.
- People getting their lives back because we were able to address the cause.
This is even sometimes after they’ve seen multiple doctors, orthopedic doctors, surgeons, they’ve had shots, they’ve had everything they can do in the medical model and within a period of weeks to months we’re getting them back to normal function.
The thing that no doctor looks at when you have a shoulder problem is the neck. If you look here on this chart, these are the nerves in your body. You’re supposed to have a 40 to 45 degree curve in your neck and everything is supposed to be moving.
We just did a couple videos on posture and most people, they have a loss of curve in the neck, which really affects the lower part of the neck. C6. C7. If you look on this chart, those are the nerves that go into your shoulders and they go down into your arm and they control that function. So if I cut the nerve from your neck to your shoulder, it will not work. There’s no amount of stretch, exercise, surgery, that can ever fix that. So when you’re coming in with the shoulder problem, the first thing you want to look at is the neck.
- Do you have a good curve in the neck?
- Is there any nerve interference?
- Is there subluxation?
To do that, you have to go to a qualified corrective care chiropractor. Now there are also adjustments and other therapies that we do of the shoulder that’s very specific, that restores motion, breaks up scar tissue, restores motion, and we give people exercises to help restore the normal function in the shoulders so that it can heal.
The best part is no drugs, no shots, no surgeries. We fix the cause, the body heals itself.
Shoulder Functional Exercise
So I’m going to show you one exercise that you can start doing on your own to help with shoulder function.
Grab five or 10 pound weights that you can hold in your hand. Stand with your shoulders back, palms forward, and tilt your chin up.
From the side it looks like this, and what you do is you slowly use the momentum of the weights to swing your arms back and forth. Now you don’t want to swing the weights too high. You want to make sure you’re just using momentum and you bring the chin up to restore that curve in the neck.
Repeat about 50 to 100 times at least once a day. What this does is it tractions your shoulders to open it up. It pulls your head and shoulders back, and also you’re putting the curve back in the neck so it takes tension off the spinal cord and the nerves, and that’s a way to help start restoring posture and open up the shoulders.
If you’re doing this and it’s still causing pain and your issues are not getting corrected, you want to make sure you’re getting in for that chiropractic evaluation as soon as possible to find out what is causing the pain. If you’re noticing any numbness or tingling into the arm or any significant weakness, that’s an acute issue. You want to get checked out right away from a qualified medical professional.
If you’re in our area, join us at MaxLivingRocklin.com. We help people with shoulder injuries all the time, seeing amazing results. If you’re outside of the area and you want to find a corrective care chiropractor, go to MaxLiving.com and search for somebody in your area.
Have you had the opportunity to join us at one of our community education events yet? During the community education events, Dr. Tim sifts through all of the knowledge out there to bring you key information about how to get healthy and stay that way and shares answers to frequently asked questions on chiropractic care and healthy eating. Enjoy the clips of previous events here.