Trigger Points
What is a Trigger Point?
Essentially trigger points are knots in the muscle which can be very painful and cause referred pain throughout the body.
A trigger point is located in a taut band in the muscle, as you get closer to the muscle you have small muscle fibres that make up the muscle. On these muscle fibres you have small sacromes that contract and move to create movement. When these sacromes become over stimulated they stay contracted which causes the knot. When these sacromes stay contracted blood flow stops to these areas causing a trigger point, then these trigger points send out pain signals to the brain.
What do Trigger Points do?
Trigger points keep the muscle tight and weak and it can reduce the muscles range of movement.
The trigger point can cause pain with or without touching it.
A trigger point can also cause referred pain to other areas of the body. That’s why you may think “why are you working on that area as that’s not wear the pain is”.
It’s our job to look at the body ‘as a whole’ and figure out what could be causing the pain.
Are Trigger Points painful?
Yes, they can be. If you have let the trigger point be contracted for too long it can cause a whole lot of pain throughout your body and make it very uncomfortable.
When a trigger point is being treated, you will definitely feel it, and sometimes the therapist won’t be putting much pressure on them at all. We work on a scale of 1 -10. 10 being extremely painful, 1 being not painful we don’t want it to be over an 7 or 8. Yes, it will be a little uncomfortable but as long as you can breathe through it you are fine. If we see clients wiggling or tensing up, we may reduce the pressure.
Example of a Trigger Point…
The main trigger point(s) we see are trigger points in the neck which in turn can cause headaches. We are amazed by how many people who get headaches, and the cause is coming from the trigger points in their neck. We have had clients that were taking pain medication on a daily basis for years because they would get headaches daily. So on their first session we did a mixture of dry needling and massage through their upper back and neck and the next week they came back for a follow up session and guess what they said? “I have not had one headache or taken any pain medication since I have seen you”. We were impressed, and still to this day no headaches, no medication and their treatment are now at every month and they feel amazing. The power of trigger point work!
How Trigger Points are treated:
Trigger points will not release without proper treatment. Treatment such as using a self care massage ball and remedial massage/trigger point therapy to create better blow flow to the areas by releasing the pressure around that area.
Please note if you are in pain and you go to the doctor, they might do a scan but trigger points can’t be located in scan/xray so the doctor could just turn around and say there is no major damage just take some medication and rest up. So think about other options other than a doctor because if you are still in pain you need to get it sorted.