Don't overlook stiff and sore shoulders

By Song Sang-ho

Housewives often suffer from sore joints. They can even find it painful to use frying pans while cooking as they get older. It is a natural phenomenon that develops as you get old. You have to consider the possibility of shoulder joint disease if the pain persists.

Both working-moms and fulltime housewives are burdened with house work here. Days pass by quickly as they cook, do the laundry, and clean their houses. As they become tired before they could do anything about the pain in parts of their body after cleaning their houses and finishing the house work, their shoulders never have time for adequate rest.

The shoulder is the only joint that can rotate 360 degrees in our body. Since its range of motion is large, it can be damaged by simple movements such as lifting heavy objects.

You should be very careful about modest pain in the shoulder. Casually neglected pain may become worse as time goes by, sometimes becoming so extreme that you may not be able to sleep at night. Rotator cuff breakage is one of the main shoulder ailments. It refers to breakage or damage to the rotator cuff among the four muscles on the shoulder and it is the most common cause of shoulder pain. If a rotator cuff is broken, it is hard to raise the shoulder and a person cannot lie down on their affected side. In very severe case, it is often misunderstood as the neck disc because pain spreads to the neck and the arm.

It is often confused with a frozen shoulder because their symptoms are similar. When we actually examine patients who have a self-diagnosed frozen shoulder, most of these are due to rotator cuff breakage, impact syndrome, tendonitis, neck disc, etc. A frozen shoulder is painful when you move in any direction because the shoulder is hardened.

Tendonitis is also very common. The main symptom is acute pain in the shoulder and the arm. However, the limitation of the joint motion is not as severe as the frozen shoulder. Tendonitis patients have crystal, formed by the calcium that accumulates inside the ligament connected to the shoulder. It is one of the three main shoulder ailments together with frozen shoulder and rotator cuff breakage, but sometimes it is neglected because the pain only comes when you raise the arm.

The cause of this tendonitis has not been established yet, but it is regarded to have to do with too much use of the shoulder. When you overuse the shoulder, the blood supply to the shoulder decreases and the crystal is formed, causing pain. Usually, there is an acute pain that makes one feel as if the arm is disjointed or broken. Patients complain of severe pain when the shoulder is pressed and sometimes cannot get to sleep.

People think that the shoulder disease appears only to people who use the shoulder a lot in their work, but it could happen to anyone — from those in their 20s to housewives in their 60s. Especially, housewives can be easily exposed to it because they do the mopping and lift heavy objects repeatedly while doing house work.

Eventually, it is very important not to exert excessive pressure on it, maintaining a correct posture every day. Avoid the posture that gives the pressure and have the back and the shoulder in the right posture. Relax the muscle by stretching exercise from time to time and exercise using dumbbells, for instance, between two to three times every week to strengthen the shoulders.

The year 2013 has come. I would recommend that housewives should put down the burden off their shoulders for a while and make their New Year’s wish. Work, including house chores, is important, but you should take care of yourselves first in 2013. Pay attention to the signal that the shoulder sends. Never forget that the health of the family rests on the shoulder health of housewives. A healthy housewife will make a happy family.

The writer is the president of Wellton Bone & Joint Hospital.