What Causes Frozen Shoulder?

Your shoulder is a very complicated complex of muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones. It's amazing that it works as well as it does. It's no wonder that things often go wrong with it. Our shoulders were an adaptation of a limb that was originally designed to be a front leg, so it retains some of the structures from that legacy, while nature has added more to it to make it support the use of our hands.

Muscles in our body typically attach two structural elements together, usuall bones. A nerve is connected to the center of the muscle, its "belly", to send it signals. The nerve signals the muscle fibers to contract or relax, the basis of all movement. In the case of the shoulder, there are many intertwined muscles and lots of bones. The shoulder is not a true joint in the same way that your hip, ankle and knee are. This is why you arms are much more flexible.

Frozen shoulder occurs when some of the fibers in two of these muscles become "stuck" in the contracted position. The more fibers, the worse the sticking. This causes your shoulder to be out of alignment and lots of other related muscles become stressed and "stick". Over a period of weeks or months, your shoulder freezes, painfully, until it's hard to use at all. Then, over time, these muscles relax, and if you are lucky, after two or three years, they will all let go and your shoulder will be back to normal.

These "sticky" muscles are known as trigger points. You will be able to find them right away. Press hard all around you shoulder and you will find several "knots" of hard muscle that feel like a knife when you press on them. Yes - those are the culprits! They are bands of muscle cells that are stuck in contraction and won't let your shoulder stretch out to normal. You will need to unstick them all to get 100% relief. The good news is that you can do this quickly, within weeks, and that you don't have to wait two years to get better.