People often take shoulder health for granted until shoulder pain or limited mobility makes it difficult to work, do chores, or play with their kids. Getting the right shoulder pain management and rehabilitation treatment plan can help you regain your strength and range of motion.
Optimum Health helps you determine the underlying causes of shoulder pain, stiffness, and limited mobility. We can provide you with a shoulder pain specialist from our chiropractic team to assist in diagnosing and treating the pain and discomfort you’ve been experiencing. Our care team includes experienced chiropractors, massage therapists, physical therapists, and pain management specialists.
Chiropractic adjustments can be hugely beneficial for the alleviation of certain types of shoulder pain, but they’re not the only solution. Optimum Health Rehab offers a comprehensive suite of physical rehabilitation and shoulder pain management services that can help patients regain their range of motion and restore their strength.
When Should I See a Doctor for Shoulder Pain?
Shoulder pain can crop up for any reason, including “sleeping on it wrong” or sustaining a minor injury. However, when shoulder pain persists for more than a few days, or when it makes use of the shoulder and arm impossible, it is critical to see a healthcare professional.
Some symptoms that indicate shoulder pain could be serious include:
- Numbness, weakness, or tingling in the hand or forearm
- Radiating pain felt in the neck, upper back, or lumbar region
- Pain that makes it difficult to concentrate
- Severely restricted mobility of the arm affected
- Pain and discomfort that interrupts sleep
- Pain and stiffness that persists for more than a few days
- Pain related to acute trauma, including falls, car accidents, sports injuries, and other events
The team at Optimum Health Rehab utilizes decades of combined experience in injury care and an array of diagnostic equipment to pinpoint the root cause of your shoulder pain. We then recommend a customized chiropractic, rehabilitation, and pain management plan.
Shoulders are a complicated part of the human body, and many different things can go wrong. The best treatment for one patient may not be appropriate for another, which is why you should seek out pain management and injury treatment clinics that don’t rely on one-size-fits-all approaches to shoulder pain.
Whether your shoulder pain is from a car accident, sports injury, repetitive stress injury from your job, or is caused by a degenerative joint condition, our diverse array of therapy options can ensure our specialists can help. If you have pain or discomfort when using your shoulder, please give us a call for a consultation.
What Does Shoulder Pain Treatment Usually Involve?
Sometimes patients tell us that they never noticed how much they used their shoulder until they started having shoulder pain! This type of pain can be complicated by the necessity for shoulder motion. Many patients only feel shoulder pain when they extend the shoulder in certain ways.
Your range of motion may be significantly restricted by shoulder pain, or you might be suffering ancillary symptoms like shoulder weakness, tingling sensations in your arms or hands, and radiating pain.
Your first visit will likely be with chiropractors and medical professionals, who will ascertain the root cause and severity of your shoulder pain. The medical doctors on staff may order imaging to properly diagnose the injury.
Treatments could include manual chiropractic adjustments and physical therapy techniques. Patients may also be prescribed special stretching techniques and exercises, which should generally be regimented to restore strength without exacerbating injuries.
Shoulder Pain and Car Accidents
If you’ve experienced shoulder pain after a car accident, it’s possible your pain is related even if it didn’t appear until several days after the car crash. Some people initially think they are all right after an accident, but the pain may occur later.
Neck injuries like whiplash are very common in car accidents, especially in rear-end accidents or any collision where the driver tried to stop the car suddenly and you may have been thrown forward, snapping your head back and forth. Although this most commonly causes typical whiplash symptoms of neck pain and stiffness, sometimes it can lead to referred pain in the shoulder.
Another issue is that seatbelts often cross one of the shoulders, and when the seatbelt suddenly pulls tight during a collision, it can put a strain on the shoulder or cause injury. If your shoulder pain came on after a car accident, chiropractic care and adjustments may be very beneficial in relieving your pain.
Optimum Health’s Georgia car accident injury care team can help you diagnose all aspects of your injury in order to come up with a personalized treatment plan that gets to the root of your underlying shoulder pain.
Georgia Shoulder Pain Specialists
Physical medicine and rehabilitation are two of the greatest tools you can use to strengthen the shoulder, joints, and muscles. Once a proper diagnosis has been made, a treatment plan can be developed that is unique to the individual and their needs.
Optimum Health Rehab combines chiropractic and physical rehabilitation treatments, which sets our clinics apart from other Georgia chiropractors and pain management doctors. We frequently prescribe medication in conjunction with more natural therapies. Treatment for shoulder pain may combine conventional methods as well as holistic and allopathic treatment plans.
One thing we don’t offer is invasive surgery. Our goal is always to help patients overcome shoulder pain and regain a full range of motion without needing to go under the knife.
Some therapies we could recommend based on the results of your diagnostic tests include:
Chiropractic Adjustment
If you think chiropractic care is only for back pain, think again. Misaligned or compressed areas of the spine can cause referred pain in various parts of the body, including the shoulder, but chiropractic adjustment may help.
In some cases, the pain originates in the shoulder joint, and your chiropractor can adjust the shoulder. It’s also very common to see injuries or misalignments of the neck or ribcage cause shoulder pain, and adjustments are effective at treating these as well.
One example of a common shoulder problem is a condition called shoulder impingement, which is often caused by overuse of the shoulder. When it occurs, the shoulder blade, also called the acromion, rubs up against the rotator cuff, a cluster of muscles and tendons that keeps the shoulder joint in place and functioning. As the rubbing continues, the joint becomes painful and inflamed, and movement is soon difficult.
Some patients worry that they will need surgery or strong painkillers to get through this injury, but in many situations, our chiropractic adjustments help to provide pain relief. In combination with other treatments like exercises, it may even resolve the problem completely.
Regenerative Medicine
Spinal misalignment isn’t the only possible cause of shoulder pain. Sometimes a patient may have a persistent problem with one or more of the eight muscles, four tendons, and three ligaments that make up each shoulder. Like the shoulder joint itself, these tissues face a lot of strain as we go about our everyday lives, lifting and carrying things. Additionally, acute injuries from an accident or a sports activity can tear or damage the delicate muscles and tendons in your shoulder.
When other treatments haven’t provided enough pain relief for a soft tissue injury in the shoulder, we may try a platelet-rich plasma, or PRP, injection. This consists of plasma taken from the patient’s own blood, which is separated into both platelet-rich and platelet-poor plasma. During the same visit, we take the platelet-rich plasma and inject it into the shoulder. Its bio proteins and growth hormones speed up the healing process, and many patients finally get the relief they need without surgery.
Neurology Services
Some shoulder pain can be caused by nerve compression or damage, rather than an injury to the joint or muscles. The nerves may be in the spinal cord, the shoulder, or in between. Our Optimum Health Rehab specialist will perform a neurological evaluation, diagnose any nerve difficulties that could be causing your pain, and set out a treatment plan to address them. This may involve several other therapies, including spinal manipulation, physical therapy, or pain management injections.
Visit One of Our Georgia Clinics for Shoulder Pain Management
Are You Ready to Tackle Your Shoulder Pain? Call Optimum Health Rehab Today
The chiropractic and medical team at Optimum Health Rehab is committed to developing shoulder pain treatment plans that help Georgia residents restore a full range of pain-free motion. Before you resort to invasive surgeries with long recovery periods or pharmaceutical solutions with potentially severe side effects, schedule a consultation with our chiropractic and wellness team. Call us at 877-704-1761 or fill out our form to schedule an appointment.