Nobody likes pain and nobody should have to live with it, yet there are thousands of people in the UK today who live with pain every day believing that there is no cure for them.
Many people suffer minor aches and pains which stem from tight and overactive muscles. When muscles become stiff not only do they usually feel sore locally, they can also trigger pain in other areas of the body, often several inches away from the muscle itself.
This referred pain is comes directly from muscle ‘trigger points’ – parts of the muscle which produce pain when overworked or pressured, making it difficult to determine the exact cause and location of pain.
Trigger points exist when over stimulated muscle fibres are chemically prevented from releasing from a contracted state. When muscle fibres hold their contraction, blood flow is reduced to the immediate area, resulting in starvation of oxygen and an accumulation of toxins. The irritated trigger points respond by sending out pain signals.
Trigger points are known to cause and to contribute to headaches, migraines, neck and jaw pain, lower back pain, the symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome, tennis elbow and many other types of joint paint mistakenly ascribed to arthritis, tendonitis or ligament injury.
Pain caused by trigger points varies from a low-grade discomfort to being severe and incapacitating and are usually steady dull and aching. Sufferers may feel pain when they are at rest as well as with movement.
There are several causes of trigger points, including injury sustained in a fall, continuous muscle activation caused by muscle imbalances or teeth grinding, accidents or sports injuries, poor posture (especially when combined with sitting at computers or travelling for long periods) over exertion, acute overload and chilling.
Trigger points often lead to chronic pain and are unfortunately the most poorly recognised cause of musculoskeletal pain. They are often missed by general practitioners and orthopaedic surgeons as they don’t show on X-rays or scans, leading the patient to believe that there is nothing that can be done to fix their pain.
The good news is that if trigger points are recognised as the cause of pain, there is an effective way of treating patients through knowledge of the pattern of trigger point referral and the use of applied massage directly on the point.
Massaging the trigger point allows nerves which are tethered by the tight muscle to move freely again and hence reduce pain. It also directly stretches to release the trigger point’s knotted muscle fibres improving circulation. It’s also thought that by manually easing out the muscle messages are sent to the brain to switch off an excited nerve circuit, hence to reducing the contraction.
Other treatments include acupuncture and dry needling, whereby needles are inserted into the skin and muscle at the trigger point, identifying the points of contraction which helps improve the treatment outcomes.
For comprehensive advice check out The Physio Centre's website www.edphysio.com (Edinburgh) and www.ggphysio.com (Glasgow) or call 0131 556 1116 (Edinburgh) or 0141 332 6000 (Glasgow), where you can find comprehensive advice on pain relief.
