Pain that Won’t Go Away

It’s often in the muscles

There are many kinds of problems and complaints that you might expect in a Chiropractic practice. Over the years I have come to recognize some common threads which underlie many if not all of the conditions which we encounter. Among the most common is the muscle/tissue disorder: back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain, headaches– even radiating pain syndromes can all be a result of persistent myofascial disorders. These presentations often have many of the earmarks of chronic myofascial pain.

These problems often come to us as Chiropractors after the patient has exhausted conventional care resources, a process that usually reveals the incapacity of diagnostics [2] such as imaging and serology to identify the real problem. This does not reflect poorly in any way on the allopathic community; these are great professionals. The last doctor you see- the one that resolves your problem- is standing on the shoulders of all the other doctors you saw who did the hard work of ruling out all of the disorders which they successfully treat.

In your journey to manage your problem it is common to discover interventions which help but don’t yield lasting results. Massage, the chiropractic adjustment and other physical and pain intervention modalities which manage to touch the problem but not resolve it. The adjustment is an intervention which primarily addresses the articulation (joint), while various tissue procedures, like trigger point reductions, attend muscular elements of the frame. We have found that resolving articular and myofascial issues[3] together yields far more lasting results than simply focusing on the adjustment or the muscles.  This can lead to the success of Staying Adjusted!

The common (but not always the only) barrier to best results in this matter is the persistent/chronic tissue disorder. Often misdiagnosed as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome or the like; the American College of Rheumatologists has pivoted from issuing diagnostic standards to publishing classification statements which reflects the difficulty associated with diagnosing such difficult and multifaceted disorders from a single protocol. Persistent tissue disorders, in some cases described as soft tissue rheumatism, seem to include postural distortions, repetitive micro trauma (vocational or otherwise) and muscular pain which involves chronic pain arising from trigger points, fasciitis, adhesions, tendonitis and bursitis- extra articular problems in tissues which have developed as a result of ongoing inflammation. These trigger points, fasciitis, and adhesions are problems that have resulted from a disturbed repair process and they will not resolve with muscle relaxers, stretching, heat or any of the things which help muscle that is simply tight or hypertonic. All of these cases are examples of repairs that your body makes that went poorly. What they need is a second chance.

You need reduction and remodeling. Please look here for reduction discussion, here for cryotherapy usage, here for rehabilitation/re-organization modelling and here for a glimpse into the more fundamental issue of constitution/recuperative wherewithal.
Are you struggling with a persistent pain situation? It may be a muscle that healed poorly and needs to be remodeled. Because pain is caused by a wide variety of things, it is best to come in and be examined by a professional to understand the true root of your pain.

 

[1] Alessandrino, F., & Balconi, G. (2013, March 2). Complications of muscle injuries. Journal of ultrasound. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3846951/

[2] Reveille, J. (1997). Soft-tissue rheumatism: Diagnosis and treatment. American Journal of Medicine. https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(97)00413-0/abstract#:~:text=Soft%20tissue%20rheumatism%20is%20one,Laboratory%20findings%20are%20normal.

[3] Criteria . American College of Rheumatology. (n.d.). https://rheumatology.org/criteria