Shoulder pain at night
Nocturnal shoulder pain is a phenomenon that can be caused by various shoulder diseases and is based on an anatomical mechanism. During the day, the joint space between the head of the humerus and the acromion is pulled apart by the weight of the arm, which relieves surrounding soft tissue. During the night, the strong deltoid muscle, which has to fight the weight of the arm almost constantly during the day, pulls the head of humerus towards the acromion by means of its inherent tension.
The resulting narrowing of the joint space and compression of soft tissues causes the nighttime shoulder pain. In this respect, the shoulder behaves in exactly the opposite way to the other large joints, where pain is usually reduced at night due to the relief. A somewhat cumbersome and uncomfortable way to combat shoulder pain is to apply a stretching device.
This involves placing the wrist and foot on the side of the painful shoulder in a sling and connecting these slings with a flexible band. In this way, the pull of the arm weight on the shoulder can be imitated at night.Alternatively or in addition to this, exercises can be performed which stretch the deltoid muscle and thus can widen the joint space both for a short period of time in case of complaints and for a certain period of time as a precaution. A simple but effective example is the following exercise: The patient sits on a chair and places his hands under his buttocks.
With his back straight and his gaze directed forward, he tilts his upper body towards the side opposite the painful shoulder, thus widening the joint space. This exercise is suitable both for short-term pain relief at night and for regular exercise of the shoulder during the day. If the pain can only be relieved for a short period of time in any of the ways described above and recurs over several weeks or even increases in intensity, immediate consultation with a doctor is recommended.
Often such nocturnal shoulder pain can be an early sign of osteoarthritis, which is characterized by the fact that damage that has already occurred is almost irreversible. Other possible causes are practically all other shoulder diseases that do not result from a clear injury, such as dislocation of the shoulder or a torn biceps tendon. These include tension, muscular deficits or so-called bottleneck syndromes. In the latter case, anatomical structures such as nerves and vessels are compressed at certain narrow points, which causes pain that initially occurs mainly at night due to the mechanism described above.
