Shoulder pain is a common complaint that can be caused by a variety of factors. It can significantly limit your daily activities and affect your overall quality of life.
Why Your Shoulders Hurt
Shoulders are complex joints that allow for a wide range of movements. They consist of muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones, making them susceptible to injury and damage.
Acute shoulder pain, which lasts less than three weeks, is commonly caused by muscle strains and sprains resulting from overusing the muscles that support your shoulder joint.
Chronic shoulder pain, lasting longer than six months, can result from an underlying injury or a disease that affects the muscles, soft tissues, or bones of your joint.
4 Common Causes of Shoulder Pain
At Pain & Wellness Institute, we offer comprehensive care to ease your shoulder pain and address its underlying cause.
The four common causes of shoulder pain include:
1. Bursitis
Bursitis refers to the inflammation of the bursae in your shoulder joint. These fluid-filled sacs protect the tendons of the rotator cuff in your shoulder. When the space where the bursae sit becomes narrow, shoulder movements can irritate your tendons, leading to persistent inflammation, pain, and immobility in your shoulder.
2. Arthritis
Arthritis is a degenerative disease that affects your joints, with osteoarthritis being the most common type that affects the shoulder joint. This condition occurs when the protective cartilage that lines the bones breaks down and wears away. Without cartilage, your joint bones rub together, causing friction that results in inflammation and pain in your shoulder joint.
3. Tendon Injuries
Tendons are the tissues that attach muscles to bones. Overuse injuries are the primary cause of tendon strains, and continued use of your joint can result in the tendon tearing into pieces, causing severe pain.
4. Referred Pain
Referred pain is when you feel pain in another area of your body, but it radiates to your shoulder. Conditions that commonly cause referred pain in your shoulder include degenerative disc disease and spinal stenosis.
There’s Hope for Shoulder Pain
Lifestyle Changes and Physical Therapy: Lifestyle changes such as avoiding overuse of your shoulder joint and physical therapy to strengthen the structures of your joint can significantly improve your shoulder pain.
Manual Adjustments and Ultrasound Therapy: Chiropractic adjustments can ensure your spine is correctly aligned, reducing referred pain in your shoulders. Ultrasound therapy uses low currents of energy to stimulate your body’s natural healing processes.
Steroid Injections: Interventional steroid injections can be used to reduce inflammation and make shoulder movement easier.
Regenerative Medicine Therapy: Regenerative medicine therapy uses platelet-rich plasma (PRP) to stimulate your body’s production of new, healthy cells to repair damaged tissue, expediting the healing process.
Shoulder pain is a common problem that can limit your daily activities. If you’re experiencing shoulder pain, we offer comprehensive care to not only ease your pain but also address its underlying cause.
Contact Pain & Wellness Institute today at (813) 873-7777 to find out more about our solutions.