Shoulder Pain
Have you ever just tweaked your shoulder doing something innocuous, and waited for the pain to go away only for it to just hang around? Do you get a sharp pain in your shoulder or upper arm when you reach up or behind yourself? Is it uncomfortable to lie on your side in bed at night? If so there is a chance you may have shoulder impingement, a condition where one of the rotator cuff muscles has been pinched and is continually irritated when the shoulder is moved in certain positions.
Rotator Cuff Tendons
The shoulder is such a mobile joint in our body and has a large range of motion so that we can reach our hands into lots of positions in order to go about our daily business such as brushing our hair, tucking our shirt in, or reaching up to the top of a cupboard. What enables us to control all of these movements are four muscles collectively known as the rotator cuff. The rotator cuff muscles originate from the shoulder blade and work in fine balance to provide the control to enable us to move our hands into such a large range of positions.
Shoulder impingement occurs when this balance is lost, causing uncoordinated movement and resulting in one of the rotator cuff tendons being repeatedly pinched between two bones every time the shoulder is moved into a certain position – commonly overhead or behind you.
Symptoms Of Shoulder Impingement
Shoulder impingement is usually experienced as:
a quick sharp jolt of pain in the shoulder and upper arm when reaching the arm in certain directions
a residual dull ache when moving the arm back into a comfortable position
pain getting dressed, putting a seatbelt on, lying on the affected side
This pattern of pain will continue until the correct movement pattern has been restored to the shoulder. This is where a physiotherapist can help, by identifying what has caused the tendon to be pinched and providing a way to correct it. Once this has been done and the shoulder is moving in such a way as to prevent further aggravation of the tendon, a physiotherapist can use a variety of techniques in order to promote healing and improve the strength of the tendon.
More detail on shoulder pain can be found here, and there are some exercises that you can try at home here.