Muscle and Myofascial Pain

What is Muscle and Myofascial Pain?

Myofascial pain is pain that comes from the muscles and the fascia, the connective tissue that wraps around them. Its hallmark is the trigger point: a tight, tender knot within a taut band of muscle that hurts when pressed and often sends pain to a predictable area nearby.

These trigger points form when a muscle is overloaded, held in one position too long, injured, or kept under stress. A small knot can produce pain well beyond its location, which is why neck trigger points can cause headaches and shoulder trigger points can cause arm pain.

The pain is real and mechanical, but it does not usually show up on scans. Diagnosis comes from a careful physical examination that locates the trigger points and reproduces your familiar pain by pressing on them.

Symptoms

• A deep, aching pain in a muscle that does not fully ease with rest
• Tender knots or tight bands you can feel within the muscle
• Pain that refers from the knot to another area, such as head, arm, or back
• Reduced flexibility and a restricted range of motion
• Muscle weakness or fatigue in the affected region
• Pain that worsens with stress, poor posture, or overuse

How We Treat It

Our first step is to release the trigger points directly. Trigger point injections place a small amount of medication into the knot to switch off the taut band, while dry needling uses a fine needle to achieve a similar release without medication. Both can produce immediate easing of the local and referred pain.

We follow this with manual therapy and physiotherapy to correct the posture, weakness, or movement pattern that allowed the trigger points to form in the first place. Treating the knot relieves today’s pain; correcting the cause is what stops it coming back.