Pain

The first medical description of pain connected with muscles and connective tissue was reported in 1843 by German Physician F. Froriep, MD. In the ensuing 167 years, modern medicine still does not have any effective immediate treatment for this kind of pathology. 

The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons held a symposium in 1987, in which the attending experts examined the limitations of orthopedic medicine in treating soft tissue injuries.  Their conclusion was that not only do sprains and strains of the muscular tissues cause considerable impairment and pain, but that these injuries are often poorly diagnosed and inadequately managed. 

 Pain grabs our attention and alerts us to a problem, but it is secondary to a problem often unrecognized.  Because it is easy to become fixated on a painful spot, we often ignore the root cause and treat only the symptoms. 

Muscle tone is the residual tension to a resting muscle, and much pain is the result of nerve entrapment by muscle hyper-tonus from chronic over-contraction.  Most of our nerves are placed under, and cushioned by layers of muscle tissue.  However, with irritations and other conditions, our hypertonic muscles aggravate neighboring tissues.  Trigger points are irritated nerves under spastic muscles.

When the level of hyper-tension or residual tension increases, irritations and inflammation occur.  So do endorphins, the body’s natural pain killer.  When this happens, the level of pain awareness is depressed.  Decreased sensitivity allows the inflammation and irritation of the spastic muscle to increase.  This accounts for the client’s surprise at a painful trigger point or their belief that the original pain symptom simply went away.

Relaxation will eventually decrease muscle irritability.  Increased initial irritability is evidence of improvement.  As the progressive relaxation occurs on continually deeper layers, inflammation and irritation will decrease faster than the pain sensation increase.  This is when the treatment becomes pleasant.  Until then there will be a steady decrease of symptoms in intensity and duration each session.

The “no pain, no gain” approach fosters a negative perception of massage therapy in general and especially in Trigger Point Therapy (TPT) because the clients are in severe pain  or they have a low pain threshold.

Inaccurately applied TPT does not eliminate active trigger points, but instead transfers them into a latent or “sleeping” state.  This is the reason why treatment can appear, to the practitioner and the client, to have been successful; however, a latent trigger point will sooner or later reactivate itself in response to one or several triggers such as physical overload, emotional stress, sharp fluctuation of temperature or barometric pressure, etc.  In such a case, the incorrect protocol of TPT applied by a practitioner has, rather, transferred an acute trigger point into a long, sometimes life-long, chronic problem for the client.

It sounds like a no-brainer, but massages are especially effective for aches like low-back pain. Researchers at the Group Health Center for Health Studies in Seattle, Washington, found that massage works better than common treatments including chiropractic therapy and acupuncture. It’s not clear why, but several studies show massage reduces levels of the stress hormone cortisol while boosting the feel-good hormones serotonin and dopamine. Those changes slow your heart rate, reduce blood pressure, and block your nervous system’s pain receptors. Massage also increases blood flow to the muscles, which may help them heal.

A bonus: Massage also seems to ease distress from migraine, labor pain, and even cancer, as well as the body tenderness seen with fibromyalgia, says Tiffany Field, Ph.D., director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine. Plus, the benefits may last as long as a year after just a few treatments, says Partap Khalsa, Ph.D., a chiropractor and a program officer at the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, the agency funding many major studies on massage.

It may not be discussed as often as pleasure. But pain, like pleasure, is one of our most universal human experiences. In fact, the Joint Commission recently named pain as the “fifth vital sign”-a condition to be evaluated alongside temperature, pulse, respiration and blood pressure. We have studied pain extensively, so that we can better help you manage it.

 Whether it’s the dull throb of an overworked muscle or the grating stiffness of joint discomfort, pain affects millions of Americans on a daily basis. And too often, those suffering from pain feel that they have no choice but to live with its effects. Fortunately, most pain can be managed with treatment and therapy, facilitating better physical performance, reducing the severity of symptoms, improving the quality of life, and enabling your body to perform at the highest level possible.

Here Are Some Facts About Pain That You May Not Have Known
• 80 million Americans are “Weekend Warriors” who experience muscle aches and pains.
• 76 million Americans suffer from pain each day.
• 40 million Americans suffer pain from Arthritis.
• 26 million Americans between 20-64 experience frequent back pain. 

The Burden of Pain on Every Day Life
• The annual cost of chronic pain in the United States, including healthcare expenses, lost income, and lost productivity, is estimated to be $100 billion.
• More than half of all hospitalized patients experienced pain in the last days of their lives and although therapies are present to alleviate most pain for those dying of cancer, research shows that 50-75% of patients die in moderate to severe pain.
• An estimated 20% of American adults (42 million people) report that pain or physical discomfort disrupts their sleep a few nights a week or more.

 Commonly-Reported Pain Conditions
• When asked about four common types of pain, respondents of a National Institute of Health Statistics survey indicated that low back pain was the most common (27%), followed by severe headache or migraine pain (15%), neck pain (15%) and facial ache or pain (4%).
• Back pain is the leading cause of disability in Americans under 45 years old. More than 26 million Americans between the ages of 20-64 experience frequent back pain.
• Adults with low back pain are often in worse physical and mental health than people who do not have low back pain: 28% of adults with low back pain report limited activity due to a chronic condition, as compared to 10% of adults who do not have low back pain. Also, adults reporting low back pain were three times as likely to be in fair or poor health and more than four times as likely to experience serious psychological distress as people without low back pain. 

For more on the statistics, please visit:  http://www.biofreeze.com/page/en/painfacts.aspx?parent=23

 _____________________________________________________________________

Susan Clingman, RMT, A Healing Experience Massage, 5031 S. Federal Blvd., Suite 3, Englewood, CO 80110, (303) 726-2575; susanmclingman@comcast.net; www.ahealingexperiencemassage.com