Where Shoulder Pain Can Come From
Dr. Kosterman here with Kosterman Chiropractic in Cary, North Carolina. In this video series, we’re continuing to talk about shoulder pain. In this video in particular, we’re going to talk about three simple tests that you can do at home to kind of figure out if the problem’s coming from your shoulder.
The shoulder’s a complex joint. The shoulder itself has about eight or nine muscle attachments, depending on who you ask or which book you look in, but the whole shoulder girdle has about eight muscle attachments to it. Again, pain can come from an old injury, a new injury, a chronic injury, or some other underlying pathology.
The caveat is that I’m going to give you these three tests to check and see if it’s coming from your shoulder. But if it’s something you just can’t figure out, go see a medical provider or healthcare provider and have them check it out to make sure something more serious isn’t going on underneath.
Shoulder pain can come from the shoulder itself and the muscles, tendons, and ligaments attached to it. Or it can come from the back, the spine, the scapula or shoulder blade. It can even come from the elbow and refer up. It can come from nerves that are compressed in the neck. So these are three easy tests you can do at home just to kind of find out if it’s coming from your shoulder.
Test One: Abduction
The first one is called the abduction test. With this, you’re just going to go through some easy range of motion. You’re going to start here and raise that arm all the way up. You really want to get that arm all the way to the top. When you bring it back down nice and slow, I want you to stop and hold it at 90 degrees.
Seems easy enough, but if your shoulder’s hurting and you have some impingement, it’s going to be a challenge to do that. If you get pain with this, that’s indicative of a shoulder problem. Or if you get pain moving it all the way up, then notice that when you bring it down and try to hold it, it simply falls and you can’t hold it, that’s indicative of a shoulder problem. If you’re unable to get it up all the way to the top, that’s indicative of a shoulder problem, too.
It could be indicative of a serious shoulder problem, especially if it’s dropping while you’re holding it. That could be a serious rotator cuff problem, which needs to be evaluated thoroughly.
Test Two: Reaching Over the Shoulder
The second test is a simple range of motion. Let’s say we’re testing the left side. You’re just going to reach over the top and grab the opposite shoulder blade. Go as far as humanly possible to try to grab that area, right?
If you’re doing that and you feel some stress, strain, or pain in that joint that reproduces what you’ve been having, it’s probably coming from the shoulder.
Test Three: Reaching Behind Your Back
The third test is the least amount of fun. Essentially, you’re going to turn around, take the hand on the side that’s bothering you, go up and under as high as you can, and try to reach that opposite shoulder blade.
This is not a very fun one if you’re having shoulder problems. It’s either going to be hard to do, it’s going to be restricted—meaning you can’t get there or the pain inhibits you from getting there—or you just can’t do it because of the pain.
What the Tests May Tell You
All three of these tell you that there’s probably some type of rotator cuff issue in there. There could be tendinitis, there could be tendinopathy if it’s been in there long enough, some type of strain or injury, or, at the very worst, some type of arthritis or degeneration where the tissue is just worn out.
At any rate, if you go through these and they do reproduce your shoulder pain, it’s probably a good idea to get assessed or checked by a healthcare provider. That way, you can find out what’s going on and have a plan built out for you to see if you need further testing, like an X-ray or an MRI.
Thanks so much for watching the video. If you have any questions, please let us know, and we’ll see you in the next one.
