Frozen Shoulder
What is a frozen shoulder?
Frozen shoulder is one of the commonest causes of shoulder pain. Frozen shoulder affects women more than men and diabetics get more shoulder pain and frozen shoulder than the rest of the population. The pain of frozen shoulder is rarely severe enough to be disabling (although it can be if you are unlucky) - but it is draining enough and prolonged enough to really get you down.
How long will frozen shoulder pain last?
Textbooks tell you to expect frozen shoulder pain to last for anything between a year and eighteen months. In my experience the duration varies according to each individual, to their health record and to the treatment given in the early stages of the condition. You can read more about this in my frozen shoulder ebook. The main thing is not to get despondent and to maintain a positive outlook about dealing with your shoulder pain
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My name is Dr Gordon Cameron and I've specialised in joint pain for years - shoulder pain and shoulder pain problems in particular.
I've used this lens page on Squidoo to give you an overview of frozen shoulder pain by pulling together all my published articles and web content related to frozen shoulder pain and frozen shoulder treatment.
I'll add more regularly - so check back often
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Shoulder Pain and Frozen Shoulder
Shoulder Pain Articles written by yours truly !
The headlines below relate to content recently published on one or more of my websites. I also contribute articles like this to other medical websites. I try to write in a clear and easy to read style. You'll find lots of other frozen shoulder information elswhere on the web but not much of it will be written in such a clear and down to earth fashion.
It's my mission in life to demystify medical topics and to strip away all the nonsense that often surrounds them. If you want crystal clear information from an expert in the field then click on below:
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byFrozen Shoulder - A free Frozen Shoulder Ebook to Download
60 full color pages - fully illustrated and comprehensive content
I've written a comprehensive fully illustrated frozen shoulder ebook. It has more than sixty pages and works just like a real book - you can click to turn the pages back and forward.
It's free to download from the link in the Frozen Shoulder Links section below on this page.
Common Questions about Frozen Shoulder
What is a Frozen Shoulder?
What causes Frozen Shoulder?
Why does your shoulder get stiff and sore?
Frozen shoulder is especially common in diabetics and in patients with high cholesterol levels although doctors have not yet worked out why this happens.
In a large number of patients no obvious cause can be determined. These cases are called "idiopathic." Idiopathic frozen shoulder seems most common in women in their 40's, 50's or 60's but men and people of other age groups can also be affected.
Sometimes the same pattern of limited motion and pain is seen in patients with rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis in their shoulder. Your doctor may organize tests to check for these possibilities although they are not common.
Frozen Shoulder Symptoms
What are the symptoms of frozen shoulder?
Most people feel their pain over the upper arm but it can spread down the arm to the elbow or below. The more inflamed the shoulder is, the further the pain seems to spread. Using the arm above the head or behind the back is very difficult and many people find it unpleasant to lie on the affected side when asleep at night.
Dressing and undressing can be very difficult - more so for women who rely on the ability to get the hand behind their back to fasten or unfasten their bra.
In many cases the pain starts slowly and gets steadily worse for several months - accompanied by increasing stiffness. Things then seem to stabilize and a few more months may pass with neither worsening or improvement in the situation. Gradually, the pain gets less and movement returns but the process from onset to recovery can take several years if no treatment is given.
Tests for Frozen Shoulder
Should you have shoulder investigations?
If there is a suspicion that other joints are also inflamed then tests to look for rheumatoid arthritis might be arranged or an X-ray taken to check for osteoarthritis.
Significant trauma at the start of the symptoms could indicate that the muscles of the rotator cuff have been torn and in this case an ultrasound image, an MRI scan or an arthrogram (injection of dye into the joint) might help to make a plan for management.
Frozen Shoulder Treatment
What are the treatment options for frozen shoulder pain?
Stick with simple painkillers - they will help just as much as anti-inflammatory drugs - and are much less likely to cause side effects in your system.
An injection of steroid and local anesthetic can give very good pain relief but the joint often stays stiff.
In very resistant cases it is possible to do an injection very deeply into the joint using an X-ray machine to guide the needle and - if things still don't improve - surgery can be undertaken to release the capsule. Other treatments designed to free up movement include manipulation under general anesthetic.
Most sufferers simply need adequate pain relief, physiotherapy and reassurance - with perhaps an injection in the early stages to relieve the worst of the pain.
Recovery from frozen shoulder
When will your frozen shoulder be back to normal?
Treatment can shorten the time to recovery dramatically. Injections lessen or abolish the pain and well planned physiotherapy will improve the movement range. Many people are simply glad of the reassurance that they don't have arthritis or some other serious condition. Adhesive capsulitis - although very frustrating - always recovers eventually.
Frozen Shoulder Links
Get more information about Frozen Shoulder and Frozen Shoulder Treatment
- Free Frozen Shoulder Book
- Get a free download of Dr Cameron's free 60 page frozen shoulder ebook
- Diabetes and frozen shoulder
- People with diabetes are more likely to get frozen shoulder than the rest of us - and when they get it their pain is usually more severe. Read more about Diabetic frozen shoulder problems by following this link
All About Frozen Shoulder
Dr Cameron's Frozen Shoulder Overview
Frozen shoulder is also known as adhesive capsulitis and the two terms are used almost interchangeably. The use of the word adhesive relates to the fact that the joint surfaces inside the painful shoulder become sticky because of inflammation in the joint.
Doctor's first recognized adhesive capsulitis in the late 1800's when they realized that it was a different condition from arthritis of the shoulder. Frozen shoulder is not a form of arthritis and it does not develop into arthritis - this is worth remembering because many patients do worry that their shoulder pain will lead on to arthritis.
The shoulder pain from frozen shoulder can start quite quickly after an injury or it may sometimes develop more gradually without any obvious trigger. But where does the word frozen fit into the shoulder pain picture?
A frozen shoulder can cause severe shoulder pain and may produce pain that spreads down the arm from the shoulder towards the elbow or the wrist. Women with frozen shoulder find it very difficult to unfasten their bra because they cannot get their hand around behind their back. Men can't reach the back pocket of their trousers because their range of shoulder movement is limited.
One of the first textbooks to devote attention to adhesive capsulitis was published in the 1930's and it only devoted a few pages to the subject of frozen shoulder. The author said that frozen shoulder pain was common, but little was known about the cause or the problem inside the joint. Things have changed a lot in medicine since 1930 but doctor's still don't have a clear answer to the question of what triggers the process that leads to a frozen shoulder.
About twenty years after this textbook was written a surgeon tried to perform surgical operations on the shoulders of patients who were suffering from frozen shoulder pain. During his attempts he found that the gristly capsule around the joint was stuck to the bone surface. He had to peel it away like a Band-Aid or elastoplasts strip. Because of this he coined the name Adhesive Capsulitis. The terms frozen shoulder and adhesive capsulitis have been used interchangeably ever since.
So why does a frozen shoulder get stiff?
Read more on www.jointenterprise.co.uk
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