I'd at least try the doctor to help figure out what is wrong. Whether you choose to heed his advice or do your own "natural" remedy is up to you once you have a diagnosis.

Why are you guessing that a doctor won't help? This kind of stuff is what a doctor is for.

First: this is not any kind of medical advice, I don't really know the nature of your injury, and I don't really know what to do about it.

Here's my story of what sounds like a similar issue. About 3 months ago, I was doing some heavy overhead squats and heard a clicking/cracking sound in my shoulder while finishing up some reps. Afterwards, my shoulder hurt a little, but nothing I couldn't ignore and finish my workout.

For the next couple of days my shoulders were really sore and it got to the point where it was impacting my sleep and workouts. I talked to a PT friend of mine and she did some quick tests and said that it was most likely a tendon rubbing up against a nerve because the tendon was inflamed and a little bigger it wasn't fitting in the channel it should fit into.

So on that advice I started really cleaning up my diet, taking it easy on overhead work, and stretching my shoulder. Over the next 2 months or so it was getting better but every so often there would be a nagging pain that would impact something I was doing.

I'm not a doctor-goer nor am I a drug-taker, so I just kept stretching, and taking it easy. But it only got so much better. My wife suggested that I take a little ibuprofen just to help with the inflammation. So I finally gave in and had a little.

After two days my shoulder was back to normal. No drugs (well a little), no doctors. My post-hoc explanation is that while I was managing the inflammation of my shoulder with diet it wasn't fully going down. Since it was inflamed, as I kept using it, it would rub something and get a little more inflamed. So it never fully healed. The two days of ibuprofen was enough to fully take down the inflammation so that the tendon fit back into its channel and it doesn't keep getting reaggravated.

Maybe that's enough for you. A low inflammation diet wasn't enough for me, but hitting it with a little bit of ibuprofen to really smack down the inflammation was perfect.

I'm happy with any solution that keeps me out of a doctor's office.

Pain on movement vs. pain after eating or from not eating vs. positional pain vs. traumatic experience....and so on and so forth all go into diagnosis of what is causing the issue. Chiropractors are well trained in this differential diagnosis and seeing as your leaning toward a neuromusculoskeletal issue that is where I would go.