Winged Scapula

(Shoulder Blades That Stick Out)

An Overlooked Cause and Treatment

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When my fibromyalgia was at its worst, one of the many orthopedic problems I had was winged scapula. While I didn't feel any particular pain in my shoulder blades, it looked pretty bad. I did have pain that radiated up into my neck, giving me chronic neck pain. If you looked at me from behind my shoulder blades were very pronounced and stuck out from my body at a weird angle.

Most of the physical therapists I went to told me my problem was caused by back muscles that were stretched out and weak. They gave me back tightening exercises to do to strengthen my back. However, the back exercises just made me worse and made my neck hurt. In the end I figured out that the physical therapists were only half right. My back muscles were indeed weak and stretched out causing my shoulder blades to separate too easily from my body, but that was a symptom of my problems -- not the cause. They presumed that where my dysfunction occurred was also the location of the cause of my problem, which in my case, and probably many others, was not true at all. It was a gross over simplification of a complex, interrelated set of factors.

The root cause of my scapula issues was that my chest muscles were overly tight from a combination of having a connective tissue disorder, a magnesium poor diet that kept my muscles from relaxing and sitting at a computer for long time periods. In my experience, there are some great physical therapists out there (and I eventually found a good one) but many PTs have difficulty distinguishing between where pain occurs and the source of the pain. They are not necessarily the same place. With the winged scapulae and many other of my orthopedic problems, the pain and dysfunction were often a symptom of a problem somewhere else in my body, and not the root cause.

In the end, the main thing I did was yoga postures to loosen up my tight chest muscles, change my diet to get more magnesium to release my tight muscles, and take frequent computer breaks. With these changes the winged scapula condition cleared up completely over time. I think it was because my shoulder blades were no longer being pulled out of position by tight muscles from the front of my body.

Back Care Basics : A Doctor's Gentle Program for Back and Neck Pain Relief

The book I found the most helpful for correcting this problem was Back Care Basics. The postures in the Back Care Basics book that helped the most were:

1. Passive Back Arch - page 97

2. Crocodile Twist - page 94

3. Standing Twist - page 108

4. One leg Up, One leg out - page 100. This pose seems to be more of a leg stretching pose, but in my case my chest muscles were tight, in part, because of tight muscles in my legs pulling on my torso. So by relieving the pressure in my legs, in turn it helped loosen up my chest muscles, which in turn loosened the pull on my shoulder blades.

5. Wall push - page 123

6. One Elbow Up, One Elbow Down - - page 153

7. Kneeling Backbend - page 153

I also bought a styrofoam back roller that I would lay on to stretch out my pectoral muscles. That also worked pretty good to help expand and lengthen my chest muscles.

Related Links -

Chronic Neck Pain Treatment Tips

Scoliosis Exercises

Pectus Excavatum - I suspect that tight chest muscles plus soft bones in the rib cage play a role in many cases of sunken chests.

Fibromyalgia Treatment