Shoulder PainPonca City Oklahoma Chiropractor Dr. Leon Bristow talks about what causes shoulder pain. That is truly an interesting question. Let's take a look and see what are the most common causes of rotator cuff pain are. The shoulder joint, like the hip, has a considerable range of motion which is provided by the type of joint it is, a ball and socket joint. The shoulder ball and socket joint depends heavily on the surrounding tissues to hold it together. These tissues, the ligaments, joint capsule, tendons, fascia, and muscles are what hold the shoulder joint in place and make it work. If the shoulder joint has one weakness it is the weakness of these supporting and stabilizing tissues. When you are standing or sitting up the weight of the arm places a certain amount of stress on these tissues all the time. When you pick something up with your hand and lift it up the weight of the object is increased as the arm acts as a leaver when it lifts something up. What this means is that lifting one pound with the hand could be placing five to ten times the load on the tissues of the shoulder joint than the one pound. The actual amount of the load on the rotator cuff tissues depends on the length of the persons arm and how high they lift the object. Lifting the arm to 90 degrees so that the arm is parallel with the floor will put the maximum load on these tissues. So for example lifting a 10 pound object could place a 100 pound load on the shoulder joint tissues. What I am trying to point out is that the tissues must carry the entire load of this joint. This load is increased when you lift an object. If something is going to have a problem in the shoulder joint and cause shoulder pain or rotator cuff pain it is most likely going to be the tissues. The tissues are the weakest link in this chain. So what would happen to the tissues? Simple, they break. Damage in the tissues is simply the tissues breaking. What is it that breaks and causes pain in the shoulder? For the answer to that question we need to look back at the tissues. Remember the tissues are the ligaments, joint capsule, tendons, fascia, and muscle. With the exception of the muscle cell, all of these tissues are just one tissue called connective tissue. Connective tissue is simply amino acids stuck together into chains then several of these chains are woven together like a rope over and over again until you have the three fibers of connective tissue called collagen, elastin, and reticulin. It is these three fibers that make up the ligaments, joint capsule, tendons, and fascia. These three fibers are what hold us together and support us. So when the tissues of the rotator cuff break it is these fibers that break. So what does this have to do with shoulder pain? If we look at the pain sensors in the body we see that there are three types of pain sensors in the body. All three of these pain sensors are designed to do one thing, detect damage or the threat of damage to these tissues. These pain sensors are all located in the connective tissues. These pain sensors are predominantly located in two locations in the tissues. One is close to the surface to detect damage from the outside of the body. The other location is down deep next to the bone where all the tissues must attach to the bone to be anchored in place to hold and support the bone. This location let's us know that the body considers damage to the attachments to be critically important. If an attachment should become pulled completely loose then that tissue would become completely useless and function would be lost. The body would not reattach the tissue by itself. This would be a surgical problem. Just like damage at the surface of the skin it does not take a lot of damage to the deep tissues attached to the bone to cause shoulder pain. This shows the importance of damage to the shoulder joint. Even minor damage to this area would compromise the integrity of the attachment and put the attachment at an increased risk for further damage. That is why there are so many pain sensors in this location, to let you know at the first sign of trouble to try to prevent total failure. If you have shoulder pain one of the most common and most likely problems is damage to the tissues of the shoulder. Another common problem would be the nerves being compromised or damaged somewhere along the course of the pain nerve. If the nerve is being injured somewhere along the course of the nerve this can also cause pain in the shoulder as well. This could easily be the source of your shoulder pain. Both of these common problems as well as others are what I treat every day. Eliminating pain and restoring the body to normal healthy function is my number one priority in practice. Helping the body to repair damaged tissue is a critical part of eliminating pain in the shoulder. For more information on how I work to help the body repair damaged tissue please follow the link to Directional Pressure Therapy. If you have questions please feel free to call my office at 580-762-7634.
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