SIMPLE PAIN RELIEF with Kathryn Merrow, the Pain Relief Coach

Tags: Kathryn Merrow The Pain Relief Coach

What is the cause of pain on the bottom of your feet?

There are several possibilities including the muscles on the bottom side of your foot.  Those muscles can be pressed into with fingers or a tennis or golf ball.  The muscles to press tend to be in the area of foot pain.

If those muscles are strained, wearing arch supports in your shoes may help by supporting them.

Another cause that is commonly overlooked is the piriformis muscle.  This muscle runs from your sacrum (wide, fused end of spine just above your tailbone) to the head of your femur (top outside of your thigh bone.)

The piriformis is usually covered by the thick gluteal (butt) muscles.  It can develop Continue Reading »

Tags: bottom of foot pain, foot pain bottom of foot, Kathryn Merrow, pain in sole of foot, pain relief coach

You have muscle or joint pain and, of course, you want to get rid of it.  You prefer to get rid of your pain naturally without the use of drugs or surgery.  Is this possible?

Yes.  Why?  Your body heals all the time.  It is constantly changing and making corrections (when it can.)

Let’s use me as an example:  I used to have such severe asthma (difficulty breathing) that I ended up in the hospital twice and I took steroid medications for almost 20 years.  Now?  No problem.  No drugs.  No wheezing.

(In case you are thinking that I finally outgrew it, nope.  I outsmarted it.  Made corrections to my diet and started taking vitamin and mineral supplements seriously.  Lots of illnesses are caused by nutritional deficiencies.)

Now let’s use you as an example:  Have you ever had a broken bone?  It healed?  And how about all of those scrapes, cuts and other injuries you Continue Reading »

Tags: how injuries heal, how muscles heal, how wounds heal, how your body heals, Kathryn Merrow, pain relief coach

Is massage therapy good for people who have hypermobile joints?  Here’s a question I received and my response.

Question:

I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Hypermobility Type.

Have you worked with this disorder before?  If so, is there any type of massage that I should avoid?

I know I don’t like the deep tissue massage, and any type of rolfing.  I have had a reaction to too much of the heated sonar prior to massage which makes me feel like I had a sunburn.

My Response:

Prime Olympic athletes receive a type of sports massage which neither loosens nor tones their muscles.  It just allows them to remain in their peak condition while still having the benefits of massage.

I wonder Continue Reading »

Tags: hypermobility massage, Kathryn Merrow, massage for hypermobile syndrome, pain relief coach

Did you know that pain can be caused by not getting enough sleep?  Researchers have been able to create muscle pain in healthy, young college students simply by depriving them of sleep!

The kind of pain they developed was the type that people with Fibromyalgia Syndrome have:  all-over joint and muscle aches.

If you have trouble falling asleep and Continue Reading »

Tags: can't sleep, fibromyalgia, how to fall asleep, insomnia, Kathryn Merrow, natural sleep remedies, pain relief coach

What’s the relationship between gratitude and pain?   It turns out that when you realize all that you have to be grateful for, your levels of stress and pain go down.  That’s a very good thing!

Gratitude helps you feel better on ALL levels.  Here’s the link to a very good article about an easy system for being thankful for what’s good in your life.

Increase Gratitude, Decrease Pain and Suffering. (<– click here.)  And start feeling better!

Tags: cause of pain, gratitude and pain relief, Kathryn Merrow, pain relief coach

We humans get back pain when our muscles get out of balance.  How does this happen?

Well, we are supposed to move, run, jump, climb, roll and continue doing all of the cool, fun things we did as young children.

But most of us do not. 

So, we get back pain.  Why?  Because we are no longer using our muscles in a balanced way.  We use the same 60 or 70 or so each day and the rest of the 600 muscles are ignored.  When those muscles get unhappy, you Continue Reading »

Tags: back pain, back pain relief, cause of back pain, Kathryn Merrow, pain relief coach

Have you ever heard of someone having a tooth pulled because they had pain in the tooth?  But afterward they still had the pain?  I have.  Here’s how:

There are muscles in your head that can actually cause you to feel pain in your teeth.  The pain is not IN your tooth but that is where you feel it.  Removing the tooth doesn’t get rid of the pain because that wasn’t the cause of the pain to start with.

The muscles in your head can get “tight” and ornery just like any other muscles.  They can develop trigger points.  Trigger points are areas in muscles that “fire” or cause pain at some distance.

The muscles at the sides of your head–your temples–can Continue Reading »

Tags: cause of tooth pain, Kathryn Merrow, muscle cause of tooth ache, pain relief coach, toothache

If you have stiffness in your ankles or pain in the arch of your foot, this article is for you!

My client Pat had told me about the pain that ran from her hip to her foot.  We had worked on the muscles of her lower back and hip in previous sessions because those muscles can “refer” pain into the foot.

Those muscles can also press on the nerves that run to your foot.  Releasing or relaxing the low back and hip muscles can get Continue Reading »

Tags: ankle pain, foot pain, Kathryn Merrow, pain in arch of foot, pain relief coach, stiff ankles, Tarsal Tunnel Syndrome

Muscle pain happens for reasons. The good news is that you can get rid of those reasons by taking simple, natural actions. I’ll tell you about five of them shortly.

As a neuromuscular massage therapist, I learned a lot from my clients, my instructors and my own body and pain.  That’s how I know that bodies want to be well. Sometimes they need a little help, but they are able to get better.

Bodies change all the time.  Bodies can heal. Bodies do heal.

That means your body, too.

Bodies are brilliant. Give them what they need, and they WILL get better.

So what do bodies need?

1. Your body needs Continue Reading »

Tags: cause of muscle pain, Kathryn Merrow, muscle pain, muscle pain relief, pain relief coach

Which type of massage is best?  Here’s an article from my friend Janet McClain. She’s been providing therapeutic massage to residents of southeast Michigan since 1992.

Janet says:

Some people have a preference for a certain type of massage.  This may be because they have had it in the past and enjoyed the experience.  But the fact of the matter is…

There are many types of massage treatments and a skilled therapist who knows many different techniques will quite likely incorporate several into each session.  Why would this be?  Different techniques “talk” to the body in different ways.  Some are more superficial or surface-touch.  Others work deeply into the skeletal and Continue Reading »

Tags: Janet McClain, Kathryn Merrow, massage, massage therapy, pain relief coach, types of massage