Are you suffering from shoulder pain, but don’t want to have surgery or take drugs to ease the pain? You may have been told you need to get steroid shots or take other measures that only mask the discomfort, but there are natural shoulder pain treatments that can provide as good if not better relief. This is particularly true if you have what is referred to as “frozen shoulder syndrome.”
Understanding Frozen Shoulder Syndrome
Frozen shoulder syndrome usually presents with the following symptoms:
- Pain in the shoulder worsens at night
- Shoulder movement is restricted by pain, especially during rotation and adduction
- Pain often persists for two years or longer, even after treatment has begun
Adduction of the shoulder is the movement of the arm toward the body’s midline. For example, if you hold you arm out straight out at the shoulder and bring it down to your side, this is an example of adduction. This sort of movement is painful for those who have frozen shoulder syndrome.
People who have Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, thyroid problems or cardiovascular disease are more likely to develop frozen shoulder syndrome than the average population. Those who have suffered from a stroke are also at higher risk, and as many as 40 percent of people diagnosed with diabetes will suffer from frozen shoulder syndrome at one point or another.
Frozen Shoulder Relief
A recent study indicates that chiropractic adjustments provide significant and measurable pain relief in a remarkably short amount of time.
The study participants were 50 patients diagnosed with frozen shoulder syndrome, all of whom were aged 40-70. Study participants underwent chiropractic adjustments for shoulder pain focused on correction of C0-C1 chiropractic subluxation.
Twenty-eight days after beginning chiropractic treatment, over half of the patients reported significant pain reduction and improvements in shoulder adduction.
On average, patients reported a 78 percent improvement in pain reduction, ranked on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the highest level of pain and one the lowest level of pain. The median average study participant reported a reduction in pain level from a nine out of ten (at the beginning of the study) to a two out of ten (by the end of the 28-day study).
Almost all of the patients also saw improvements in adduction. Of the 50 participants, 16 regained normal shoulder adduction, 25 reported improvement of 75-90 percent adduction, and eight had 50-75 percent improvement. Only one study participant experienced less than 50 percent improvement in adduction.
