Ad copy

If your shoulder has suddenly gone stiff and painful, and you can't for the life of you work out what you did to it, this is worth a read. Because I finally found out what's actually behind it, and nobody had ever bothered to tell me. For me, it started with my bra, of all things. Stood in my bedroom one morning, reaching behind my back like I've done every day for forty-odd years — and my right shoulder just wouldn't go. Like someone had put a wall there in the night. I actually laughed about it. Told my husband I must have slept funny. Silly me lol. That was over a year ago. And what came after was honestly one of the hardest stretches of my life — over something as daft-sounding as a stiff shoulder. So if yours has started aching and seizing up and you can't work out why, please read this. Because I found out what's actually behind it, and I'd have given anything to know sooner. I'm 58. And let me say this first, because I know what you might be thinking. I am not a sporty woman. I've not done Pilates since my early fifties — gave it up when things started aching, if I'm honest. No yoga, no tennis, never lifted a weight in my life. I just walk. That's my lot lol. And that's what confused me most. I always thought shoulder trouble was for the sporty ones. The ones overdoing it at the gym. I hadn't done anything. No injury, no fall, nothing to point at. It just turned up one morning and never left. And it didn't stay at the bra. 😔 Within a few months my right arm — my good arm, of course, wouldn't it just be — was next to useless. And when your good arm goes, you find out just how hopeless you are with your left one. Brushing my teeth left-handed like a toddler. Spilling tea down myself. Making a dog's dinner of my hair every single morning. Drying my hair became a two-person job. There's a sentence I never thought I'd write. My husband, bless him, doing my ponytail — and it staying in for days because I couldn't face the palaver of redoing it. 🙈 The seatbelt was the one that used to bring tears to my eyes. That reach across and back — I'd be doubled over in the car outside Tesco, waiting for it to pass, praying nobody was watching. And the worst of it — the thing I've never said out loud — it hurt to hug people. 💔 My own daughter would come at me for a cuddle and I'd twist myself sideways like I was dodging her. She noticed. Course she noticed. The nights were their own misery. Can't lie on it. But lie on the other side and it pulls. I used to be a side sleeper, but now both sides come with their own problems — so I just lie on my back and hope I drop off eventually. And then you forget in your sleep, roll onto it, and wake up with a stab of pain like an electric shock down your arm. That's the bit nobody understands. The pain punishes you for forgetting. Some days you'd forget about it completely — reach for a falling cup, wave at somebody, pull a coat on too quick — and it would remind you, sharp as anything. It always came back. It never once let me off. And from the outside? Nothing. No cast, no bruise. I looked completely normal. Which is its own special kind of lonely — hurting that much with nothing to show anyone. I tried everything you'd expect. 😢 Deep Heat by the tube. A heat pad every evening. One of those special pillows off Amazon. Ibuprofen that barely touched the night pain. And stretching — everyone tells you to stretch it, don't they. So I stretched it. And it got worse. Then you're told it seized up because you didn't move it enough. You cannot win. I used to sit on the edge of the bath and have a little cry about it, honestly. The GP was kind enough, but I came out with nothing. Wear and tear, my age, take paracetamol, maybe physio down the line. There's a waiting list, mind. And I remember driving home — carefully, one-armed — thinking: I'm 58. I'm supposed to be the one who copes. The one who does everything for everybody. And I can't fasten my own bra. What changed everything was my friend Lynn. We walk together twice a week — it's the only exercise I do, really. And one morning she watched me struggling with my coat zip at the gate, doing it all wrong-handed, and she stopped and said, "It's your shoulder, isn't it." Not a question. She knew. Turned out Lynn had been through the exact same thing three years back. Same arm, even. The bra, the seatbelt, the nights — all of it. And then she said the thing that stopped me dead in the road: "Did nobody tell you it's the menopause?" I actually laughed. My shoulder? But she wasn't joking. And she said, go home and look it up for yourself, because nobody believes it till they read it. So I did. I was up half that evening with my reading glasses on, going down the rabbit hole. And oh my days, the things I found out. So apparently your shoulder joint is wrapped up in this layer of soft, stretchy tissue. A capsule, they call it. And it's built mostly out of collagen — that's what lets your arm swing about and reach and do everything you never give a second's thought to. And it turns out your hormones have been looking after that tissue your whole life. The oestrogen keeps it soft and stretchy and keeps the swelling down — and it keeps your body making the collagen the whole thing's built from. You never know any of it's happening. It's just done for you, every day, for forty years. Then the menopause comes along and the oestrogen goes. And here's the bit that got me. Your body doesn't just make less collagen — it actually starts breaking down what you've already got, faster. You lose over a third of it in the first five years of the menopause, apparently. It's being taken from both ends and nobody tells you a word about it. So that soft tissue round your shoulder starts to stiffen up and thicken. One article said it's like a leather glove left out in the rain, and honestly, that's exactly what it felt like. That's why it comes out of nowhere. No injury, no cause. Because it wasn't you. It wasn't us. It was the menopause. And once I knew that, everything finally made sense. All those months blaming myself — thinking I'd slept wrong, sat wrong, done something — and it was going to happen anyway. Women our age get this up to four times more than men. There's even a name for the bad version, frozen shoulder, and three-quarters of the people who get it are women like us, nearly all between 40 and 60. It was never a sporty woman's problem. It comes for the ones who've never done a downward dog in their lives lol. It came for Lynn. It came for me. 😢 I sat there reading all this at the kitchen table and I welled up, if I'm honest. Because it meant I hadn't done anything wrong. I wasn't going mad, and I wasn't just "getting old." There was a reason. There'd been a reason all along. And the stretching and the painkillers were never going to fix it, were they. They weren't putting back what was being taken away. That's what Lynn had worked out. She'd started taking collagen — to rebuild the stuff itself, from the inside. Fix the cushioning, calm the inflammation down. And she was dead firm with me about which one to get, because the right one has a few specific things in it — and knowing them is what stopped her wasting her money on ones that never work. Because your body's got different sorts of collagen doing different jobs, apparently. The marine sort — from fish — is the one your soft tissue and tendons want. The very stuff that capsule round your shoulder is made of. The bovine sort is for the joint itself. And the cheap tubs only put one sort in. Which means the women taking them never really see the effects. Not the full ones, anyway. And collagen on its own barely absorbs at all. It needs vitamin C taken at the same time to switch the whole process on — and most brands don't bother putting it in, because it costs them more. Lynn reckons that's why half the women who try collagen give up on it. It was never getting in. The one she takes — and the one I've been on since — is called Elavate. Both sorts of collagen in the one scoop. The vitamin C built in. A proper dose — 8 grams, when the shop ones are 2 or 3. And hyaluronic acid too, which is what your joints use to stay oiled and moving smooth. ⭐ Over 20,000 women in the UK have left it five stars. And it comes with a 90-day money-back guarantee — so you get three whole months to feel it in your own shoulder, and if it does nothing for you, you send it back and get every penny. Which, after the money I'd thrown at creams and gadgets and magic pillows, was the only reason I was willing to try one more thing. So I started. One scoop in a glass of milk every evening — tastes like a chocolate milkshake, so it became my little treat at the end of the day. And I didn't tell anyone. Not even my husband. After the Deep Heat and the pillows and the rest of it, I just really wanted this one to work, so I kept it to myself. I'll tell you straight — the first three weeks, nothing. I nearly gave up. But Lynn had said give it two months minimum, the tissue rebuilds slowly. So I stuck at it, mostly so I could tell her I had. Around week five, little things. Reaching for my seatbelt without even thinking about it — and only realising after that it hadn't hurt. The warm-up in the mornings getting shorter. And then about eight weeks in — the bra. Reached behind my back one morning, fastened it, and was halfway through brushing my teeth before I realised what I'd just done. Fastened it. Behind my back. Like it was nothing. I stood there in the bathroom and had a little cry, over a bra. 🥹 I'm several months in now, and I'll be honest with you — it's not perfect. Some mornings it's still stiff, and it takes a minute to warm up. But the difference has been huge. Those horrible sharp stabs have all but gone. I sleep on my side again. I hug my daughter properly, both arms, no twisting away. And I do my own ponytail every morning now — and there's more hair to put in it, which I wasn't expecting either. And another thing that came free — my knees have stopped complaining on the stairs, and my nails and skin are the best they've been in years. I only started it for the shoulder. 😊 💛 So if your shoulder's started seizing up and you can't work out what you did — please hear me: you didn't do anything. You're not making a fuss. And you don't have to just wait it out with a heat pad like I did for a year. It's the menopause taking the collagen out of the very tissue your shoulder's made of. And that, at least, is something you can do something about. ⚠️ Quick warning — it does sell out. I got caught waiting on a restock once, so there's always a spare in my cupboard now. 👇 I've popped the link below. It's the UK one, with both collagens and the hyaluronic acid. That's the one that matters. Lynn passed this on to me and it's helped me more than I can say — so I thought I'd pass it on to you. Hope it helps some of you. x