Do I Need Shoulder Manipulation?

Shoulder manipulation can be the right choice for you. Like surgery, it is generally considered when other options have failed.

Shoulder manipulation is typically done when the patient is under anaesthesia, as the procedure involves*:

• forceful abduction of the arm to intentionally rupture the inferior capsule of the shoulder and the posterior capsule of the shoulder
• forcible external rotation and internal rotation (with great care to prevent causing a spiral fracture of the arm)

"Manipulation Under Anaesthesia | Shoulderdoc". Shoulderdoc.co.uk. N. p., 2017. Web. 19 June 2017.

It is known by doctors and physical therapists that manipulation will increase shoulder Range of Motion (ROM) by ripping soft tissue at the cost of introducing more scar tissue into the shoulder. This added scar tissue can be very problematic, requiring quite a bit of PT and often significant treatment post-manipulation. If not dealt with properly, your shoulder could end up in worse condition than before. This is why manipulation is only performed as a last resort.

Contraindications, or People That Shouldn't Have a Manipulation

Fozen shoulder that is associated with type 1 diabetes does not "respond well" to manipulation. Past cases were shown to freeze up again within 2 to 3 weeks.

In cases where there is a history of postirradiation fibrois, shoulder manipulation may lead to a loss of elasticity in the brachial plexus and as such, put you at risk of a traction lesion.

Due to the risk of bone fracture it is highly advised that elderly or frail patients or anyone with osteoporosis do not undergo the manipulation procedure.

If You Haven't Done So Yet, Get a Proper Diagnosis

Shoulder manipulation is not effective unless you really do have frozen shoulder. This is why it is important to get to a physician and find out what is really going on - this is known as getting a proper diagnosis. Getting a proper diagnosis would also determine if your locked shoulder is referred pain or a side effect from another condition or disease (diabetes or lyme disease are two examples). This is less common but nonetheless, very serious. So yes, it is important to get a proper diagnosis - and even more important when pertaining to frozen shoulder.

The Good News

Most frozen shoulder cases do not require manipulation, and will heal on their own. This is why most doctors, physicians and orthopaedic specialists will recommend conservative treatments for frozen shoulder injuries before considering manipulation.

Some of the most effective conservative treatment methods to avoid manipulation are:

• Avoid Activities that Caused Your Injury - While resting your shoulder it's also important to avoid all activities that may have caused your injury in the first place and this definitely includes pretty much any type of sport where your upper body is involved. Continuing on with regular activities will not only make your injury worse, but limping to 'work around' your injury will eventually give rise to over-compensation injuries in other areas of your body.
• Apply Cold As Needed - The application of a Cold Compress or Ice Pack will help you to manage pain after a manipulation while getting rid of swelling, inflammation and edema in your shoulder. Immediate pain relief and reduced inflammation can also relieve some of the pressure that's being placed on the soft tissue in your shoulder (impingement)and stop your injury from getting worse.
• Use a TShellz^® Circulatory Boost Wrap
  Effective Circulatory Boost = Treatment with a Shoulder TShellz Wrap.
  You can use your own blood flow to maximize healing of damaged tissue, maintain healthy blood flow to your shoulder, decrease recovery time, and boost overall long-term healing.
• Stretch Your Shoulder, Often by Using Our Top 5 Frozen Shoulder Stretches - Undertaking a frozen shoulder stretching regimen frequently on a consistent basis will help to increase the Range of Motion in your shoulder over time. Before stretching, apply the Shoulder TShellz Wrap for a treatment session to "warm up the shoulder" (increase tissue elasticity, decrease chance of strain). After stretching, apply the Shoulder Cold Compress if any pain or swelling flares up from the stretching.

For acute (new or recent) Achilles tendon tears that have the ability to heal on their own - your doctor may even cast your foot in a toe pointed position (in something called a "hanging enquinus cast") or in a removable brace/splint. A removable splint can be very helpful to prepare you for PT sessions and mobility exercises.

Prolonged use of a cast, removable splint, or long-term rest (restricted movement) without proper exercise or stretching can make your Achilles tendon injury worse. If your Achilles tendon remains completely immobilized and at constant rest, the ends of the Achilles tendon (where it attaches to bone or other muscles) will begin to fill in with scar tissue as part of the healing process. You may also have on-going symptoms of pain, swelling and inflammation, and even poor blood flow circulation.

Lack of proper blood flow and growth of scar tissue will decrease the natural length of the tendon (atrophy) and tighten tissue, reducing the flexibility between your ankle and foot. Your ability to push off with your foot in certain activities such as running, jumping, or going up and down stairs all become compromised. You are also at an increased risk of re-rupture of the tendon, especially if the initial injury was large and required surgery in the first place.

What Happens When You Are Not Using
Conservative Treatment Methods (as Outlined Above)

Soft Tissue Injuries of the Shoulder (this also includes the rotator cuff) are all injuries that cannot really be ignored. If you choose to ignore the injury, then this means you will still be be trying to do certain tasks (ie. using a fork, putting on your seat belt, etc) using soft tissue (strained and/or partially torn ligaments & tendons) that is already compromised. This means it will inevitably get worse.

Here is what to expect:
• Since the tissue is still inflamed, lack of proper blood flow will drop your healing rate to a crawl.
• Continually straining the soft tissue (just by doing daily tasks that such as cooking and sleeping on your side) worsens the injury and will introduce more scar tissue.
• Increased scar tissue buildup will tighten the soft tissue in your shoulder, decreasing your already limited flexibility.(reduced range of motion)
  If you suffer from a rotator cuff injury, this means that when you get out of bed in the morning and try to bathe, shave or wash your hair, it will hurt a LOT - this is due to reduced flexibility in the shoulder.

Since the ligaments/tendons of the shoulder cannot flex as much as they once did, trying to use it during your simple daily routine just introduces more scar tissue and continuously worsens the injury. As you can see this is a cycle that just gets worse and worse, eventually becoming a chronic (long term) injury. This is the cycle you need to stop or you will probably wind up having surgery once your injury becomes chronic.

The Absence of Pain Does Not Mean Your Injury is Gone

After most of our clients treat themselves with a Cold Compress or Ice Pack (2 to 4 times per day), the shoulder pain disappears very quickly. This where most people wrongly associate the pain with the injury, whereas in truth, almost all of the pain really came from the inflammation and swelling. Once the inflammation is gone, do not assume you are fully healed.

Time Is Not Your Friend

So you have used cold compression and most of the pain is gone, but your Range of Motion has not improved. If this is you, then you have probably not been stretching. To really start dealing with frozen shoulder, cold compression is helpful - but you really need to start stretching to get your shoulder tissue to "unfreeze", and you don't need me to tell you this is a pain in the butt! This is why the Shoulder TShellz Wrap is such an important tool. It basically kick starts your constricted soft tissue by increasing its elasticity and elongation.

The best time to strech your frozen shoulder is shortly after you finish a Shoulder TShellz Wrap treatment; your tissue is elongated and more elastic at this time, meaning stretching will be more effective and the chance of strain will be reduced.

We also highly recommend that our clients treat themselves with the Circulatory Boost wrap first thing in the morning before getting out of bed. This is important, as the treatment is proven to increase elasticity and flexibility in shoulder ligaments and shoulder tendons; it will decrease the chance of re-straining these ligaments and tendons at their most vulnerable time - after a long period of inactivity.

If our body is designed to heal our own injuries, why does it take so long to heal?

When we have an injured ligament, muscle, tendon or bursa, this means the tissue is damaged. Your body responds to this damage with healing right away. During this healing process the injured tissue spasms. These spasms are contractions, and are meant to hold the tissue still to prevent any further injury.

Swelling and inflammation is your body's way of:
• Creating localized pain to tell you something is wrong there and to stop moving it, and
• Sending blood to the area to start healing. Healing at this point will also expand the blood vessels in the injured tissue - they enlarge and swell causing you pain. This pain is a signal for you to lessen activity that would put anymore undue stress on your shoulder.

However, there is are significant problem with swelling and inflammation with regard to healing rate. Once soft tissue (such as your supraspinatus tendon) is inflamed, blood-flow is restricted. The body heals itself by sending nutrients through the blood to the injured tissue, and if the injured tissue is swollen, the blood-flow is greatly decreased.

Decreased blood-flow to injured tissue, prevents the damaged tissue from healing as fast as it would if the area wasn't swollen.

The other issue is that swelling is also very painful. With many conditions such as the common supraspinatus tendinosis, once you get rid of the inflammation, a lot of the pain will disappear as well.

Once the Pain is Gone, We Think Our Soft Tissue Injury is Healed.

So we start using it more and more for common tasks, and then "boom" we get a sharp pain and then it starts all over. When this happens, the injury was never fully healed - and now it is worse! More scar tissue grows in the new tissue micro-tears and well, lets talk about scar tissue.

Scar Tissue - We Need It For Kick-Starting Tissue Tear Repair
But After That It is Nasty Stuff

Tendons, ligaments, muscle and other soft tissue in the shoulder are all meant to be soft and flexible, ready to work and move extreme forces in everyday activities. When I say extreme force, I mean try to imagine the amount of force that your arm puts on your shoulder, even when you are just trying to lift your own arm, let alone something heavy.

Scar tissue grows in damaged tissue when it tries to heal; little tiny band-aids that overlap each other to bind tiny tissue tears together. With this added scar tissue, muscles & tendons & ligaments become rigid, less flexible and unable to handle the forces that it once could. If you're suffering with scar tissue now you may feel the effects with stiffness, tightness, weakness and tiredness in your shoulder.

Scar tissue can form fast to bring together the edges of a tear, but working fast doesn't mean that the job's done right. When scar tissue forms it doesn't come together as neatly as regular (healthy) tissue would. Scar tissue fibers will lay down over top of your tear in a cluttered, messy and jumbled up way.

On-going issues with scar tissue can result in soft tissue tears and increase chances of strain to nearby tendons or ligaments (as they are now handling higher forces due to overcompensation).

Scar tissue is one of the MAIN reasons why a chronic shoulder injury has not healed and your Range of Motion (ROM) is reduced from what it once was.

Scar tissue will form fast to deal with a soft tissue shoulder injury, and this scar tissue will also attach to everything in the area, including the surrounding healthy tissue as well. This can result in a fusing together of the soft tissue in your shoulder that shouldn't be fused together, and this will cause extreme pain when you move your shoulder - it is literally ripping scar tissue. This is why PT is often painful - the therapist stretches the joint, forcing the scar tissue bonds to break so you can regain your range of motion.

Scar tissue is a major problem especially when it comes to a shoulder injury - causing your injury to become chronic, and taking months or even YEARS to completely heal!

You can quickly soften scar tissue and prevent further injury to your shoulder muscles/tendons/ligaments by increasing blood flow to that area. Treating yourself with a combination of the Shoulder TShellz Wrap is the easiest and most effective way to accelerate your recovery and deal with stubborn scar tissue.

When applied before activity or work, the TShellz Wrap will also relax and lengthen your soft tissue to help improve your range of motion and prevent atrophy (tissue wasting & shortening) of your injured shoulder.

Overall, continued treatment with a TShellz Wrap will maintain good health in your soft tissue and significantly reduce your risk of re-injury.

When to use a Cold Compress or Ice Pack:

Circulation Boost

If you want to heal quickly, you need to keep your blood moving and that's where Circulatory Boost, comes in.

What is Circulatory Boost? It's a substantial increase in the flow of blood to soft tissue in the shoulder without the need to exercise your already damaged tissue.

Have you seen what happens when you add water to a flower wilted from drought? In essence, your injured shoulder is much like a "wilted" flower; your body wants to heal its injury, but needs lots of nutrients to do it. Blood supports and facilitates new life by delivering healing nutrients and oxygen that are vital to your tissue. In addition, the blood carries away toxins and waste cleaning the area and healing it faster. Without a good supply of blood, your injury simply won't heal properly.

With Circulatory Boost your injured shoulder is constantly being fed with healing, nutritious, oxygen and energy filled blood. This is exactly what your body needs to heal.

In order to get maximum blood flow to your frozen shoulder, you need to help your body stimulate blood flow. A Shoulder TShellz Wrap^® is a fast, easy and pain-free way to increase blood flow (while also increasing flexibility of soft tissue).

TShellz Wrap^® = The Perfect Circulation Boost Delivery Tool

• BEFORE getting out of bed in the morning. BEFORE going to bed at night.
• BEFORE exercise, workouts or activity of any kind to increase elasticity of shoulder tendons, ligaments and muscles and decrease the chance of re-injury.
• AFTER manipulation or surgery (once the skin wound has healed over and swelling has reduced) to increase post-manipulation healing rate and minimize scar tissue growth at the shoulder location.
• Anytime BEFORE you feel you might undertake activity that will put significant strain on the injury area.

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Minimize Your Chance of Shoulder Manipulation with these Effective Conservative Treatment Options

If your doctor thinks you might be able to avoid manipulation by using conservative treatments, you can join our many customers who have had great success treating themselves with the powerful treatment products we offer through AidMyFrozenShoulder.

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We also encourage your to Call Our Office at 1-866-237-9608 (toll free continental NA) where we can answer any questions you have and/or take your order via phone.

Shoulder Injuries are common and can happen to anyone. Right now there are thousands of doctors and physical therapists dealing with patients that require a solution to treat their shoulder injury fast and heal it (where possible). If you want to be pro-active about properly addressing your frozen shoulder injury by using the best conservative treatments, then you need to use AidMyFrozenShoulder's system utilizing Circulatory Boost via use of the TShellz Wrap^®.

If Shoulder Manipulation is Required

Ok, well the good news is that AidMyFrozenShoulder conservative treatments are also highly effective for shoulder post-manipulation recovery. They are effective treatment tools that can be used at home to as an aid to your PT.

The Next Step Is Up To You!

Living with pain is never easy as it affects your entire lifestyle. Living with pain during or after an intensive manipulation (or surgery) and lengthy rehabilitation period can be even harder! What is more important than taking your best shot at trying to recover from your frozen shoulder before signing up for a manipulation under anesthesia?

Doctors and Surgeons are always improving the technologies used in manipulations, but keep in mind that manipulations introduce scar tissue, and recovery can be often disappointing - especially if you do not adhere to a strict and lengthy PT routine. If you do wind up getting manipulation, know that rehabilitation at-home while attending regular PT or doctor appointments is vital for your overall recovery. It is especially vital to the shoulder areas, as they consistently handle extreme forces (body weight). Consistent exercise and conservative treatment on a daily basis during your rehabilitation while working with your doctor, surgeon or physical therapist is key - and this is why you should seriously consider maximizing your recovery by using the TShellz Wrap and a Cold Compress or Ice Pack at home.

We strongly believe that we can help you, and we have thousands of happy clients to back this claim. You are welcome to try our products for a 60 day period.. If you are committed to following the treatments outlined in the product instructions we are very confident that our TShellz Wraps will aid you immensely. If you do not receive the benefits that countless of our other customers have experienced from our products, call us, mail the product back to us and we will provide you with a full product refund.

Our online shop accepts Visa & Mastercard as well as a Paypal Payment option.
We also encourage your to Call Our Office at 1-866-237-9608 (toll free continental NA) where we can answer any questions you have and/or take your order via phone.

Our customer service lines are open 5 days a week helping people understand their injuries and how to treat them. Simply call toll free 1-866-237-9608 to talk or place an order with one of our knowledgeable Product Advisers. They have the ability to answer questions and even put together a treatment plan for you.

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Living with pain is never easy and we encourage you to call us with any questions you have related to your frozen shoulder. We will do our best to help.

I want to learn more about Frozen Shoulder Causes.

I want to learn more about TShellz Wrap^® Circulatory Boost

I want to learn more about Ice & Heat: Which Is Better For Treatment?

I want to learn more about Trigger Points.

I want to learn more about Frozen Shoulder Manipulation.

I want to learn more about Post Surgery Recovery?

During your recovery, you will probably have to modify and/or eliminate any activities that cause pain or discomfort at the location of your soft tissue injury until the pain and inflammation settle. The more diligent you are with your treatment and rehabilitation, the faster you will see successful results!