Hi, I'm Natalie here with Veritas Health, and I'm going to give you guys some information on using heat therapy for shoulder pain.
Heat therapy can be helpful for dealing with a number of different types of shoulder pain, such as rotator cuff tendonitis, shoulder impingement, shoulder bursitis, shoulder arthritis, or really any generalized shoulder pain. Heat therapy helps provide some superficial vasodilation, so opening of those blood vessels to help promote increased blood flow, more nutrients, and also helps promote healing of the tissues.
Heat will also help temporarily decrease your pain, which gives you a good window of opportunity to go about living your daily life, doing any stretches or exercises you need to do, or other things that are going to help promote long term healing. When using heat therapy, you have a number of different options you can use. You can use an adhesive pad that can be applied directly to the skin. These are helpful because they move with you throughout the day and they're very convenient.
You can use a gel pad that you can get at your pharmacy. These can be warmed up in the microwave and then placed directly over the skin as well.
Finally, you can use an electric heating pad, which can help provide coverage to a little bit broader area, and also has the benefit of having a timer to help you keep track of time. Sometimes a shoulder pain people get pain that radiates into the bicep or into the back part of the arm. If that's the case, that pain is still most likely coming from your shoulder joint so you can apply that heat right over the joint area.
When using any of these heating options, I would recommend using for about ten minutes to up to 30 minutes, but no more than 30 minutes. You want to be mindful of any redness or signs of skin irritation that could be causing a skin burn. I also recommend not falling asleep with these on, because then you may accidentally exceed that 30 minute time limit.
Learn more about heat therapy for shoulder pain please visit us at Spine-health.com and be sure to subscribe to our channel for more videos like this one. Thanks for watching!
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