Trigger Point Therapy
Trigger Points
Chronic pain is the biggest challenge of modern medicine because it is hard to handle. there are no medications that solve all the factors that generate or maintain the pain indefinitely. There are also objectionable side effects to many drugs.
Experts believe trigger points are a significant cause and complication of neck and back pain. These sore spots in your soft tissue generally happen around injury sites. When you have a lot of trigger points, your doctor may refer to your condition as myofascial pain syndrome. In trigger point therapy, a medical professional rubs and presses on these sensitive areas to relieve pain. Though experimental and involves a lot of trial and error, trigger point therapy work for many people.
Who discovered trigger points?
Most of the credit for the discovery of trigger points goes to Dr. Janet Travell, the private doctor for former President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s. She was tasked with helping the president overcome chronic back pain, which started when he was in college and lasted throughout his life. Travell was not alone in this discovery, however. Dr. David Simons, whom she met during a lecture on the subject at the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine in 1960, helped her map out all the trigger points and their pain referral patterns. Together, they wrote the Trigger Point Manual in 1983.
Myofascial pain syndrome is caused by a stimulus, such as muscle tightness, that sets off trigger points in your muscles. Factors that may increase your risk of muscle trigger points include: Muscle injury. … For example, a spot within or near a strained muscle may become a trigger point.
When muscles are stressed or injured, they often form tender “trigger points” that feel like dense tight knots in the muscle tissue. Pressure on a trigger point causes the muscle fibers to shorten and be painful to the touch. … In addition to pressure, activity, and stress can also aggravate trigger point pain.
Trigger points feel like little marbles or knots just under your skin. When pressing on trigger points, many people feel no pain or discomfort. … But if you have enough trigger points, you may start to feel intense pain and experience limited muscle mobility.
The knots feel as if they are small, hard lumps or nodules. A person may have to press deep into their connective tissue to feel the knots or trigger points. Trigger points often cause what doctors call referred pain. When a person presses on the trigger point, the pain spreads from the trigger point to nearby muscles.
Chronic pain with no obvious cause is a relatively unstudied epidemic, and not many doctors know what to do with it or even try.
If trigger points are a muscle tissue dysfunction or pathology — which is plausible but far from proven — that’s another reason they have fallen through the medical cracks: “Muscle is an orphan organ. No medical speciality claims it. Muscle tissue is the largest organ in the body, complex and vulnerable to dysfunction, and the “primary target of the wear and tear of daily activities,” nevertheless “it is the bones, joints, bursae and nerves on which physicians usually concentrate their attention.”
Dry Needling used to treat trigger points. This treatment can be covered under your extended health care insurance.
30 minutes – $75
