The Frozen Shoulder Workbook: Trigger Point Therapy for Overcoming Pain and Regaining Range of Motion

What's up with this book?

This book is supposedly for the person with frozen shoulder and aims to treat this condition with trigger point therapy. Problem is, the book wrongly believes that frozen shoulder is ill defined by the medical community and that the real culprit is muscular in nature. I really don't know how the book came up with these assumptions, but they are both dead wrong. If you don't know how to search the medical literature, just go on the internet and look up any site for the layman, perhaps the Mayo Clinic website on frozen shoulder. A quick search will reveal that there is no confusion- frozen shoulder is a problem with the shoulder capsule around the shoulder joint- it has become contracted, tight and fibrotic. More advanced researchers will find that there are many published medical studies documenting that people with frozen shoulder do indeed have fibrotic changes in their shoulder capsules- objectively confirmed by arthrography and actual tissue biopsies. Furthermore, Neviasier has described an arthroscopic four-stage classification for the frozen shoulder and Hannafin et al have described a correlation between the arthroscopic stage, the clinical examination, and the histological appearnce of the tissues. Evidence shows a synovial inflammation with subsequent reactive capsular fibrosis and a dense matrix of type I and II collagen laid down by fibroblasts and myofibroblasts in the joint capsule. Subsequently, the shoulder tissue contracts. The only logical conclusion, therefore, is that if one has frozen shoulder and the problem is a tight shoulder capsule, how the heck is rubbing the muscles, as the book suggests, really going to help? By the way, I could find no mention of the above published info in the book, meaning that the book either overlooked this info or didn't know about it. Either way is bad, because the poor non-medical reader suffering with frozen shoulder is in the dark about this info. I found this all quite irritating, but even more irritating to me, was the very unprofessional bashing of physical therapists which is devoted to no less than an entire chapter, Chapter 9. What the book has against physical therapists and why the book wastes the reader's time discussing the ineffectiveness of physical therapy is beyond me- and I don't care. Furthermore, a discussion of why physical therapists have supposedly missed the boat on treating frozen shoulder isn't really going to help my shoulder get better any quicker either. But then again, this all comes from a book that doesn't seem to have many of it's facts straight. Expect this book to treat a general shoulder problem with a very narrow scope of treatment- massage.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

I recovered from a frozen shoulder with the information in this book.

Wonderful book. I read the reviews written here by the health professionals. 'Tight and contracted' muscles in a frozen shoulder, I agree. Fibrotic not always, unless it has been a long time, but not within a few months. My shoulder 'froze' within 2 weeks, I was diagnosed with 'frozen shoulder' about 3 months later and sent to physical therapy, where I went for 5 months. I saw some improvement in range of motion, but not in the level of pain. I recovered the last 20% of my range of motion with trigger point massage, with no physical therapy at all. When I had to move, I needed to find a way to treat myself until I found another place for physical therapy. I found this book, worked with it and didn't need a new place for physical therapy. It is not magical. It takes time, just as physical therapy does, but you stay in control of your treatment, and the price tag is never the same. And as any other treatment, it might not work the same for everybody. I have recommended this book over and over. Whoever has had a frozen shoulder knows the pain and desperation it brings. I gave it a try and was amazed at the results. After 8 months of pain 'five of them with physical therapy', I achieved recovery with the help of this book. It took almost a full year from the beginning of my ordeal until recover 'about 4 months massaging', and I continue massaging whenever I fell those muscles tense or sore. It happens when I overwork them. The muscles are easy to locate with the explanations provided. Like any treatment of a frozen shoulder, it is not without pain, but I can assure you that it is never as painful as physical therapy, and you stay in control of your treatment. I just want to recommend you to take it slowly. It is a lot of information, so concentrate on the most likely culprits of your problem 'maybe 3-5 muscles', work on those, and then add one more muscle at a time. It will become easier as time goes by. Massaging subscapularis 'which is very painful at the beginning' made such a difference in the pain of my frozen shoulder, that I considered this the most important part of my treatment. Good luck, and don't loose faith. Trigger point therapy does wonders, and this book is explained in such a way that you will not have a problem understanding it. I didn't just read or learn about this: I lived it.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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