Trigger Point Therapy

[Guest guest]

Barb forwarded a post to me this morning from the EDS Awareness

board that referenced " The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook - Your

Self-Treatment Guide for Pain Relief " " by Clair Davies. I had not

included this one in my earlier book recommendations but am doing so

now (and have already asked Barb to add it to the EDS Today site as

well). If you suffer from trigger points, I highly recommend and

strongly suggest getting a copy of this book.

It is detailed, well written and user friendly. And yes, I do have a

copy of it myself. The title really captures the focus of the book.

It is specificaly written to be used by someone as a self-help

reference and not as a medical manual for a doctor/pt/lmp/etc to use

on a patient or client.

From page 3:

" Travell and Simons describe a trigger point as simply a small

contraction knot in muscle tissue. It often feels like a partly

cooked piece of macaroni, or like a pea buried deep in the muscle.

A trigger point affects a muscle by keeping it both tight and weak.

At the same time, a trigger point maintains a hard contraction on

the muscle fibers that are directly connected to it. In turn, these

taut bands of muscle fiber keep constant tension on the muscle's

attachments, often producing symptoms in adjacent joints. The

constant tension in the fibers of the trigger point itself restricts

circulation in its immediate area. The resulting accumulation of

the by-products of metabolism, as well as deprivation of the oxygen

and nutrients needed for metabolism, can perpetuate trigger points

for months or even years unless some intervention occurs. It's this

self-sustaining vicious cycle that needs to be broken.

The difficulty in treating trigger points is that they typically

send pain to some other site. Most conventional treatment of pain

is based on the assumption that the cause of the pain will be found

at the site of the pain. But trigger points almost always send

their pain elsewhere. This referred pain is what has always thrown

everybody off, including most doctors and much of the rest of the

health-care community. According to Travel and Simons, conventional

treatments for pain so often fail because they focus on the pain

itself, treating the site of the pain while overlooking and failing

to treat the cause, which may be some distance away.

Even worse than routinely treating the site of the pain is the

pharmaceutical treatment of the whole body for what is usually a

local problem. Painkilling drugs, the increasingly expensive

treatment of choice these days, give us the illusion that something

good is happening, when in reality they only mask the problem. "

Of all the aches, pains and problems I read about in the various

posts, trigger points are probably the easiest and least expensive

to treat - if identified and treated properly. More importantly,

they frequently can be treated using self-help techniques without

having to spend a bunch of time and money seeing someone, getting

expensive injections, taking equally expensive narcotics, or having

to learn acupressure point or being able to feel energy. Most

trigger points, and the treatment thereof, are fairly straight

forward. As info, in spite of what most western trained

practitioners will tell you, trigger points are also very commonly

acupoints as well and can be treated using acupressure.

The normal, bodywork, treatment for trigger points is very simple

and easy to do. Trigger Points and Tender Points feel virtually the

same except for one key difference. A trigger point refers pain

elsewhere in the body and a tender point does not. A tender point

is strictly " local. " The obvious way to identify a trigger point

is " push on a spot and it hurts someplace else. " The pain referral

pattern for trigger points, however, is well documented. Because of

this, it is also fairly easy to " work backward. " It hurts at B,

therefor I will push at A and see if there is a referred pain

sensation.

At any rate, once a trigger point has been identified, treatment is

equally easy. Simply take your thumb, a finger tip, or a hard

rounded object of about the same dimension, and press deeply and

firmly into the trigger point. On a scale of 0-10, you press until

the max level on the scale is reached. You then hold that pressure

until (1) the pain stops referring and changes to local only where

being pressed, and (2) the local pain level drops to just " finger

pressure. " Because trigger points can sometimes be " layered, "

repeat this procedure to see if the pain comes back at a deeper

level. You can add little refinements by making circular or cross

fiber motions while holding the sustained pressure but you don't

need to. That's all there is to it. For chronic, long-standing

trigger points, you will probably need to do this for 6-10 sessions

before you can make it go away. Others you can get rid of fairly

quickly.