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Trigger
Point Therapy
Research by Drs. Janet
Travell and David Simons, authors of "The Trigger Point Manual,"
has shown that trigger points are the primary cause of pain at least 75
percent of the time and are a factor in nearly every painful condition.
Trigger points, a type of muscle stiffness, are the result of tiny
contraction knots that develop in muscle and tissue when an area of the
body is injured or overworked.
Trigger points are
something traditional doctors ignore, but they could be the one thing that
has been overlooked in your case for years, if not decades.
A hallmark of trigger points is something called "referred" pain. This
means that trigger points typically send their pain to some other place in
the body, which is why conventional treatments for pain so often fail.
Many health care practitioners wrongly assume that the problem is located
where the pain is and therefore fail to assess the body correctly to find
the cause of your pain.
I'm going to give you some valuable information about trigger points that
I hope will encourage you to consider the possibility that trigger points
may
be the missing link in your quest for relief.
What
Triggers a Trigger Point?
Trigger points can
occur as a result of muscle trauma (from car accidents, falls, sports-
and work-related injuries, etc.), muscle strain from repetitive movements
at work or play, postural strain from standing or sitting improperly for
long periods at the computer, emotional stress, anxiety, allergies,
nutritional deficiencies, inflammation, and toxins in the environment. A
single event can initiate a trigger point, and you can suffer the effects
for the rest of your life if that trigger point is not addressed properly.
Why trigger points
cause trouble
Your body's instinctive
reaction to a harmful "event" is to protect itself. It does that by
altering the way you move, sit, or stand, which puts abnormal stress on
your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints. This produces strength and
flexibility imbalances in your muscles, as well as postural dysfunctions
throughout your body.
If that were not bad enough, your blood flow can become restricted and
when that happens both your peripheral and central nervous systems will
start to send out those "referred" pain signals, making assessment and
treatment even trickier. That's why some experts believe that trigger
points
are the beginning stage of fibromyalgia. Can things get even worse? Keep
reading.
Here's
why you may be suffering
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To better illustrate the
process, here's an example of how one trigger point in one muscle can
cause back pain, sciatica, or a herniated disc. The most common place for
a trigger point is in the muscle of the lower back called the quadratus
lumborum (QL), which is located just above your hips. Regardless of what
kind of event sparks the trigger point, your QL will gradually become
dysfunctional-that is, the QL will tighten and shorten. And as you limit
its use, it will weaken.
As the QL becomes increasingly dysfunctional, it will alter the position
of the pelvis. As the pelvis becomes dysfunctional, it will force the
spine into an abnormal curvature that will put abnormal pressure on the
disc. |
Over time, the disc will
begin to bulge. This situation will get progressively worse, affecting
your overall quality of life. Depression often follows. All of this from a
single event that occurred in one moment in time.
How do
you know if you have trigger points?
Everyone has trigger
points; the question is degree. If you have lingering pain, tightness, or
restriction of certain movements, it is a good bet that you are
experiencing the effects of a trigger point. Trigger points may produce
symptoms as diverse as dizziness, earaches, sinusitis, nausea, heartburn,
false heart pain, heart arrhythmia, genital pain, and numbness in the
hands and feet.
Trigger points can bring on headaches, neck and jaw pain, low back pain,
sciatica, tennis elbow, and carpal tunnel syndrome-you name it. They are
the source of joint pain in the shoulder, wrist, hip, knee, and ankle that
is often mistaken for arthritis, tendonitis, bursitis, or ligament injury.
If you think this is overkill, I suggest you read the book "Why We
Hurt: A Complete Physical & Spiritual Guide to Healing Your Chronic Pain,"
by Dr. Greg Fors, in which he explains precisely why so many different
conditions are rooted in trigger points.
Here are a few more symptoms you should know about: If you have restless
leg syndrome, you have TPs; if your teeth hurt, you have TPs; if your
workouts have plateaued, you have TPs; if you have painful menses or
irritable bowel syndrome, you have TPs.
How does
Trigger Point Therapy work?
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Simply rubbing the surface
of the skin with a massage lotion, a vibrating massager-or using heat-will
not change the tissue of a single trigger point. What it needs is
sufficient deep sustained pressure to the "knotted-up area." As you work
the Trigger Point, your body will undergo soft tissue release, allowing
for increased blood flow, a reduction in muscle spasm, and the break-up of
scar tissue. It will also help remove any build-up of toxic metabolic
waste.
Your body will also undergo a neurological release, reducing the pain
signals to the brain and resetting your neuromuscular system to restore
its proper function. In other words, everything will again work the way it
should. |
How long does it
take to get relief?
The length of time it takes to release
a trigger point depends on several factors, one of which is how long you
have had your trigger point. Other
factors include the number of trigger points you have, how effective your
current treatment is, and how consistently you can administer or receive
treatment.
Even if you are lucky enough to find a clinician who can properly assess
your condition-let alone treat trigger points-it can be time-consuming and
costly to pay someone to completely release all the primary, latent, and
myofascial trigger points you may have in your body. You can try going to
a massage therapist, but trigger points are very fickle; they need to be
addressed daily using a technique that will apply the pinpoint pressure
that is needed. Most likely it will be impractical to see a massage
therapist frequently enough to get a trigger point to release.
An approach that
makes sense
The basic idea is simple. First of
all, a trigger point is only about the size of a mustard seed, which is
one of the tiniest of all seeds. The idea is to put sustained pressure on
the area for a set period of time on a regular basis. There are a number
of techniques out there that you can employ to do this. The bottom line is
that you need to take the initiative.
"There is no substitute for learning to control your own musculoskeletal
pain," says Dr. Simons. "Treating myofascial trigger points yourself
addresses the source of that kind of common pain and is not just a way of
temporarily relieving it." In other words, you can fix your own trigger
points better than anyone else-once and for all. Dr. Simons has it exactly
right: You must educate yourself about your condition and then apply what
you've learned. This runs counter to today's conventional wisdom, which
says that whenever we have a health issue, we should find someone to take
care of the problem for us.
What I'm saying here is that you need to take responsibility for managing
your own care. From time to time, of course, you may find you need help
from medical professionals. But even so, the more you know, the better
care you're going to receive. This is naturally going to require some time
and effort on your part,
but the payoff will be faster with far better results.
Contributing Author:
Steven Hefferon
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hefferonarticles@yahoo.com
Freelance Health / Nutrition Writers, Web Content Writing Services, India
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