If Shoulder Pain Wakes You Up at Night

If losing sleep is worse than the shoulder itself

Key points in 30 seconds

1. Shoulder problems hurt more at night. During the day it's bearable, so you put off seeing a doctor, and at night you lose sleep.
2. "Leave it alone and it will heal" didn't hold for 4 in 10 people. That's the result of a study that followed 223 people with frozen shoulder for an average of more than 4 years.
3. And the more severe the pain at the start, the longer it lasted.
4. Pain bad enough to wake you at night is a sign of a "severe early stage." It's closer to a signal to start than a signal to wait.
5. But it might not be frozen shoulder. If a tendon is torn, the treatment is completely different.

What we often hear

• "When I roll over onto the painful side, the pain wakes me up."
• "Even lying on the other side, my shoulder feels squashed and I can't get comfortable."
• "Not being able to sleep is worse than the shoulder itself."
• "They say frozen shoulder heals if you leave it alone."

During the day, you can get by. But the nights are the problem.

Shoulder problems have a strange feature

They hurt more at night.

During the day it's bearable, so you put off seeing a doctor, and at night you lose sleep.

That's why people with frozen shoulder usually come in because of their sleep, not their shoulder. And they come in very late.

There's one more reason people come in late

"They say frozen shoulder heals if you leave it alone."

Because of this saying, people tough it out alone through the most painful stage.

But studies that actually checked this saying found something a little different.

In a study that followed 223 people with frozen shoulder for an average of more than 4 years:

• 59% returned to normal or close to normal, but
• 41%, or 4 in 10, still had symptoms years later

And one thing was clear: the more pain people had at the start, the longer it lasted.

Put these two together

Pain bad enough to wake you at night is a sign of a "severe early stage."

And a severe early stage is closer to a signal to start than a signal to wait.

But there's something to check first

Is it really frozen shoulder?

Pain at night and not being able to raise your arm also show up in exactly the same way when a tendon is torn or when calcium deposits have formed in the shoulder.

There's something you can check at home:

• If someone else lifts your arm and it gets stuck hard at a certain point → more likely frozen shoulder
• If it goes up when someone lifts it, but you don't have the strength to lift it yourself → we suspect the tendon first

But this is only a guess. The treatment is completely different depending on which one it is, so we confirm with an exam and imaging. We decide on the direction after checking in partnership with the radiology clinic on the 2nd floor of the same building.

If it is frozen shoulder, the first goal is the nights, not the angle

First, we get the night pain under control.

We focus on using acupuncture and pharmacopuncture (herbal acupuncture) to deal with the pain at night. There's a reason for this order.

If you can't sleep, your body has no chance to recover, and a painful shoulder can't keep up even with exercise. So we help you get your sleep back first.

Next, we widen the stiff range of motion.

Once the pain is under control, we gradually widen the blocked range with Chuna (Korean manual therapy) and step-by-step joint exercises. If the inside of the shoulder is very stiff, we consider acupotomy (a treatment using a fine, blade-shaped needle to release stiff tissue).

For reference, large studies did not find surgery to be better than rehabilitation. That's why giving these treatments a proper try comes first.

And we check by angle.

Before treatment, we measure the angle your arm can be raised to and compare it at every visit. We judge by the increase in angle, not by how it feels, and if there's no change over the set period, we don't repeat the same treatment.

If you have diabetes, it can last longer and be harder to loosen, so we check for it at the first visit and look after your blood sugar management too.

What we're aiming for

Nights when rolling onto the painful side doesn't wake you up.

Once those nights come back, the daytime treatment goes much faster, too.

How much you improve and the final range of motion vary from person to person depending on how long the shoulder has been stiff, how it was at the start, and other conditions such as diabetes. But the starting point is clear.

If you've started waking up at night, that's your starting point.

If your shoulder has been costing you sleep lately, your nights are too precious to spend waiting for it to heal "on its own."

For questions or appointments, message us in English through the messenger at the bottom right of the page, or call +82-53-716-1175.

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We've summarized the original studies that checked the saying "it heals on its own" in the director's column They say frozen shoulder heals if you just leave it.

If you're worried about waking up at night regardless of your shoulder, also see Waking at 3 a.m. is different from waking at 5 a.m..