MYO Pain Therapy - Feequently Asked Questions

 

1) Can myofascial trigger point therapy help me?

Some conditions treatable by myofascial trigger point therapy include (but are not limited to):

- Lower and upper back pain

- Arm, elbow, hand & thumb pain & dysfunction

- Repetitive overuse injuries such as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Tennis & Golfers Elbow, tendonitis and bursitis

- Overuse injuries of musicians

- Shoulder pain and dysfunction including rotator cuff injuries, frozen shoulder, winfed scapula & thoracic outlet syndrome

- Chronic head, neck and jaw pain & dysfunction including TMJ, tension headaches and migraine headaches

- Fibromyalgia and complicated regional and myofascial pain syndromes

- Knee pain & dysfunction

- Leg, ankle, foot and heel pain & dysfunction including plantar fasciitis

- Sciatica

- Sports injuries

- Arthritis If you don't see your condition listed here, please feel free to call and ask if we can help you.

2) Could I have fibromyalgia?

There are three primary criteria for fibromyalgia:

- Widespread and persistent pain for at least 2 months

- Fatigue that has lasted for at least 2 months

- Non-restorative sleep (regardless of how much you sleep, you often wake up feeling unrefreshed) Another sign would be widespread hypersensitivity. You are also more likely to have it if you are female: 80-90% of fibromyalgia patients are women. If you have had these symptoms for less than 2 months or if your pain is not as widespread, it is possible that you have myofascial pain syndrome. Both are treatable with myofascial trigger point therapy.

3) Why isn’t trigger point therapy more mainstream?

The main reason most medical practitioners don’t know about myofascial trigger point therapy has to do with the fact that they’re not taught much about it. As it stands most medical schools, physical therapy schools, schools of nursing and chiropractic schools do not adequately train their students in elimination and treatment of trigger points. Additionally, standard medical testing procedures such as x-rays or MRI’s don’t reveal trigger points. So, although the taut bands of muscle tissue which signal the presence of trigger points can easily be felt to the touch, that kind of physical examination often does not happen today. Another reason is that myofascial trigger point therapy takes time to perform effectively.

Typical appointments may last anywhere between 45 minutes to 2 hours. It’s not practical for MD’s to integrate such time-consuming therapeutic techniques into their practice. And although some basic understanding of trigger point treatment is increasingly becoming a part of the standard massage curriculum, the depth and extent of knowledge is still very limited within the massage field. For this reason, it is not easy, even for those physicians who do have knowledge of myofascial trigger point therapy, to find qualified therapists to whom they can refer patients. It is precisely this lack of knowledge and understanding that led us to write our first book on self-treatment of myofascial trigger points in the low back and buttock, the most common muscular pain problem for our patients.

We believe most people who are living with chronic or acute pain have both the motive and the ability to learn enough about the field of myofascial trigger point therapy, that they can develop the capacity to perform effective self-treatment techniques. Our hope is that the general public will find it a useful tool in relieving their own myofascial pain problems. But we also hope that medical practitioners will find it a useful tool in understanding how to evaluate and treat their patients’ myofascial pain and dysfunction.

4) I was told I needed surgery. Can myofascial trigger point therapy help me?

Over the past twenty-five years, we’ve taken a number of patients off the surgical schedule. For example, carpal tunnel surgery (cutting the flexor retinaculum) is one method of releasing the compression of the ulnar nerve which passes through the wrist beneath that ligament. However, you can learn to release the carpal tunnel ligament (flexor retinaculum) with hands-on compression treatment (massage) and stretching. Therefore, myofascial trigger point therapy is much easier, less costly, less risky and less invasive. This is just one example out of the hundreds we encounter.

Another example is sciatic pain, which often leads ultimately to some kind of surgical intervention, even if only exploratory in nature. Yet this sciatic pain can often be relieved completely by treating the paraspinal iliopsoas, the gluteus minimus and medius, the piriformis or the hamstring and lower leg muscles. There are many other conditions such as TMJD, stenosis, and bone spurs which can be effectively treated by myofascial trigger point therapy in lieu of surgery. But the most compelling reason to consider myofascial trigger point therapy before surgery is that it is a non-invasive form of treatment which has no known side effects, and none of the risky complications that come with surgery. And if for some reason trigger point therapy does not help you, surgery remains an option. But when surgery is performed first, it can make it much more difficult to apply trigger point techniques to good effect.

 

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