Headaches or Shoulder Pain? It Might Be Your Neck

Headaches or Shoulder Pain? It Might Be Your Neck

One of the most common issues we see at Lane Cove Physio is patients who present with persistent headaches, tight upper shoulders, or shoulder blade pain – convinced these are the root of the problem, when in fact the real source is the neck.

When Neck Pain Doesn’t Feel Like Neck Pain

Austin Wallace, physiotherapist at Lane Cove Physio, is passionate about this area and sees this pattern regularly in the clinic: a patient convinced their shoulder or their head is the problem, pointing the finger at their tennis serve technique, or dehydration – when the real source is a few centimetres away… the neck.

Our neck is packed with joints, muscles, and nerves that all share pathways with surrounding areas. When one of the small joints in the upper neck becomes stiff or irritated, the pain doesn’t always present at the site of the issue. It can travel up into the base of the skull as a headache, out across the top of the shoulder as trap tightness, or down between the shoulder blades as a nagging ache that never seems to go away no matter how much you stretch or roll it out.

This is called referred pain, and it catches a lot of people out – chasing the symptom rather than the source.

The good news is that once the neck is properly assessed, these patterns are usually very recognisable and very easily treatable for both short- and long-term relief.

Getting to the Root Cause

The first step is working out whether pain is truly coming from the shoulder or head itself, or whether it’s being referred from the neck. This usually involves testing the specific joints and muscles of the cervical spine, checking how the neck moves, and seeing whether recreating certain neck positions reproduces that familiar headache or shoulder ache.

From there, treatment typically involves gentle manual therapy to restore movement in stiff neck joints, targeted strengthening for the deep neck flexors and postural stabilisers, as well as ergonomic adjustments. Fine-tuning how we sit, sleep and set up our workstation or training can make a significant long-term difference in a short period of time.

The key message is that people don’t need to keep living with recurring headaches or a shoulder that “just gets tight” – treating the shoulder or having a Panadol for your headache in isolation will only ever offer short-term relief without getting to the root cause of the problem.

If headaches, trap tension, or shoulder blade pain have become a regular part of your week, it’s worth booking an assessment with one of our physiotherapists at Lane Cove Physio to find out what’s really going on.