Good afternoon,my name is Dr. Alex Hernandez from Life Chiropractic and Acupuncture, and today we’re going to talk about shoulder injuries. The shoulder is a very complex joint, and we frequently treat shoulder injuries in this office. I’m going to start out with anatomy so we get an idea what are we dealing with. There are nerves that come out from the neck and feed the shoulder, so plenty of nerves in this area along with muscles including the biceps; there are also tendon connections as well as the ligaments that connect bone to bone.
So, why do shoulders get injured so much? The shoulder has a lot of range of motion which means there’s a lot of flexibility: we can move it up and down, we can move it towards the back, the inside, and we can rotate it. So there’s a lot of motion which is a good thing, but there’s also a lot of chance for getting hurt. One of the common things that we see is people getting hurt in the gym, from throwing a ball, or from anything that requires a lot of motion and a lot of hyperextension as well as from weightlifting.
I want to give you a real life example. I have a patient who recently came in. As he was bench pressing, during the last couple repetitions, his arm just started to drift down. In order to avoid the weight hitting him, he pushed really hard with his left side to bring the weight up, and he injured the tendons and the muscles in the shoulder area.
What we do here is we identify exactly what is wrong with your shoulder: tendon, muscle, or fascia around the whole area. We also use laser therapy to correct these issues. But the first step is a proper evaluation of the shoulder. We check your range of motion, your strength, we find what is deficient and dysfunctional in your shoulder. Once we do that, then we can attack the problem.
If you are experiencing shoulder injury, please contact us.
