Shoulder Pain Non-Surgical Options For Healing and Relief

By Mary Babcock, DO

Artius Integrative Medicine

. http://www.artiusmedical.com/

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Shoulder Pain Non-Surgical Options For Healing and Relief

Integrative Methods To Tackle Root Cause of Pain For Lasting Relief

Shoulder Pain A Multi-fastened Condition

Chronic shoulder pain affects thousands of people every year. Arthritis, a torn cartilage, or a torn rotator cuff can cause shoulder pain and swelling to occur around the bursa sacs that protect the entire shoulder. When a patient has shoulder pain, there may be psychological repercussions due to the pain. An integrative pain doctor takes a broad approach to treating shoulder pain, considering it vitally important to diagnose and to treat the root cause(s) of the shoulder pain.

Several things can cause shoulder pain yet there is no specific cause to this condition. The shoulder pain could come from a number of factors, such as a common sport injury, or just overuse.

Integrative Pain Management

An integrative pain management approach includes regenerative therapies in conjunction with trigger point injections (TPI). When the muscles of the shoulder won't relax they can form painful knots. These integrative treatments target those knots to help relieve the pain.

Trigger points can irritate the nerves around the muscles and cause severe pain, which may also affect other parts of the body. Integrative pain management physicians use specific TPI for shoulder, as well as joint pain.

These injections contain an anesthetic (often times saline) combined with a corticosteroid. A doctor gives this injection and it takes a few minutes for pain to be relieved, however one treatment can provide sustained relief. If a given patient has an allergy to a specific drug, a dry-needle technique (no medications involved) can be used.

TPI's are primarily used to treat various muscle groups, including the shoulders, back and legs. This treatment is also used to treat fibromyalgia and tension headaches, as well as, to alleviate myofascial pain syndrome that will not respond to other treatments.

Another treatment is prolotherapy. This method involves injecting a solution that contains dextrose (sugar) to induce healing and stimulate immediate response in local tissues. Patients often respond positively to one procedure, but other times a person may need three to obtain long-term relief.

Medical Acupuncture

Used in Chinese medicine, acupuncture is a technique that is used to target specific points in the body to ensure they are stimulated. The National Institutes of Health has supported many studies that show positive results that acupuncture helps assist in reducing chronic shoulder pain.