Find out one of the biggest unrecognised causes of Muscle Pain
The Truth About Muscle Pain And how to switch it off - without drugs, surgery or expensive treatments.
Dr Jonathan Kuttner
Many people have muscle pain - it’s one of the most common things we all experience at some stage in our lives. Some of you, though, may have had muscle pain for years and all the experts you have seen have been unable to explain it or help you. There is, however, an explanation for muscle pain that’s not so well known. I’m talking about:
Myofascial Trigger Points Most people have them (though they may not be active.) They can cause shooting pain, dull aching pain, and stiffness. And if you have active trigger points, all the anti-inammatorypills, gels, exercises - even surgery won’t do you any good. What will help? Learning how to nd and switch off trigger points - and stop them coming back. So let’s dive right in. What is a trigger point? The basic denition is a very small area of spasm within your muscle. The trigger point can be latent (not in spasm, but with that potential - like a dormant volcano) or active (spasmed and painful.) Some people have a few active trigger points, some people have dozens. Trigger points can radiate pain throughout your body or in a specic location. It all depends on the type and number of trigger points that you have.
1. Trigger Points do not cause damage. They are painful, but they don’t actually damage your muscles, or the surrounding area.
2. You can switch off trigger points
without medication, surgery or expensive equipment. Some people have the problem that their trigger points keep coming back - we’ll address that in a later email.
But for now, what I want you to know about triggers is: a) They are not causing permanent damage AND.... b) you can switch them off yourself. Let’s go in a bit more detail into the science of trigger points - what they are, why we know they aren’t damaging you, and then we’ll get into how to switch them off.
What is a trigger point? Medically, it’s denedas a “hyperirritable locus within a tight band of skeletal muscle.” In layman’s terms, it’s an area of spasm - or knot - within a muscle. When you have a trigger point, it pulls a thin band of taut muscle which runs the length of the muscle bre.And when you’re looking for triggers, this feels like a guitar string within the bulk of your muscle. A diagram of a Trigger Point within the muscle
A Trigger Point is like a knot within your muscle
A brief scientic interlude....the picture above is a photomicrograph of a myofascial trigger point within skeletal muscle. In the lower half you can see parallel bands of so-called I-bands & A-bands. They are evenly spread. In the upper half there is a central elliptical area where the bands are squeezed incredibly tightly together. This is the myofascial trigger point. The band of bres on either side of this are stretched further apart than normal.
So after you’ve examined your muscle and are able to feel a tight band within it - like a taut guitar string - how do you know for certain that it’s a trigger?
The test for identifying trigger points is quite simple. Trigger points act like the trigger of a gun - when the gun is red, the bullet causes pain elsewhere. Similarly, when a trigger point is activated, it sets off a pain pattern - sometimes causing pain far from the site of the trigger. For more information of how triggers work - click here. Each pain pattern is specic to that trigger point. There are hundreds of riggers scattered around the body. Remarkably, each trigger point pattern has been shown to be consistant over thousands of people. Here is a pain pattern for the trapezius muscle - a very common trigger point. As you can see, pressing on the trigger point (the small black cross) causes pain to radiate in a band up into the back of your head. Many people who spend their entire day working hunched in front of a computer get this pain. It can seem like a sore neck, or tension headache. But in fact it’s caused by a trigger point in your shoulders.You can test for this trigger point now. Just put your hand on your shoulder, and search in that spot. Trapezius Trigger Point
Apply gentle pressure, until you ndaspot where you push into your shoulder muscle - and get pain that travels up your neck
Now you know what to look for, let’s get onto how you can switch off your trigger points. The rst thing I want you to know is this:
Trigger Point releases - when done correctly should not hurt. I know the ‘No Pain, No Gain’ philosophy - and it doesn’t apply here. Think about it - when you stress a muscle, it automatically tightens up - as a protective reex.This is part of what causes trigger points in the rst place. So doing trigger point releases that cause your muscles to tighten up is like trying to lift a chair you’re sitting on. You’re working against yourself.
Now there is a marvelous technique for doing pain free trigger point releases which I’m going to describe to you soon. But rst I want you to understand exactly how trigger points work. Once you understand this you’ll see why a pain free trigger point release is so important.
The key structure in understanding trigger points is the muscle spindle bre.This is a nerve arranged in a spiral, looking and behaving like a spring. It is found in parallel with your muscle bres. When it is stretched, it sends messages to your spinal cord. When the muscle bre reaches beyond a critical length,the spindle will re a particular message. This message then goes up your nerve to the spinal cord and zooms straight back to the muscle bre - causing it tocontract. This is the simplest feedback loop you can have. So Trigger Points are in fact part of a protective mechanism your body uses to keep safe - to stop muscles being over stretched, and joints being damaged. Problems (and trigger points) happen when your muscle spindle becomes sensitised - for example after your have been injured. It stays in this protective mode. This means it will not allow the muscle bre to lengthen at all and will cause a localised knot of spasm. This localised spasm is the myofascial trigger point. Trigger points cause your muscle stays in spasm - even when there is no threath of damage. Diagram of the feedback
Switching off trigger points is therefore a matter of interrupting the spasm message your muscle spindle is sending to your nerve. And you can do this in a pain free way by using Ischemic Pressure. Ischemic Pressure involves gentle increasing pressure on the trigger point. Over a few minutes, this will reset the messages to the muscle - switching off the trigger point. This is a pain free trigger point release - you stay just below the pain threshold while gently increasing pressure. I’ll give you a link to free video on how to do shortly. Trigger points are a misguided message. They’re like a security alarm that’s been switched on - and hasn’t been switched off.
But rst,let’s look at why some of the more traditional ways of relieving muscle pain that don’t work if you have trigger points....
There’s stretching your muscles. This doesn’t work because your muscles are in spasm and will continue to be in spasm until the trigger points are switched off. Stretching muscles with trigger points is just like pulling harder on a knot - you’ll just make it tighter. What you actually want to be doing is loosening the trigger rst - after which stretching can be very helpful. There’s traditional massage. This can be slightly helpful, but only if the masseuse is actually putting pressure on the trigger points. And to do an ischemic trigger point release you need to apply pressure in a very specicway.
Stretching muscles with triggers doesn’t help - you need to release the trigger rst
Then there’s anti-inammatory gels and pills. These may relieve some types of pain but trigger points are not in fact caused by inammation - so these are not so effective So how do you do a Trigger Point Release using ischemic pressure?
Traditional massage only helps if it’s targeting precisely the trigger points- and applying ischemic pressure
Click here to watch a video that shows you exactly how to do ischemic trigger point releases. So that’s all for now, folks. In the next emails, we’ll dive deep into: - how to nd trigger points - anywhere in your body. - more techniques to switch triggers off - how to stop triggers from coming back. So stay tuned and check your mailbox.
Please feel free to share this report with friends and family - anyone you think could benet from this knowledge. And if you’re not already subscribed to receive more free information on trigger points - here’s where to sign up. Best Regards, Dr Jonathan Kuttner. MBBCh, Dip O&G, FRNZCGP, Dip Sports Med, Dip MSM, FAFMM.
If you’re reading this report, then you’re probably tired of being in pain. You’re looking for a reliable, safe way to get rid of muscle pain - without expensive treatments, surgery or pain medication. Before you close this document and get on with your day,
I have 3 quick questions for you: 1. Did you know
that some of the most common treatments for sore muscles actually make them
WORSE?
2. Are you aware that muscle spasms cause pain that can be felt anywhere from in your
in your body - from your head down do your toes - and in fact they’re sometimes mistaken for arthritis, irritable bowl syndrome, or even toothache?
3. Did you know that
there are some simple, easy to apply techniques you can do yourself to get rid of muscle pain and you can feel the initial results within minutes? I’ll explain more in detail shortly, but rst, let me tell you a story. It was the summer of ‘87, and I was a (fairly) young doctor. I’d always led an active life, with lots of sport - tennis, hockey, cricket. But I always had stiff sore muscles, and I’d resigned myself to the fact that this was just how I was made - and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it.
Then, one day, a friend gave me a book on trigger points. ‘Huh?’ I thought. ‘What are Trigger Points?’ And I started to read. It was one of those ‘lightbulb’ moments. I spent that weekend going through and nding every trigger point I could on myself (I had loads of them,) and switching them off. It was the rst time I was painfree - in as long as I could remember. Then I started to treat the people who came in to see me in my medical practise. And I met a LOT of people withtrigger points - some of whom had been in pain for years - and never knew that it was caused by trigger points. So I started teaching people how to nd and treat their own triggers. And I saw many people get their own lightbulb moment - the moment when they realised that they could x themselves. Using just their hands - or a strategically placed tennis ball, they had everything they needed to treat their own muscle pain, and get rid of triggers - for good. So - how is this going to help you? Well, if you’re ready to take action and get rid of triggers for good, you can get started on the Trigger Point Treatment Course right now. It’s the exact techniques I’ve used on myself - and taught to my patients - to nd, switch off and stop triggers coming back.
Jonathan Kuttner Bio After a serious hangliding accident above the cliffs of his home coastline, Jonathan had 6 years of chronic back pain. He had been a family doctor for more than 20 years, but this sudden change lead him to specialise in treating people with chronic muscular and joint pain - a specialty called Musculoskeletal Medicine. Having found a solution to his own pain, Jonathan now kite surfs, plays tennis, does Tai Chi and plays the cello in his coastal haven in New Zealand. Jonathan also runs a clinic treating people with chronic pain four days a week - for more details go to: www.kuttner.co.nz
Dr Jonathan Kuttner. MBBCh, Dip O&G, FRNZCGP, Dip Sports Med, Dip MSM, FAFMM.
He’s a rm believer in the concept of Knowledge = Power. Understanding the reason for your pain is the rst and vital step to healing, and you are your own best healer. He started www.LifeAfterPain.com to help people rst understand, then help themselves get out of the chronic pain cycle. More than 18,000 people visit this site monthly, and he has a growing newletter readership - at the last check there were more than 33,000 subscribers. Hundreds of people have benetted from his online triggerpoint course, which he continues to revise and improve. For more information on how to get rid of trigger points, including neck stretches, advice on posture to avoid trigger points,
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