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As many as one in three struggle with musculoskeletal pain in keeping with the World Health Organization. When you include yourself on this group, you might have a difficulty referred to as myofascial pain syndrome. This syndrome can present itself in quite a few uncomfortable ways in which limit your mobility and overall quality of life.
Myofascial pain syndrome can leave its victims feeling confused, frustrated, and helpless, not least because medical science has difficulty accounting for its causes and differentiating it from other pain conditions. This overview of the syndrome should enable you understand the way to recognize it and what to do about it.
Causes of Myofascial Pain Syndrome
Myofascial pain describes pain affecting each the muscles and the membrane of connective tissue surrounding them (referred to as fascia). While medical science has yet to trace down the precise mechanisms behind myofascial pain syndrome, it often follows an acute injury to muscles, tendons, or ligaments.
Chronic strain conditions comparable to repetitive motion injuries may additionally initiate this syndrome. These injuries typically occur once you subject one particular muscle group, joint, or connective tissue to constant overuse.
In some cases, myofascial pain syndrome may stem not from overuse, but from underuse of the affected body part. For instance, an arm forced into inactivity resulting from weeks in a forged or sling may develop this syndrome. Even chronic emotional stress can lead you to clench your muscles consistently, encouraging myofascial syndrome.
Symptoms and Complications of Myofascial Pain Syndrome
The hallmark symptom of myofascial pain syndrome involves the looks of stiff, palpable muscle knots. These knots may not actually hurt once you touch them; as an alternative, they refer pain signals to a close-by a part of the body. Trigger points may additionally cause the affected region of the body to experience numbness or tingling.
Unlike the everyday acute pain related to a muscle pull or a short-term, isolated muscle knot, myofascial pain syndrome may plague you with constant or frequent pain and other neurological symptoms. Some victims even experience irritable bowel syndrome as a co-occurring problem.
Myofascial pain syndrome shares symptoms with fibromyalgia, making the 2 issues difficult to inform apart. The muscle knots created by fibromyalgia, nevertheless, feel painful at the positioning of the knot as an alternative of referring pain elsewhere. Fibromyalgia also distributes its symptoms across more of the body than myofascial pain syndrome.
Diagnosis of Myofascial Pain Syndrome
Muscle knots related to referred pain symptoms that proceed for greater than three months qualify as a chronic pain problem. This may increasingly prompt your doctor to look to myofascial pain syndrome as a probable diagnosis.
To envision this diagnosis, your doctor may search for such distinguishing characteristics as jump sign. On this response, palpating the trigger point produces referred pain sharp enough to make you jump or jerk in response. The presence of other symptoms comparable to irritable bowel syndrome might help confirm the diagnosis.
Treatment of Myofascial Pain Syndrome
Conservative pain management and stress relief techniques may help to manage your myofascial pain syndrome. Examples of such techniques include massage therapy, physical therapy exercises, dry needling, and therapeutic ultrasound. You might need to try these methods before advancing to stronger options.
Medical treatment may succeed where conservative care cannot. Research has demonstrated that injection of analgesic drugs directly into trigger points can bring relief that lasts for weeks at a time. One other study showed that lidocaine injections proved simpler against myofascial pain that either Botox or dry needling.
Even such frustrating issues as myofascial pain syndrome can reply to expert care from experienced pain management practitioners. Contact Specialists in Pain Management in Chattanooga or Ooltewah to learn more about this syndrome and schedule the enable you need.
