Frozen shoulder scar tissue from 25 yrs ago almost fully healed from alternative therapies; post ABX

No more clicking or range of motion issues in my left shoulder. I aggressively treated this last year. Now I just need to get this left shoulder and upper arm as strong as my right one, this could take quite a while as well.

I developed frozen shoulder in the early 90's, with lyme.

Actually in both shoulders with a very tight neck, along with other lyme symptoms all at once. Both got usable and better but never fully healed correctly. Multiple sports impacts had something to do with this too- but alone, that should have healed, and Drs were unable to figure this out. So I learned to live with limited range of motion for a couple decades.

What I learned: You cannot fully strengthen muscles that are tight and/or have scar tissue in them. A continuing infection certainly wont help healing either and can be a partial cause.

Past efforts to fix this:
-PT didnt work
-chiros electrical "gimmics" did not do much
-Cortisone shots made it worse (25 years ago)

What helped:
-ABX lyme treatment stopped it from spreading not long ago
-Active release helped point out which tendons /muscles were the issue
-Aggressive trigger point also helped
-"Grastonn Technique" from chiro kind of helped , but was costly and not aggressive enough (its a patented rip-off of ancient chinese "Gau-Sha")

Icing on the cake:
-Very aggressive self Gau-Sha for two months breaking up the hard tissues. Multiple tools and counter top curved edge used.
-Applied DMSO/Arnica Montana gel after Gau-Sha, and worked out the next day- all last month

I do this to my right shoulder also. Same story with that one, but a few diff tendons/muscles. Hopefully same results follow.

Post Edited (astroman) : 2/25/2018 1:07:02 PM (GMT-7)

Girlie- Did you hubby ever talk you into putting some DMSO on your shoulder?

My injury list is too long to bore people with here LOL.

I understood what you described, and I just did it. Maybe cheated a little by bending my fingers back! My left and right wrists both equally stopped about 1" off the floor. That would have been difficult years ago.

Reaching for the car radio was really hard to do 25 years ago. I had to boost my whole body forward.

Wasn't putting on a winter jacket fun with this???

I was a mechanic way back then, so it made my job painfully difficult for a while, my awesome boss understood though. Then it partially healed enough for me to adapt to a less ROM and stiffness instead of pain.

Its finally so much easier to sleep on my left side now. I enjoy going to the gym again, it was brutal for a few years and I couldnt when I was herxing.

Interesting- my more major injuries are re-healing in the reverse order of which they were acquired. I remember the bad ones in slow motion memory... etched in my mind forever..

Cable pulley weight machines are great for regaining shoulder and upper arm strength. What so great is you can strengthen at ALL angles on one machine- its unlimited.

Different strength bands can be used for this as a starter, but have obvious limitations later on.

Pilates, I used one in PT 10 years ago. They have all kind of add ons for those now.

If I was going to get some new modern gym equipment for home, it would be something close to the original Bowflex if you remember there infomercials years ago.

They branched out to making all kinds of equipment now, so there's no longer just one.