Why do your muscles hurt?
The most common reason for booking a treatment with Vitality Therapy is muscle pain due to your”knots”.
So what do we mean by “knots”? Technically speaking they are either Trigger points (or Myofascial Trigger Points to give them their correct name) or hypertonic muscles.
There are six key elements that cause acute or chronic muscle pain:
- Ischemia: the lack of blood flow to soft tissues that causes hypersensitivity to touch.
- Hypertonic muscles: very tense muscles or muscle spasms.
- Trigger points: highly irritated points and bands in the muscles that refer pain to other parts of the body.
- Nerve entrapment/compression: pressure on a never by soft tissue, cartilage or bone.
- Postural distortions: imbalance of the musculoskeletal system resulting from poor posture while siting at a desk.
- Bio-mechanical distortions: imbalance of the musculoskeletal system resulting in faulty movement patterns e.g. poor sports techniques.
A massage therapist has a wide variety of techniques in their toolkit to help release muscle pain including NMT.
Related Posts
Myofascia – part 1
What is Myofasci? Fascia is the main connective tissue of the body. Fascia surrounds every cell, muscle, bone, nerve, blood Bessel in the body, creating a three-dimensional web. This is one continuous network from head to toe. Myofascia is the fascia that surrounds all the muscle. Why it is important? In its normal state fascia is fluid and pliable, allowing full, pain-free movement. However, fascia is vulnerable to trauma from
- Accident
- Infection
- Injury
- Surgery
- Repetitive Movement
- Habitual Poor Posture
- Poor biomechanics
- Altered structural alignment
- Compromised blood supply
- Pain
- Reduce flexibility and stability
The Impact of Sitting All Day – Part 3
In part 1, I looked at the impact of sitting on your muscles, and in part 2 I started to explore the impact on the rest of your body. In this post I continue to explore the impact of sitting on your circulatory system including your heart. Heart Disease When sitting for prolonged periods of time, muscles burn less fat and blood flows more sluggishly, allowing fatty acids to more easily clog the heart. In 2012 Ford & Caspersen in their research paper, Sedentary behaviour and cardiovascular disease: a review of prospective studies (International Journal of Epidemiology, Vol 41, No 5 pages 1338 - 1353) showed that the people with the most sedentary time are more than twice as likely to have cardiovascular disease than those with the least. In 2012 Zedric and Hamilton found that just a few hours sitting suppresses a gene that helps keep your cardiovascular system healthy by controlling inflammation and blood clotting. T W Zedric & M T Hamilton, 2012 Identification of hemostatic genes expressed in human and rat leg muscles and a novel gene (LPP1/PAP2a) suppressed during prolonged physical inactivity (sitting), Lipids in Health and Disease, Vol 11 see http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1476-511X-11-137.pdf Cholesterol Sitting also means that your large postural support muscles are inactive. When active these muscles produce a quite of beneficial molecules. One molecule skeletal muscles produce is an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase - which you can think of as a vacuum cleaner for fats in the blood stream. A study in rats showed that after 24 hours forced inactivity, their lipoprotein lipase acitivity was reduced by 90 - 95%, which led to a 75% drip in the ability of their muscles to remove fats from their bloodstream as will as a significant decrease in "good" (HDL) cholesterol. L Bay & Mark Hamilton, 2003, Suppression of skeletal muscle lipoprotein lipase activity during physical inactivity: a molecular reason to maintain daily low-intensity activity, Journal of Physiology, Vol 551, No 2 pages 673 - 682.See http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/jphysiol.2003.045591/full
Why does slumping at your desk contribute to lower back pain?
We all know that we should maintain good posture when sitting rather than slumping (poor posture) to avoid lower back pain, but why? The human spine is an upright bendy column and in someone with good posture it’s an S shape. With perfect posture a straight line can be drawn through the ear, the tip of the shoulder, the front of the knee joint and the back of the ankle. The spine is made of 24 vertebrae or segments. If we look at the S shape it consist of the cervical lordosis which is the arch in the neck, this is followed by the thoracic kyphosis which is an arch in the chest in the opposite direction, this is then followed by the lumbar arch or lumbar lordosis which is the hollow in the lower back. Perfect lumbar lordosis (or perfect arch in your lower back) helps
- Ensure the correct distribution of your body weight
- Allows your lower back to bow forwards slightly when walking to absorb the impact during walking
- Choose a chair that allows you to rest both feet flat on the floor while keeping your knees level with your hips. If necessary, prop up your feet with a footstool or other support.
- Sit back in your chair. If the chair doesn't support your lower back's curve, place a rolled towel or small pillow behind your lower back.
- Stretch the top of your head toward the ceiling, and tuck your chin in slightly.
- Keep your upper back and neck comfortably straight.
- Keep your shoulders relaxed — not elevated, rounded or pulled backward.
Remember
Although good posture should be natural, you might feel wooden or stiff at first if you are used to slumping rather than sitting up straight. The key is to practice good posture all the time, and be extra vigilant when you are really concentrating, getting tired or its late in the day. You can make improvements at any age. Stretching and core strengthening exercises can help, too. And if you have got lower back pain, why not try massage.
