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What is Frozen Shoulder?
The term "frozen shoulder" is often incorrectly used to describe any
shoulder pain, but in reality it's when your arm is both stiff and
inactive and cannot be moved without intense pain by you or anyone else.
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. Its also more 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 going to stand any chance of getting sustained
improvement to the
condition in a few weeks.
At both the start and end
of each treatment I will accurately 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.
During the treatment, some of my time will be spent showing you how to
treat yourself. I also provide notes on what you have to do
and tools to help get to those inaccessible points - around the shoulder
blade etc.
How many treatments
I don't ask for a commitment for 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 - you have to help me, to help you!
I can't help you
unless you are prepared to help yourself between treatments. By now,
I'm sure I've made that clear!
Once you're committed, then just phone or email me (details at the bottom
of the page) to arrange an appointment.
Link:
www.gudgeon.co.uk |
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