Shoulder pain and Functional Osteopathy

Are you suffering from shoulder pain?

Have you found, like many, it is difficult to find a solution through traditional physical therapy including chiropractic, traditional osteopathy and physiotherapy?

In my early years of osteopathic practice, I must admit, I also struggled with  many of my clients shoulder issues. No amount of exercises, manipulation or massage gave any truly long lasting relief.

Part of the problem is partly related to the fact that the shoulder joint is naturally very unstable and so the smallest of imbalances can cause a whole lot of trouble. The shoulder joint is stabilized by over 11 different muscles which essentially means 11 different opportunities for a problem to occur. What helped me more than anything to help me unravel this conundrum was Functional Medicine. One of the underlying principles of FM is that health is found by a balance between 3 factors your structure, your chemistry and your emotions. So for example, if you have a muscle weakness in your shoulder then it may be due to a spinal misalignment (Structure), nutritional deficiency (Chemistry) or emotional trauma (Emotions). Each of the muscles in the shoulder are also associated with different organs or glands in your body. One of the most common shoulder muscles weaknesses is the Teres Minor which is associated with your Thyroid gland. So if your thyroid is under active then this will weaken your Teres Minor and so cause an imbalance in your shoulder.

Your thyroid can become under active because of a number of reasons, the most common being:

• Nutritional Deficiencies, including Iodine and Iron.
• Gluten Sensitivity which leads to Thyroid Autoimmune disease.
• Soya which contains goitrogens that effect the thyroid.
• Fluoride and Chlorine, which reduce Iodine uptake.

My most recent client with a shoulder problem had a both a Teres Minor and a Deltoid weakness. Her Teres minor was weak due to an Iodine deficiency, common for people in Ottawa who have fluorinated tap water. Her Deltoid, which is related to her lungs, was weak due to a CoQ10 deficiency. CoQ10 is important for muscle function among other things and it's absorption is most commonly effected by medications. The client in question took a Actonel, a medication prescribed for people with osteoporosis. CoQ10 is also effected by cholesterol medication such as Lipitor and Crestor. By simply supplementing the clients diet with Iodine and CoQ10 her shoulder resolved within 4 weeks.

If you have any questions, queries or comments regarding this article please leave them below.

Foods that may be giving you pain.

As I've mentioned before, as an osteopath working in Ottawa I tend to be the last in line of different

therapists that a client will consult for their pain issues. This is mainly due to many Ottawan's knowing little or nothing about osteopathy. Many, of course, have tried chiropractic, massage and physiotherapy, and because they now sit in my office the results from these approaches have been at most short term. When presented with such people I would often play a bigger emphasis on looking at their diet rather than physical therapy to alleviate their pain. On this note here are my top 7 foods that I find commonly cause pain:

1. Wheat gluten (Gliadin) - typically causing neck stiffness, chronic pain between the shoulders and lower back pain but can effect joints such as knees and hips. It is also linked autoimmune arthritis such as rheumatoid arthritis.
2. Caffeine - Most notably associated with neck and lower back pain.
3. Soya - typically associated with shoulder pain.
4. Fluoride - although not a food, it is found in our drinking water, typically associated with finger stiffness and arthritis.
5. Artificial Sweeteners - most often associated with lower back pain.
6. Dairy particularly cheese - typically associated with sinus headaches and migraines.
7. Night Shade vegetables particularly potatoes and tomatoes - associated with headaches, migraines, upper back pain, and heavy legs.
8. Antibiotic feed chicken - typically causes general joint pain and stiffness.

This list is not exhaustive but gives you the most common foods and food additives which I find at the root of my clients pain issues.

If you know of any other foods that you know give you pain please let me know in the comments box below.

Shoulder pain, your Thyroid and Soya

The food we eat has an enormous effect on our bodies. I see this in virtually every patient that walks into my office. I have recently been treating two clients for chronic shoulder pain. Shoulder problems are, speaking from my own experience, notoriously difficult to treat. The same was true for these two clients. In both cases, their pain had started without any particular reason. Treating them using massage and osteopathic manipulation had seen only minor improvements.

There had to be a deeper root cause.

When problems don't respond to physical treatment then if I am looking deeper the first place I look is the persons diet. There are certain foods that I know from experience have caused clients issues in the past. On questioning both these clients both were eating large amounts of soya. The man was having soya based protein powder shakes every morning and the woman had been consuming soya milk as she was intolerant to cows milk.

There is a lot of misinformation about the health benefits of soya.

The main benefit is that it has a positive effect on the incidence of breast cancer in the far east. It is true that there is less breast cancer in far eastern countries like Japan where they eat large amounts of soya, but they eat soya sauce. This is totally different in nature to the highly processed products that we see in the western world which is made primarily from highly toxic genetically modified soya beans.

So how is soya bad?

Soy contains a number of substances that are harmful to your body and in particular the thyroid. The thyroid is the gland found in the base of your neck that controls the rate at which you burn food. One of these substances is soya gluten which is similar in structure to the gluten we find in wheat. Wheat gluten has been shown in research to be linked to the thyroid autoimmune disease, Hashimoto's. This disease occurs when your body mistakes the proteins in your thyroid for the gluten protein and attacks it. Because soy gluten is similar in structure to wheat gluten so the same problem can arise if you eat too much soya.

With your thyroid under attack so this obviously has a negative effect on how well it works.

The medical term for a reduction in the function of your thyroid is hypothyroidism. The typical symptoms for someone with an under active thyroid include fatigue, weight gain, sensitivity to cold, numbness in the fingers, constipation, depression and muscle and aches and pains. Not all these symptoms need to present but the last one on the list is the most relevant for my two clients.

The exact mechanism as to why a person's shoulder should be effected can not be explained using western science.

However there is a connection when you look at at it from the practice of Chinese Acupuncture and Applied Kinesiology which connects different organs and glands to particular muscles. Your thyroid is associated to the Teres Minor muscle in your shoulder. So when the function of thyroid is reduced to this effects the strength of the muscle and so your shoulder is likely to develop a problem.

A simple answer to a chronic problem.

Suffice to say I duly advised both clients to remove soy and a few weeks later their shoulder pain was gone!

If you have been suffering from chronic pain which has been unresponsive to physical treatment then looking at your diet could be the next best step to finding an answer. Let me know if you have any questions or comments below.