
Everyone gets shoulder pain from time to time. It can be from a sudden injury, or it can be from something like posture or sleep habits. Sometimes the pain is coming from the inside of the shoulder joint, or the rotator cuff muscles, or the muscles around the shoulder blade. Here are a few examples:
Joint Pain / Arthritis
Shoulder joint (glenohumeral joint) pain. This type of pain is often from arthritis or a sudden injury. When it is from arthritis it’s a type of pain that sets in slowly over time. It is a degenerative process where your bones degrade and your joint surfaces wear down over time. That kind of pain sometimes leads to surgery, but there is a lot of time that can be bought by addressing the muscular (soft tissue) problems that coincide with the joint damage. When a joint starts to break down, the muscles that surround and control that joint then start to function poorly. That tightness in muscles, and the painful knots or trigger points that take hold inside the shoulder blade, often exacerbate the shoulder pain. By eliminating those muscle issues the arthritis pain in the shoulder can become much more manageable, and the possibility of surgery can be pushed back.
The other goal at our office when we are dealing with an arthritic shoulder is that we need to get the shoulder joint back to as-close-to-normal function as possible. The shoulder is a ball-and-socket joint, and it needs to have a smooth “roll” with normal biomechanics in order for the joint to not get worse. While arthritis is already “baked in” by the time it is visible on x-ray, the progression of the degeneration can be slowed down by getting the joint to move normally again. We regularly treat this type of shoulder issue here at Park Bench, with great results.
Postural Pain / Sleep Positions
Postural or Sleep (muscular) pain. This type of pain is often worse when certain positions are held for periods of time. For example, sleeping or sitting in a chair working at a computer. Proper posture is a struggle we all are working on constantly. It is very easy to let our posture slip. Unfortunately for all of us, it is usually more comfortable to rest in a bad posture. It is when we try to improve our posture (after months or years of bad posture) that we then feel even more pain. It becomes painful to try to improve our posture! Sleeping is a whole other problem – we are asleep while we are in a bad posture. It’s difficult enough to change our posture while we are wide awake with a coffee in front of us, it’s much more difficult to control our body positioning while we are asleep! We have advice and ideas to help with that, so make sure to talk to us about your sleep habits.

This type of pain is usually mostly from the soft tissues of the shoulder, and it is the muscles that position the shoulder blade (the scapula) which most often are the muscles that are way too tight and sore. By working on those shoulder muscles with manual therapy (massage, trigger points, etc) and then adjusting the joint we can normalize the muscle and improve the joint’s range of motion, helping to address two of the problems that poor posture cause. When the shoulder works poorly, it puts a lot of strain on the thoracic spine (the upper back), and these tight muscles tugging on the neck and back vertebrae usually means a series of adjustments is needed to get your body back on track.
The big challenge to posture is to get the client to stop doing the wrong things and to start doing the right things. That is as much about psychology and motivation as it is about physics and ergonomics. Sometimes we look at your situation and we need to address your chair or your workstation, other times it is the amount of time you spend sitting or otherwise in a bad posture, and other times it’s the right combination of home stretches and exercises that you need to do in order to counteract the postural demands of your job. Some jobs, like plumbing/electrician or HVAC can involve a lot of bending and reaching and twisting. Computer jobs really jam up the body, and there’s not even movement involved. There’s no two ways about it, you just need to do certain things as part of a job. In situations like that we try to find ways to undo the problems by getting the body strong in the right ways so that those things don’t cause pain any more.
Rotator Cuff / Impingement Pain
When we have repetitive motions, even including reaching for the computer mouse or holding and pulling a dog leash, these movements can cause inflammation or damage to the rotator cuff muscles of the shoulder. Sometimes it is a tight jar lid! Rotator cuff or impingement typically will cause pain with trying to reach backwards, behind the back, or to try to rotate the arm bone on the shoulder socket. Think about the ref at a football game making the “field goal” sign. This often hurts at the top of the shoulder, or even in the muscular part of the top of the arm, just past the shoulder joint. It may hurt to lay on the painful shoulder at night in bed. Sometimes there will be tingling in the hand, quite often more on the “pinky” side of the hand.
This type of pain requires identifying the activity that is causing the problem and then changing or stopping that. There’s already some pain and inflammation, so treating with that chiropractic adjustments to the neck/upper back and shoulder, stretches, exercises and by working on the trigger points in the shoulder blade will all help resolve this type of pain. In some cases we will send you for x-rays or even an MRI if your case is bad enough, but often that isn’t needed.

If any of these shoulder issues sounds like something you are dealing with, give us a call at (301) 378-0334 to schedule a new patient appointment. We can usually get you in within a week or less. The first visit is an hour long and it is a thorough look at your problem. We explain everything up front. Check out our reviews if you aren’t sure, or just call and ask questions if you have any. Thanks for reading this!