Tel: 021 173 5766
Shoulders are the most complicated joint in the whole body. We don’t have any other joints with nearly the same range of motion as the shoulder, and we need them to be strong and in good condition in order to handle all of the things we expect them to be handle in day-to-day life like lifting a full kettle for a cup of tea, typing, driving, getting dressed, eating, and doing the Brooklyn Hustle!
At Pacific Coast Osteopathy we specialists at treating arm and shoulder pain:
-
Diagnosing the root cause of arm and should pain.
-
Providing the most effective short term treatment.
-
Creating a long-term management strategy.
What’s a common cause arm and shoulder pain?
The main shoulder joint (the glenohumeral joint) is essentially like a golf tee with a golf ball sitting on top of it. That isn’t very stable, and so to look after the shoulder we have a group of small muscles collectively called the rotator cuff, whose job it is to hold the arm in the joint no matter what position when end up putting the shoulder into.
That’s quite a big job for some not-very-big muscles, and so the rotator cuff are some of the most commonly injured muscles in the body.
But that’s not the only cause of arm and shoulder pain.
There are a bunch of little sacks in the shoulder (bursa) that are filled with a lubricating liquid that can get pinched. The capsule around the shoulder can get torn or inflamed and stuck in a condition called frozen shoulder.
The nerves that run down to the arm can get pinched up near the neck by one of the disks (the arms version of sciatica), by something else near the neck (thoracic outlet syndrome), or by something going on in the arm itself (supinator syndrome, carpal tunnel syndrome, or a few other less common ones as well).
The joints that connect the collarbone (clavicle) to the shoulder blade (scapula) or sternum can get sprained or become unstable. The list goes on.
Shoulder or arm pain isn’t something that can be easily diagnosed by Dr Google unfortunately. You should definitely see a professional to have it evaluated if you’re having any problems.