06/04/2026
🟢 Q & A Wednesday 🟢
"Why do you ask if I have headaches when it's my shoulder that hurts?" 🤔
The body is all about connections. There are a number of muscles that connect from your shoulder to your head and neck. When these muscles are tight or have trigger points, the may refer pain up into the head causing a tension headache. Those same muscles may also refer pain down the shoulder blade and down the arm mimicking shoulder pain.
In the case of shoulder impingement or rotator cuff injury, tension headaches can also give me a clue that you are using other muscles to compensate. For example, the Upper Fibre Trapezius muscles (know as our "traps" on the top of the shoulders) tends to overwork when the shoulder is injured. We tend to shrug the shoulder to avoid pain but this eventually leads to poor body mechanics. Headaches that go up the neck and wrap around the ear are a common referral pattern for this muscle. This tells me that I need to work on the traps but also retrain how your shoulder moves.
