3 Tips for Shoulder Pain

One of the reasons shoulder pain sucks is that it interferes with lots of everyday activities such as getting dressed, washing your hair, and getting comfy for a good night’s sleep.

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In this episode of MoveMedics TV, I share 3 handy tips to help make things easier for you as you get better.

’Til next time, Be Free In Your Movement™.

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Selina
B. Phty
This information is not medical advice. Got health concerns? Consult a real-life health professional.
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When you are experiencing shoulder pain you may find it difficult to do simple everyday tasks, so I want to show you three tips to help you out.

Hi, I’m Selina, physio from MoveMedics. I want to help you to improve your movement, increase your health knowledge, so you can move better feel better, and keep doing what you love for as long as you want.

Now shoulder pain is exceedingly common, you don’t have to be an athlete to get it, you don’t have to do sports to get it, anybody can get shoulder pain. And one of the reasons that it increases the this suck factor for shoulder pain is that it affects a lot of the things that you do.

For example, it makes it very difficult to get dressed, to wash your hair, and even to get comfortable to sleep, so I want to show you some tips to help with these activities.

Before I show them to you, let me first say that everyone’s pain experience is different and unique, so if you are experiencing pain, the best thing for you to do is to go see your health professional, and work together to come up with a solution that is tailored specifically for you. An internet video like this whilst informative, simply isn’t good enough to do you justice.

Now with that being said the first tip I want to share with you is for getting dressed. I have had patients tell me that they have completely avoided putting things over their head and have gone for button up shirts because their shoulder hurts, and yeah I suppose that can work but I don’t even own blouses so you know that won’t work for me and I imagine for a lot of people either.

Now, when you have shoulder pain it is very common for it to be painful when you raise it up. Whilst you are working with your physio to overcome your pain, it is okay to temporarily avoid those painful movements. And here’s how you do it, to say I want to take my jumper off, this arm isn’t painful so make the non-painful side do all the work, so I can tuck that and then do this way so I’m keeping the left arm quite still and there you go.

And to put it back on, it’s cold here, you just put your painful side in first, again this arm is not painful so make it do all the fiddling around. So you can pull that up and take it to where you need it, and this one can do that, and you are dressed.

Now I didn’t mean for this to happen but I have actually messed up my hair here which is then going to help me show you the second tip.

A lot of people also tell me that they have trouble washing their hair either because it is painful to lift the arm up or it is painful to have the arm up there for a while, so this is what you can try.

So you’re in the shower and shower typically has walls around you so you use the wall to help you.

So I have a wall here and you may even have done this exercise before, walking your arm up the wall to maintain your range of movement, so you can either do that, you can do it assisted, whichever way works for you and using the weight… using the wall to help support your arm whilst you tie your hair up or wash your hair, you can even have both of them supported or if you’re washing your hair, supported.

Okay. So the last tip I want to share with you is on finding a comfortable position so you can get a good night’s sleep.

It is always important to get good quality and also enough sleep and especially when you are experiencing pain, because a lack of sleep can both increase your sensitivity to pain and also decrease your pain tolerance, and the objective here is to find yourself a position that makes your shoulder, and really your nervous system, feel safe, supported, and secure, and one way of doing that is to try to support it with some pillows.

So here I have a pillow. Let’s just say I’m lying on my side, you just have to experiment yourself to find what makes your body and your nervous system feel “Oh this is a safe place for me to be and so I can relax and go off to sleep.” And you may just need a pillow, you may for some people you might want to fold up a towel and put it underneath the arm, between your arm and your rib cage.

If you are a back sleeper you might also try to use a small folded towel to just put it behind the shoulder there, that may just be enough for it to feel secure enough so you get a good night’s sleep.

And so there are my three tips for you for if you have shoulder pain on getting dressed, on washing your hair, and also finding a comfortable position to get a good night’s sleep in.

I hope that has been helpful for you. Let me know by giving me a thumbs up. And you can also help support this channel by subscribing to it and sharing our videos with your friends. And make sure that you ding that bell so you get notified when we have a new video out for you. Thank you so much for watching, ’till next time, Be Free In Your Movement.

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