You felt fine when you went to bed. When you woke up, you felt a sharp pain in one of your shoulder-blades, as if someone is stabbing you with a knife. You may also feel some stiffness or pain in your neck.
These are related. What I am describing is a very common condition we treat called “dorsal scapular syndrome”. You see, most of the nerves from your neck run along your shoulders and down the arms to your hands. There is one nerve however, called the dorsal scapular nerve, that branches off and inserts into the muscles in your shoulder-blade (scapular) region.
You may have slept “wrong” during the night, left a fan or window open and got a chill (muscles don’t like cold air), or moved to suddenly when getting up and caused a “pinching” or irritation to the nerves in your neck. This can result in a stiff painful neck and/or a sharp, stabbing pain in the shoulder-blade.
If this is the problem, a chiropractor is the doctor of choice. This is probably one of my favorite conditions to treat because of how simple it is to fix and how quickly you can get better. If left alone, the pain can last weeks, even months. But with the proper chiropractic treatment you can be better in a matter of days!
Why suffer with pain when you don’t have to. Don’t just cover up the symptoms by taking pain medicine – correct the source of the problem. See your chiropractor today!
Sean A. Samuels, D.C.