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I had a new client the other day for an 80 minute massage. I asked him if there is anything that he wanted me to know. He told me that he suffers from a herniated disc that he has had for a few years. He has constant low back and right hip pain that at times radiates down the back of his leg to his knee. He told me that he has had two injections in his low back and has to stay on anit- inflamtory medication. Anything to avoid surgery. The pain is always there. I asked him if he ever saw a chiropractor for his pain. He said yes. But the adjustments hurt his hip so bad that he could not continiue. So here is a guy that thinks he is on the verge of surgery. I knew that there was a very strong probubllity that was not the case. The vast majority of pain people experience is nocioceptive pain( soft tissue- muscle, tendon, ligament, facia). MDs and Chiropractors see pain as neuropathic pain( nerve pain). With that asumption they give the wrong treatments and therapies. Now there is no denying that at times injections and surgery is needed. Not denying that. But most of the time - NOT. 70% to 85% of all pain comes directly from trigger points. Anyway I showed my client a testimonial from a client that I was able to help out of a very painful condition that she had delt with for a couple of years. I showed him that testimonial because all pain has a psychological eliment too it. I wanted him to start thinking maybe he is not on the edge of surgery. I palpated his entire back upper torso, both hips, and right leg. I found a very painful spot on his right L5 erectors. Another very painful spot on his right greater trochantor. A painful spot in the middle part of his lower right hamstrings. And also a tender spot on the right spinous of L3. I knew that if Iwas able to eliminate all those painful palaptory spots that I would most likely eliminate his pain problem. Because a healthy body had no painful spots even with deep massage. Ive been hunting and eliminateing trigger points for thirty years now. He walked out of the massage room pain free. He was pain free for the first time in years. All those other professional people misdiagnosed him because they assume neuropathic pain over nocioceptive pain. I assume the other way around. I'm a Massage Therapist.
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Quintner would argue against what you're doing even if he got the successful treatment-- he has built a lucrative career tearing tp therapy down.
Quintner would argue against what you're doing even if he got the successful treatment-- he has built a lucrative career tearing tp therapy down.
IMO people like Quintner are convinced of their own ignorance so rant and rave to convince the world of their brilliance.
Reading that excerpt, my opinion of the guy is not very exalted. Everyone who has ever experienced the un-funny pain caused by bumping the "funny bone" knows that nerve bruising, nerve compression does cause pain.
Compression of nerve isn't always an aching pain as the man suggests-- sometimes that pain can be quite sharp. As the author apparently doesn't understand, a trigger pointed muscle (due to the muscle compressing a nerve) usually doesn't ache, usually no pain at all while it is immobile in an unstressed position. A trigger pointed muscle causes its distinctive sharp pain upon movement-- Indeed, the physiological reason a TP forms is to limit what the body perceives (wrongly, usually) would be damaging to the muscle itself or to the joint or one of its ligaments that the muscle crosses.
By releasing the trigger point we help the CNS to understand that the perceived danger is passed (if this is not so, the tp will be reborn the moment the muscle is re-engaged, true?
actually, I think I was pretty much agreeing with what you just said. :-)
I add this, however: A TP forms for several reasons. Mechanical dysfunction within that muscle fiber as you described; CNS receiving feedback that causes it to assume the muscle has been injured or it or a ligament in the joint the muscle fiber is responsible for moving or stabilizing is about to be over-stressed; or it can form to help prevent injury to one of its agonists or even one of its antagonists.
Compression of a nerve by a muscle (not a vertebrae) is as we know almost always caused by a trigger point. What the author of that book/article says, I supposes, is that compressions of nerves form, well, just because they do.
Carpal tunnel the "experts" blame on compression of the medial nerve by the ligament that keeps the nerve and nine tendons in place. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think ligaments flex -- a ligaments job is to prevent over-extension...within a knee joint, an elbow joint, a shoulder joint, a hip joint. Ligaments don't flex, to my knowledge. Ligaments attach not to muscle but to two bones, correct? to stop them from being ripped apart by violent movement. Therefore, as you and I and most intelligent manual therapists know (or should know) the compression known as carpal tunnel is due to a trigger pointed muscle clamping on the nerve or one of the (9?) tendons that pass through the carpal tunnel. An analogy I use when explaining it to a client is that in mechanical devices several ropes or cables will be held in place by a guiding pipe; they slide freely through the pipe. But if one of the gears a rope or cable is attached to hangs up for whatever reason, that rope will rise to the top of that roomy pipe and begin to fray as the pull on the other end continues. The friction can prevent the entire machine from functioning. Inside the carpal tunnel-- which is not roomy-- the "frozen" tendon or nerve will become inflamed, enlarged with blood which makes that tight space unbearably tight...and pain is the result when the sufferer attempts to use the affected fingers or wrist.
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