Thursday, October 23, 2008

Massage Guide - Trigger Points

Trigger points are hyper sensitive/hyper contracted areas in muscles, which, when active, give a predictable pattern of pain referral. The main advantage of learning these patterns is that if you have pain in a particular area and it stems from a trigger point, knowing the patterns will help us to determine which muscle to work to help alleviate that pain. This is important since the pain can be as distant form the originating muscle as the length of an arm. For example, the pain referral pattern for the rectus abdominus muscle, which runs from your breast bone down to your pubic bone on the front of your body, can include pain in two bands across your mid back and lower back.

As well as causing refered pain, trigger points may cause stiffness and decreased range of movement and are also capable of triggering autonomic symptoms such as sweating, lacrimation, proprioceptive disturbances, dizziness and tinnitus.

Trigger Point Therapy involves applying ischaemtic pressure (pushing all the blood and fluids out of the area) in the area of a trigger point for 10-15 seconds. This can sometimes be applied when coming across unexpected hypersensitive areas as well as those we're looking for.

Trigger Point theory was originally developed by Dr Janet Travell and Dr David Simmons, and Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual by Travell & Simmons outlines Trigger Points throughout the body and their pain referral patterns.

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