Muscle Medicine: The Revolutionary Approach to Maintaining, Strengthening, and Repairing Your Muscles and Joints Read Online Free PDF Page B
Author: Rob Destefano
all-too-common examples. But in fact, the latest research is telling us that the tendons have only a limited capacity to become inflamed. Chronic pain is usually produced by the deterioration of the tendon’s collagen fibers, a downward spiral of microscopic tearing and scarring better described by the term tendonosis. Conventional medicine has had only limited success treating tendonosis with anti-inflammatory drugs. And it doesn’t pay much attention to the potential root cause of the problem: overly contracted muscle fibers that pull on the tendon ends.
Finally, in the case of a serious joint injury, muscle problems are not the cause, but the effect. Pain receptors inside the joint detect something disturbing about the way the joint is moving, and they send signals to the muscles telling the joint to slow or shut down, minimizing the chance of further damage. You see this “guarding reflex” in nature all the time such as when an animal limps with a leg drawn up so as not to further stress an injured joint. Humans, of course, are good at over-
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REFERRAL PATTERNS
Very often, the muscles refer pain to other parts of the body. In other words, the symptoms of an injured or irritated muscle can be felt in areas other than the actual damage site. This makes diagnosis and treatment difficult at times and can be very confusing for the patient. The following charts illustrate the most common muscle referral patterns. The shaded areas represent spots where you may feel all or just some of each muscle’s referred pain.
1. Psoas [A]
2. Gluteus Maximus [C]
3. Piriformis [E]
4. Upper Trapezius [G]
5. Biceps [I]
6. Scalenes [K]
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riding their body with their brain, choosing to finish their run or their basketball game even though their knee or hip is aching and the muscles around it have tightened up.
As we’ve seen, when damaged muscle is the primary problem, the immediate source of pain may be the nerves, the tendons, the muscle fibers themselves, or a combination of the three. Fortunately, hands-on muscle therapies have shown themselves to be effective at getting to the source of the problem: tight muscles.
When treating muscle, the manual therapist has to contend with the secondary damage brought about by inflammation. In the case of a traumatic injury, inflammation is a good thing, at first. It’s the body’s attempt to protect itself against further injury, and start the healing process, by flooding the area with plasma, fluid, and immune cells. But if the injured area remains irritated, or the problem is chronic, inflammation settles in for a longer stay and becomes part of the problem, not the solution. The muscle fibers remain locked in contraction, clamping down on the capillaries and reducing blood flow through the area. This has a doubly bad effect, reducing the supply of oxygen into the tissues and the flow of metabolic waste products out.
In this distressed environment, the body lays down collagen-based scar tissue to stabilize the area. In the case of an acute injury, this makes sense. It’s the only patch material muscles have. But in a chronic situation, it just gums up the works. These microscopic adhesions impede the way the fibers inside the muscle move against each other, and the way the muscle slides over neighboring muscles and nerves, and how it moves within the broad layer of fascia that gives shape to the entire soft-tissue system. The friction creates more inflammation and swelling, triggering the formation of yet more adhesions, and so on.
HANDS-ON MUSCLE THERAPY
Manual therapy has more than one way to pull muscle tissue out of this downward spiral. Massage therapies have been around for centuries as all-purpose body tonics. Massage stimulates the circulatory system to bring blood back to oxygen-starved muscles and helps the lymphatic system flush out waste. Modern therapeutic schools such as Active Release Techniques (ART) and Trigger Point Therapy have brought manual therapy into
Finally, in the case of a serious joint injury, muscle problems are not the cause, but the effect. Pain receptors inside the joint detect something disturbing about the way the joint is moving, and they send signals to the muscles telling the joint to slow or shut down, minimizing the chance of further damage. You see this “guarding reflex” in nature all the time such as when an animal limps with a leg drawn up so as not to further stress an injured joint. Humans, of course, are good at over-
----
REFERRAL PATTERNS
Very often, the muscles refer pain to other parts of the body. In other words, the symptoms of an injured or irritated muscle can be felt in areas other than the actual damage site. This makes diagnosis and treatment difficult at times and can be very confusing for the patient. The following charts illustrate the most common muscle referral patterns. The shaded areas represent spots where you may feel all or just some of each muscle’s referred pain.
1. Psoas [A]
2. Gluteus Maximus [C]
3. Piriformis [E]
4. Upper Trapezius [G]
5. Biceps [I]
6. Scalenes [K]
----
riding their body with their brain, choosing to finish their run or their basketball game even though their knee or hip is aching and the muscles around it have tightened up.
As we’ve seen, when damaged muscle is the primary problem, the immediate source of pain may be the nerves, the tendons, the muscle fibers themselves, or a combination of the three. Fortunately, hands-on muscle therapies have shown themselves to be effective at getting to the source of the problem: tight muscles.
When treating muscle, the manual therapist has to contend with the secondary damage brought about by inflammation. In the case of a traumatic injury, inflammation is a good thing, at first. It’s the body’s attempt to protect itself against further injury, and start the healing process, by flooding the area with plasma, fluid, and immune cells. But if the injured area remains irritated, or the problem is chronic, inflammation settles in for a longer stay and becomes part of the problem, not the solution. The muscle fibers remain locked in contraction, clamping down on the capillaries and reducing blood flow through the area. This has a doubly bad effect, reducing the supply of oxygen into the tissues and the flow of metabolic waste products out.
In this distressed environment, the body lays down collagen-based scar tissue to stabilize the area. In the case of an acute injury, this makes sense. It’s the only patch material muscles have. But in a chronic situation, it just gums up the works. These microscopic adhesions impede the way the fibers inside the muscle move against each other, and the way the muscle slides over neighboring muscles and nerves, and how it moves within the broad layer of fascia that gives shape to the entire soft-tissue system. The friction creates more inflammation and swelling, triggering the formation of yet more adhesions, and so on.
HANDS-ON MUSCLE THERAPY
Manual therapy has more than one way to pull muscle tissue out of this downward spiral. Massage therapies have been around for centuries as all-purpose body tonics. Massage stimulates the circulatory system to bring blood back to oxygen-starved muscles and helps the lymphatic system flush out waste. Modern therapeutic schools such as Active Release Techniques (ART) and Trigger Point Therapy have brought manual therapy into
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