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What is Frozen Shoulder?
The term "frozen shoulder" is often used to describe any shoulder pain.
In reality, it's when your arm is both stiff and inactive and cannot be
moved without intense pain.
Who are mainly affected?
Frozen shoulder is a common problem that affects 2% of us. It's more
common in those between 40 and 70 years of age, and women are
slightly more affected than men. It's common in people with
diabetes (10-20%). Strangely, the non-dominant arm is
more likely to be involved, but in around 10% of cases both arms are
affected. If untreated it can last
2-3 years with some cases having symptoms after 10 years.
What are the symptoms?
Lifting the arm sideways as well as turning a bent arm outwards are really difficult movements. Also,
moving your arm straight ahead and upwards is often painful.
Usually, it's hard to put on a
coat, do up a bra, comb your hair, or reach into a back pocket.
Common treatments
Traditional medical treatments for frozen shoulder rely on
painkillers, steroid injections, surgery, manipulation under anaesthesia,
and physical therapy. They often do little to improve symptoms or speed
recovery.
Trigger Point therapy
and Frozen Shoulder
I have been
successfully using trigger point therapy to treat frozen shoulder to relieve pain, restore range of motion,
and shorten recovery times.
Trigger point therapy is a massage technique that targets
localized areas of tenderness in muscles, A trigger point is a
small bundle of fibres within a muscle that stay in a hard contraction,
something like a “knot.” This little knot can cause ongoing pain, or
cause no pain at all unless pressed on.
More crucially, a trigger point can send its pain somewhere else and this
is known as referred pain.
Trigger points causing pain in the shoulder can be some distance away from
the point of the pain. There can be trigger points hiding in up to
24 different muscles that affect the shoulder.
We have to find and treat them.
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 Treatment Plan
The treatment
involves both you and I working together on trigger points that affect
your shoulder. Your commitment
is important if we are to get sustained
improvement to the
condition in a few weeks.
At both the start and end
of each treatment I measure arm movement that is possible
without pain.
In this way you can see the improvement both during the session and over
the course of several treatments.
I will show you how to
treat yourself. This includes providing you with tools to help get to those inaccessible points - around the shoulder
blade etc.
How many treatments
You don't need to commit to a course of treatments - you can easily
judge for yourself if we are
successful in increasing your range of movement and decreasing your pain.
Based on my experience I would suggest
you budget for 6-8 weekly treatments - but this will depend on the severity of
your condition and how hard you work.
The way forward
Once you're committed, just phone or email me (details at the bottom
of the page) to arrange an appointment. |
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