♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi, folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- We are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- Title of this video is,
"Is Your Shoulder Pain Coming From Your Neck or Shoulder,
How to Tell."
Very difficult to assess sometimes
but we're gonna give you a few clues here.
- And it's common that,
you can have shoulder pain
coming from your neck
but it was just misdiagnosed
or the lay person wouldn't know until you see this video.
- Right, so let's start right into it Brad.
If you have neck problems,
they are often can cause pain into the shoulder area.
So that's why this is...
But as a rule,
shoulder movements tend to aggravate shoulder problems.
Neck movements tend to aggravate neck problems.
So we'll be doing some tests at the end
and show you how that works.
- With the exception of some neck movements,
can produce symptoms in the arm.
- No, I know but, yeah that's a good point.
But we'll get into this. - Yeah, I think
it's a little complicated - it's a little complicated.
but stick with us and it'll be clear.
- First let's go typical location of the pain, okay.
If you have shoulder pain,
often it's in the front or the side of the shoulder.
It may radiate down the arm,
but generally it doesn't go past the elbow.
Both Brad and I have seen patients
where it did go past the elbow, but unlikely
and it went into the forearm.
- Usually their shoulder pain was pretty,
pretty high at that lab
but it might-- - Pretty severe.
- We're really talking in general terms,
not on their exceptions.
- If you have pain in the neck now
that's generally felt at the base of the neck.
It can be felt in the shoulder blade.
That's really common.
Shoulder blade generally is not a shoulder problem,
it's a neck problem.
You might feel it in the
going down the arm.
- Right.
- And yeah, if it radiates down into the hand
and wrist and fingers,
then you're almost certainly dealing with a neck problem.
And if you have numbness and tingling with it,
that generally is a neck problem.
Although you said
you occasionally have seen it.
With shoulder-- - Yeah.
Usually not.
- Yeah, usually not.
- And if you're wondering
that the pain going this far into the fingers and whatnot,
and the numbness and tinglings,
it's a pinch nerve.
Usually pinch nerves in that location happen up here.
Not so much in the shoulder.
- Right.
So, as a rule,
if you have numbness and tingling,
pretty good chances of a shoulder problem.
So we're gonna show you
some tests here--
- Oh a neck problem.
We're gonna show you some tests here, okay.
Let's first,
we're gonna test the shoulder.
And what we're gonna do is
we're gonna have you first slowly flex it forward,
with good posture.
- Yeah, good.
Slowly flex it five times, just straight up and down.
Now, if this starts to aggravate your pain,
good possibility it's the shoulder.
- Particularly if it's in the shoulder itself,
maybe radiating down a little bit.
- Now you're gonna slowly go out to the side five times.
Thumb up, thumb pointed up.
- Yup.
- And the same thing with this,
if this aggravates it,
maybe this one didn't but this one does.
- And it fits,
you get to this far and it hurts both directions
more than likely it's a shoulder rotator cuff issue.
- Or impingement. - Right.
- And if you can't raise it.
- Yeah, you're compensating moving your body a lot.
You're pretty sore probably
and you know more likely a shoulder.
- Last one you're gonna do for five times,
you gonna reach back behind you
and attempt to touch your shoulder blade.
- So yeah, usually compare the good arm,
I can go way up here
and it doesn't only to here.
More than likely a shoulder.
- Yeah, he definitely has some shoulder involvement.
- Right, yeah.
- One thing we haven't pointed out Brad is,
you could possibly have neck
and shoulder problems simultaneously.
- Sure, you bet.
- So, now let's test the neck.
So let's say you did all this
and you really didn't have any pain.
With the neck,
you're gonna do.
Flex it down and extend way back.
Now you're gonna do this 10 times Brad.
And you're gonna see, if this irritates.
Starts sending pain anywhere,
in the neck or down the arm.
Even if it just starts causing pain in the neck,
it might be still the shoulder issue
because it might eventually over time
start going-- - I do wanna bring up
and I found this a lot is
I'll have the patient do this
one forward and the very first time they get this far back
and it hurts.
It hurts here
and makes things worse here.
Then don't do 10 times.
Then you just stop.
You've got a neck problem.
If you can't do that,
almost certainly.
- And that is probably the most common one
that's gonna be tight
is going back like that.
Most common one that's gonna...
Well I shouldn't say the most common.
It hurts for a lot of people going forward.
- Yeah, and then we're gonna talk about
rotation a little bit.
- Yap, rotation the same thing.
You can go back and forth
and you can go 10 times
and you can see if that irritates it.
Generally it's gonna be one side that irritates it.
It could be either one.
- You might be able to go a full range one way
and the other way you go half that
and it starts to hurt.
That's pretty common.
It's a neck problem, more than likely.
- Yeah, then the last one is
that you can side bend.
To the left and to the right, same thing.
and the same thing.
You're gonna find out, you might be tight one direction
and that it brings on the pain.
I just...
We got a question.
We're answering some of the questions today Brad.
and someone said every time they bend their neck one way,
their arm goes numb.
- Yeah. - So
- There's a nerve--
- There's a neck problem.
So there we go.
Again, if you have any questions,
go see your professional
and have it diagnosed.
If you...
This is a video,
that's part of a series of videos on shoulder pain
and if you want you go to the series.
It's go to the programs
under our website, Bob and Brad,
find the neck series
and then with each video, we actually have a PDF with it.
- Print out.
- A print out.
- Nice.
- So you can print out everything that we said here today.
- We don't even ask for your email or nothing.
- That's right.
This is perfectly free.
- It's clean.
- Yep, thanks for watching.