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Referred
Muscle Pain
This section is my favorite. I treat patients daily
using one of a dozen types of soft tissue (muscle) release techniques. The
outcomes (results) for these patients are quite remarkable, and many times
are life changing events. To understand the process of referred pain, you
must first understand how your nervous system is connected.
Let's start with the most common example, a heart
attack. It is common knowledge that when a person has a heart attack, they
feel pain in their chest and left arm. Did you ever wonder why? There is
an easy explanation. The heart is a muscle that has pain nerves, much the
same as the muscles of your back, arms and legs. When you play or work too
hard, you strain your muscles through overuse, and you feel pain where the
damage is. That is, if you run too far, your leg muscles hurt. These pain
fibers are individually wired to your spinal cord and brain, so you feel
your leg pain in your legs. But the pain fibers in your internal organs,
such as your heart are wired different. They share nerve fibers that come
from the skin and muscles from their area of the body, the left chest and
arm.
When your heart is damaged in a heart attack, it
sends intense pain sensation through nerves to your spinal cord. These
nerves enter the cord along with the nerves that come from your left arm.
Because the pain sensation nerves from the arm and heart come into the
spinal cord at the same place, there is a spill over or crossover effect
from the intense pain nerves from the heart nerves to the arm nerves. Your
brain cannot tell the difference between your arm and your heart as the
origin of the pain. So your brain interprets your pain as coming from both
areas. This is called: " REFERRED PAIN".
Similarly the pain sensation nerves of your body's
muscles are interconnected with skin pain sensation nerves in the same
region of the body. One example is arm numbness or pain. There are
numerous upper back, shoulder rotators, and neck muscles, that refer pain
and numbness sensations down the arm. The most typical muscle to do so is
the Infraspinatous shoulder rotator muscle. Damage to this shoulder blade
located muscle is frequently hidden from your perception of pain until you
touch it. Most patients will present with their hands falling asleep or
with arm pain.
Referred pain is
sometimes impossible to identify and treat for those who are not trained in
the diagnosis and treatment of this type of problem. I have taken dozens of
hours of muscle evaluation and therapy classes. I also have tens of
thousands of hours of patient contact identifying and treating muscle
conditions.
If you think you may have a referred pain or numbness
problem, call 608-437-3600 for a no charge consultation or for an
examination to see if I can help you.
If you have questions about a problem you are having,
or have a condition that other treatment has not helped, call for a
consultation or examination today. 608-437-3600.
For more information, e-mail us
at info@kishchiropractic.com
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