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A doctor who treated
the same pain he had
Dr. Michael Carroll spent years watching patients dread shoulder surgery, then lived through the pain himself. So he built a drug-free way to find relief at home.
Practical care, from an actual relationship with the patient
Dr. Carroll trained at Wayne State University School of Medicine and chose family medicine because he believed the best care comes from knowing your patients. When he started practicing, he shared something with many of the people in his exam room: shoulder pain.
Physical therapy and steroid injections were not giving him lasting relief, and they were not solving it for his patients either. So instead of accepting that, he set out to build something better.
Tired of sending patients
to the operating room
Dr. Carroll kept seeing the same pattern: people in real pain, dreading surgery, with nothing simple to try at home first. He wanted a drug-free, non-surgical option built on one idea, so the shoulder gets a real chance to rest and recover instead of re-injuring itself in the dark. See how it works
The idea came to him at home
Out of options and tired of the pain, Dr. Carroll started experimenting. He tied a strap to the end of his bed and worked out a way to gently open the shoulder and take the pressure off it overnight. That simple experiment, refined over years of trial and error, became the first version of the device.
From there he added the daytime routine to rebuild the deep muscles that hold the shoulder together, and the night-and-day system was born. More than 120,000 customers later, the idea has not changed.
Position at night,
strength by day
Dr. Carroll's insight was that shoulder position at night is central to the cycle that wears shoulders down. The body wants to heal while you sleep, so the system gives it room to.
Stop the nighttime injury
A support sleeve helps keep the spaces of the shoulder open overnight, so you stop re-injuring it while you sleep.
Rebuild the foundation
A simple, few-minute daily exercise program works the deep muscles that are usually weak compared with the larger ones on top.
Break the cycle
Together, night and day, the routine is built to interrupt the cycle of shoulder pain instead of just masking it.
RotatoReliever became Shoulder Reliever
For more than a decade, the device went by the name RotatoReliever. It served the team well, give or take a few potato jokes. As the company grew, Dr. Carroll wanted a name that told the story more clearly, so the same product took on a new one: Shoulder Reliever.
Same invention, same mission, a name that finally said what it does. The team has thanked the 120,000+ customers who took a chance on the original product through years that were rewarding and challenging in equal measure.
The mission has not changed
Give people a drug-free, non-surgical option they can try at home, on their own schedule, before they ever consider the operating room.
A patented system,
not a quick fix
The night-and-day approach is protected by a US patent, and more than 120,000 customers have used it over years of helping people with shoulder pain.
Dr. Michael Carroll, MD
Born in Michigan, Dr. Carroll earned a BA from the University of Notre Dame and his MD from Wayne State University in Detroit. He completed his residency at the University of Wisconsin, where he served as chief resident.
He is a co-founder and senior partner at Creekside Clinic in Traverse City, Michigan, an associate clinical faculty member at Wayne State University, and the founder of Jointsmart, LLC, the company behind the Shoulder Reliever.
See Dr. Carroll explain it
The same explanations he gives his own patients, on the night-and-day system and the daily routine.
Try the system Dr. Carroll built
Doctor-invented, drug-free, and backed for 60 days. Start the same five-minute-a-day routine that grew out of his own search for relief.