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Trigger Point Therapy For Pain Relief

mugzy

mugzy

TID Board Of Directors
Aug 11, 2010
4,876
1,799
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.

Trigger Points Are Tiny Contraction Knots That Develop In Muscle And Tissue When An Area Of The Body Is Injured.

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.

Your Body's Instinctive Reaction To A
Harmful "Event" Is To Protect Itself.

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.

Here's Why You May Be Suffering

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.

The Most Common Place For A Trigger Point Is In The Muscle Of The Lower Back Called The Quadratus Lumborum.

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?

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.

Trigger Points Need Sufficient Deep
Sustained Pressure To The 'Knotted-Up Area.'

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.
 
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alterntego

Member
Apr 2, 2011
31
2
great read . thanks . i fell off a bldng in my mid twentys . saw numerous doctors for a year with not much relief to speak of . saw an accupressureist and after 2 sessions i did not need to see anyone , anymore . 20 yrs later i still have some issues but i cannot find him or any one with the abilitys and intuition that he posessed and i have looked . so knowledge is one thing and the ability to use it with the familiarity needed to heal is another . the stuff added years to me .
 
B

BikerTrash

Rottens cookie dealer
Mar 19, 2011
269
51
I will say that the Trigger Point therapy does work ,my Ol lady is in the chiropractic line of work and she has studied all the trigger point areas along with the accupuncture stuff and quite often uses that stuff on me. Not every spot or every time does it heal it or fix it but the majority if the time it relieves it at the least . Some of the trigger points in the feet are amazing at what the can have affects on . Just my .02 $
 
chicken_hawk

chicken_hawk

MuscleHead
Oct 28, 2010
718
150
Huge believer in TPT and deep tissue work in general. I went from constant pain to almost none with the help of a qualified message therapist who helped me make postural changes as well as correcting some muscle imbalances.

GREAT POST!

Hawk
 
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alterntego

Member
Apr 2, 2011
31
2
i have had tiggerpoint therapy in the past and it was definitely performed by a gifted person . he worked on me for a year . it was without a doubt the best healing i have ever had . the problem i have now is finding someone that even understands this stuff to heal me again . nothing else has ever compared . the guy that use to work on me was my boxing coach and a faith healer . (i am in no way religious but it made me wonder )he would always rub me down and then do the pressure points .
 

ajdos

Friends Remembered
Sep 8, 2010
2,282
399
Wish I could afford to go as much as I need it-makes a HYUGE difference in training and inuries.
 
J

james_s_carroll

Member
May 29, 2011
23
0
maybe there's a place for people posting on the forum if they are qualified to perform certain "modalities". I have a qualified physical therapist (in Ireland) and perform trigger point therapy (Trp) as a normal part of my treatments.
 

SHINE

Friends Remembered
Oct 11, 2010
5,047
600
maybe there's a place for people posting on the forum if they are qualified to perform certain "modalities". I have a qualified physical therapist (in Ireland) and perform trigger point therapy (Trp) as a normal part of my treatments.

Welcome to the DEN, I'm sure somthing can be arranged.
 
A

ak_manu

Member
Mar 9, 2013
10
0
Nice article, thinking to check mine ...
 
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