- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck physical therapist.
- Together we are the most famous
physical therapist on the internet
- And our opinion of Course Bob.
- Brad, this is a question we get quite often.
Why does my shoulder pop, snap, crack
you know, snap, cracker pop.
- Yep.
- Why is it making noise?
And is it something I should worry about?
- Exactly.
- So, we're gonna go about, talk about
what are the things that can cause it to make these noises,
which there's quite a few of them.
Then after that, we're gonna show you.
We're gonna talk about when you
should probably see the doctor.
- Sure.
- And then finally, we're gonna finish up
with just a few exercises you could do to maybe
help stop that for
- sure.
So, and our bone head's gonna help.
- Yeah.
- Bone apart.
- I used to call him Napoleon bone apart, but now
he's calling him bone ahead for some reason.
So, anyway, again, the noise in your shoulder
is very common.
One of the no injury causes is what we call capitation.
- Sure.
- So, you have a shoulder here, I'll go
with this one that is still attached.
And the shoulder, you have a ball and a socket
and this is all covered in a material,
kind of a tough fibrous material.
And within that material, there's actually
gases that can form.
- Nitrogen.
- Nitrogen and carbon dioxide
and they can form bubbles and they can pop when you're,
it's like when you crack your knuckles, you're popping
these GA little gas bubbles.
- Sure.
- So, that's number one.
Number two is snapping tendons.
All right, we have tendons, and Brad's gonna show you this,
especially your bicep right here, the muscle itself narrows
up into a tendon,
- Right?
And that tendon is in a groove, and that groove,
it can actually snap out of that groove at times.
So, there's a test we actually do for that.
- We're gonna pull this off of here.
And here's the groove that Bob was talking about.
And this is our mock tendon which is..
- I'll hold it.
- There you go.
Okay. And that's that groove, tendon fits right to
that's really nice model, but, and maybe people
having actually felt this when you can see the tendon
pops back and then you move your arm again
and you can feel it pop back in.
- Snap back and forth.
- Snap, snap, snap, snap.
I like this Bob.
- Yeah. There's other tendons that could do that.
But that's just one example.
So, that's again, a non-injury type thing that
could happen.
Number three is if you have what we call a loose shoulder
like a double jointed shoulder, your ligaments, you're born
with ligaments that are very loose.
If you're one of those people that can take their thumb
and put it like on their forearm, that probably
means you're loose ligamented
or what's another one Brad.
- if you go like this.
- Yeah.
- Like elbow bends.
- Yeah.
- Farther than neutral.
- Right?
Hyper mobility.
That's a good chance.
Now if your bone, if you wanna put it in there once more.
Yep.
If it can really slosh around a lot, it's not
held in there tightly.
That's gonna give you a snapping and cracking and popping.
That's gonna unfortunately wear the shoulder out too.
- Sure.
- So, that's at the end of the video,
we are gonna show you strengthen the exercise
that you could do for such.
Now, those are the injury.
Those are the ones that are really non-injury.
Now they one, there's the, the things that involve what
we call repetitive stress.
- Hmm.
So, if you are using the shoulder a lot or
over a lifetime, you can start to wear down the tendons
of the rotator cuff, the rotator.
Go ahead.
- People who Work overhead a lot.
- Yeah.
That's a primary Reason.
- Or even if your bones are not shaped right.
- Sure.
- They can start wearing down the tendons and that's,
and that can 'cause some roughness of the tendons,
again the muscles narrow up to be tendons.
And that can give you noise.
- Hmm.
- All right.
Especially when you're up in here and you hear
that grinding stuff like that,
- Right?
- The other repetitive stress injury is just
plain old arthritis.
Now we've got, you've got a little bit of covering
over the surface of the bone here
what we call hyaline cartilage.
- Hmm.
- And after a while, that starts to can wear away.
- Right.
And instead of this being nice and smooth,
feel all how Smooth that is.
- Yeah. Right.
- It's nice and smooth.
After a while, if you look on an x-ray
of somebody with arthritis, it's all roughened up.
- Right.
- It's like sandpaper,
and you can just imagine that grinding
- yeah.
- against the surface and who!
- Yeah.
That one gives
- Yeah.
- The EB GBS, doesn't it.
Okay. And the last one is in actual
where you actually have an injury itself
- hmm.
- And you just recently had an injury.
And that could be again, a rotator cuff.
- Sure.
- But it also could be what is called a torn labrum.
- Alright.
- Within the right here in the socket basically.
There's a little round.
- I got the pointer by the way.
- Oh yeah.
- Use the pointer, huh?
Right around right around the edge.
- A round ring of Tissue.
- Yep.
- So, if you took this right here, it'd be like,
I hope you can see that.
- Yeah, there we go.
That's our model labrum.
- Labrum. And it helps hold the ball in place
- yeah.
- And that, It takes pretty good injury to do it.
- Right.
- But you can tear that labrum.
Yeah.
And pieces of it can be floating around
and there's just not gonna be smooth.
- Yeah.
Ball fiber.
- And that one could require surgical repair depends on
the person.
- Sure.
- You can also dislocate your shoulder
and might tear the labrum.
Yep.
- This is my mother fell down and the x-rays looked just
like this, her shoulder, her humorous was way down
like this...
- wow!
- in the x-ray.
So, that was in the ER, half hour after she fell.
- Wow!
So, they had to put it back in place.
- Yep.
- So, those are the reasons why you might
get popping and snapping.
So, when will you worry about it, Brad?
- That's a good question.
- Alright.
- that's number one.
If there's pain with it, if there's no pain
you you're in snapping cracking, popping.
Fine. Let it go.
- Right.
- There's been no injury.
Just it's good part of life.
I will show you some things
at the end that might help.
If you've had a recent injury
and now you're hearing popping and snapping,
you may wanna see the doctor.
- Right.
- Okay.
- Especially if you had her shoulder surgery.
- Right.
- And it kind of came up,
especially if it's painful, but if it's not, yeah.
You might be concerned.
- And the third thing I would say is,
if your shoulder always felt stable and now it doesn't,
you're hearing popping and snapping,
it feels kind loose.
Like it's sliding all around.
I'd probably see the doctor there too.
- Sure.
- So, those are your three guidelines.
Now, the things to try one,
actually, I'm just the first one.
I'm gonna put up a link.
And this is just to help strengthen the shoulders.
Good pair bands strengthen the exercises.
The more you strengthen the shoulder
the more it's gonna help set it in place and keep it stable.
- Specific exercises for the rotator cuff muscles.
- Yep.
- To keep it stable.
- The four muscles that go around the shoulder.
And that last one, go ahead and have you pan
back a little bit here Lonnie.
(chair scraping against the floor)
What I want you to do is find a surface,
like a countertop.
I can use the back of this chair.
You wanna move this?
The skeleton back.
- The old bone head.
- This thing works out real well for
helping set the bone back in place
where it's supposed to be.
What you're gonna do is you're gonna put your hand flat
on the surface, a table or a countertop.
And what you're gonna do is pushing down the whole time.
So, to take the chair, wasn't there,
I'd be pushing down like this.
I'm gonna push down and
I'm gonna walk away.
I'm still pushing down and I'm gonna walk back to it again.
I'm pushing down the whole time.
I want you to do five to 10 of those.
- Should be relatively pain free.
- Yep. And that's setting the bone down in the socket,
putting in a better position.
And what I would do is I would try this
and then see if there's less snapping and cracking.
- Right.
- And so, and speaking
about snapping and cracking snap that hand, baby.
(hands clapping)
'cause we want you to slap that subscribe button.
- Yeah.
Subscribe because we appreciate it.
And so do other people.
so, keep on snapping
(Brad laughing)
- Slapping, snapping.
All right thanks.