Maybe you’ve heard of the term Trigger Point Therapy before, maybe you have not. In either case now you are certainly interested as to what it is. Trigger Points are small areas of muscle stiffness (about the size of a pea or mustard seed). These are the consequence of tiny contraction knots that develop in muscle and tissue when an area of the body is injured or over-worked. Trigger Points are something most common doctors ignore, but they could be the one thing which has been overlooked in your case for several years, if not decades. A hallmark of these painful points is something known as “referred” pain. This means that they usually send their pain to some other place in the body, which is the reason traditional treatments for pain often fail. Many health care practitioners mistakenly presume that the problem is located where the pain is and therefore are not able to assess the body accurately to get to the reason behind your pain.
Trigger points may appear as a consequence of muscle trauma (from automobile accidents, falls, sports- and work-related injuries, etc.), muscle strain from repetitive movements on the job or play, postural strain from standing or sitting improperly for extended periods at the computer, emotional stress, anxiety, allergies, nutritional deficiencies, inflammation, and toxins in the environment. Just one event can activate a trigger point, and you could suffer the effects throughout your lifetime if that point isn’t attended to properly. Your body’s instinctive reaction to a harmful “event” is to safeguard itself. It does that by modifying the way you move, sit, or stand, which in turn puts unnatural stress on your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints. This generates strength and flexibility imbalances in your muscles, along with postural dysfunctions throughout your body. Trigger points may 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 typically mistaken for arthritis, tendonitis, bursitis, or ligament injury. Many of these painful symptoms can be minimized or wiped out with proper long term treatment from a local Portland Trigger Point Therapist.
Simply rubbing the surface of the skin with a massage lotion, a vibrating massager, or using heat will not affect the tissue of a single point. What it needs is sufficient deep continual force to the “knotted-up area.” This deep tissue manipulation is known as Trigger Point Therapy. As you manipulate the small points, your body will go through soft tissue release, making it possible for improved blood circulation, a reduction in muscle spasm, and also the break-up of scar tissue. It will also help eliminate any build-up of toxic metabolic waste. The length of time it’s going to take to release a points will depend on a number of factors, one of these is how long you’ve had your Trigger Points. Additional factors include the number of points that you have got, how successful your existing treatment is, and how consistently it is possible to administer or receive treatment. Your local Portland Trigger Point Therapy specialist will be able to help you set out the best schedule for your treatments to get the maximum benefit. Your body will also undergo a neurological release, decreasing the pain impulses to the brain and re-setting your neuromuscular system to recover its proper function. This means that, everything will again work the way it should.