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I get that. I'm like that too. If I see a problem, I want desperately to try and help fix it.

This has absolutely taught me that sometimes the best answer is "Wow, that really sucks. If you want to talk about it, let me know" and move on to some other subject.




Yep. I try to be respectful by not suggesting common stuff since they would have already looked into. Sometimes I'll suggest looking into some less common things. There are many things that modern doctors won't suggest or don't know about.

For example, I'm an amateur mycologist and I have heard about health benefits of different mushrooms. If they don't want hear about the health aspect, the way I bring it up usually opens the door to a topic change about foraging for mushrooms, eating them, and many related questions.

In this case, I don't know of anything that would help frozen shoulder. There is some stuff that I find interesting to talk about but don't think it is worth suggesting to him. Like some studies on pain management that I barely remember, but I don't know if it was on psilocybin or maybe LSD. The way my dumbed-down brain remembers it is that it basically causes a pain "reset" where in some cases the brain ignores the persistent pain signals, or lowers the perceived pain level. There is also grayanotoxin that comes from tincture of ghost pipes that alters how pain is perceived, but I think that is only temporary. Interesting thing is that ghost pipes are actually a plant that doesn't contain any chlorophyll, but feed off of the roots of other plants, somewhat similar to some mychorrizal fungi.


I had a frozen shoulder. It didn't get nowhere near as bad as this article describes, although I did look at surgery, considered pain killers and had injections. After research I decided the surgery and pain killers were probably worse than the disease.

Things came to head when I was on holidays, in a hotel lying on a double bed getting some rest. The double was two singles pushed together. They moved apart, and my body fell between them but my arms unable to move remained on the beds, forcing my frozen shoulders to do things they didn't want to do. My wife saw the end result written on my face, and decided something had to be done. She traipsed between doctors, one of whom said I should see a physio.

After a couple of visits the physio said the pain was caused by muscles pulling the wrong way. The initial injury (a sprain caused by my throwing a barrel onto a truck) had triggered an avoidance mechanism, where my mind had learnt all sorts of tricks to avoid triggering the pain. The result was atrophied muscles in some places, overworked ones in others. He gave me a few elastic bands, toys really, and exercises using them.

The exercises weren't particularly onerous - nothing as tiresome as a 5k jog for instance. Just 10 or 15 minutes each morning. To say I was dubious was an understatement, but I was paying for it and the discipline I force on myself to is either stop paying or do as the man says.

It took 6 months. But it was gone. Now it is as if it was never there. I've never looked at a physio in the same way again.


Very interesting. I'm glad it turned out well for you.

I have impingement syndrome in one shoulder and it flairs up every once in a while. That shoulder has never been the same since the injury, but it's not nearly as painful or debilitating as I hear frozen shoulder is. I should probably do exercises/stretches more often so it doesn't flair up or get worse.


Plants such as ghost pipes (saprophytes) can be found in abundance, along with rhododendrons, along the Elbo Creek trail in the Olympic mountains of Washington state. https://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/elbo-creek




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