People (including professional massage therapists) often massage the rhomboid area trying to release the knot or pain there.  If it doesn’t release (relax) the knot or pain, that means the cause is somewhere else.

Let’s pretend your back pain is a dragon.  Sometimes “surrounding the dragon” will relieve the pain.  The “dragon” is the painful area.  If you pinch, roll, press or massage the latissimus or “lat” muscles on the outer sides of the back, that may help because they may be pulling on the “dragon.”  The dragon cannot relax and go to sleep while those muscles continue to pull on him.

And, there can be other causes for knots and pain between the shoulder blade and spine.

There is a muscle in the neck that causes pain in the rhomboid area. When nothing else works, that is the place to go to. If you go to http://CarpalTunnelPainReliefNow.com and look in the Video Category you will find a video that shows a massage professional treating that neck muscle. Also if you look in the Causes Category while you are there, you will find articles about the “muscle in your neck.”

If you go to http://SimpleStrengthening.com you will find articles about how to simply get strong back side muscles which will help prevent future occurrences by correcting your posture. Also, stretches to open and relax the muscles in the front of your chest and arms will help, too.

And, if you go to http://KnotsInYourBack.com you can claim a free report about how to get rid of the miserable knots in your back.

According to a study by the US Army, approximately one out of ten people have an actual leg length difference. Additionally, about one out of one hundred people have pelvic bones which are smaller on one side than the other side.

According to myofascial (muscle and soft tissue) pain experts Drs. Travell and Simons, a leg length difference of 1/8 inch or more puts you at risk for pain and dysfunction.  Why?  Because your body does things automatically to try to correct or adapt or accommodate that difference such as tilt, twist or rotate.

There are two types of “short legs.”  Both can cause migraines.

One is an actual anatomical difference which could be caused by severe injury or polio or nature and is measurable on x-rays.  It could be either the upper or the lower leg bone.

The other type is a functional leg length difference.  That means the bones are all the same length but muscles in the body cause one hip to lift.  Your hips can move independently of each other so it is possible to have one hip that is higher or more forward than the other.

People with an anatomical leg length difference often have migraines because walking with a tilt puts a lot of strain on the muscles at the base of the skull.   It causes a rotation (slight turning) of the head.  That can affect the nerves and blood vessels which play a part in migraines.  Those people can have other pain, too, such as hip pain on the short leg side or low back pain pain or TMJ dysfunction.

What’s the fix?

Good news!  There is a relatively easy fix so you don’t have to go through life “out of balance” and with migraines.

Anatomical short leg: Lifting your entire foot on the short leg side enough to level your hips will go a long way in helping you feel better, have fewer migraines, and fewer problems with your neck and muscles.

This requires that you only wear certain shoes.  They must have a solid, thick hard rubber sole.  A shoemaker can split a firm rubber sole and add a layer of neoprene rubber to lift the short leg. This doesn’t work with air or gel type shoes.

Also, if you have a really skilled shoemaker or cobbler, he might be able to remove your whole sole and replace it with a new, thicker sole.

It may seem like a lot of work or you might not want to give up your stylish shoes but the benefits to your body are huge.

Functional short leg: A skilled massage therapist can help relax and release the tight out-of-balance muscles that are pulling your bones out of neutral.

How do you know if you have a leg length difference?

Perhaps one pant leg is always longer than the other.  That was the clue for my 91 year old client who had back pain and migraines for over 70 years.  His doctors never looked for or told him he had a leg length difference but he told me, “My tailor always told me I did!”  His anatomical leg length difference was about 2 inches.

Maybe when you look in the mirror you can see that one shoulder is higher than the other or that your head sits off the side instead of dead in the middle of your body.  That’s a clue, too.

Or, as you look in the mirror, does your belt line drop to one side?

How do you know how much lift you need?

A doctor can take x-rays of your legs and hips and measure for you.  Or, you can “guestimate” by placing notebooks or magazines under your short leg and adding or removing pages until you feel level and look level in the mirror.  Many neuromuscular massage therapists are trained in measuring leg length differences also.

When you get rid of an actual leg length difference and stop the tilting and twisting that your body does to try to make corrections, you can have fewer migraines.

What else can I do?

Until I get my own migraine self-help program completed, I will refer you to this program, Jaw Pain Natural Relief.

What is the tie-in between migraines and jaw pain?  Many of the causes come from the same tight muscles and distortions in posture.  TMJ pain–pain in the jaw–also comes from the muscles around the shoulders, back, neck and head just as migraines do.

There can be multiple causes for migraines but the more causes you can get rid of, the less pain you will have.

PLEASE NOTE: Always whenever you do movements for your neck, do them carefully, slowly and thoughtfully.  Pay close attention to what’s going on so you don’t aggravate your touchy neck and cause a migraine.

If you have back pain or headaches or other pain, maybe you have already seen a massage therapist.  Perhaps it helped  a lot and perhaps it didn’t.

If your massage did not help much, you will learn a lot from this article about selecting a massage therapist who can make a difference with your pain.

If you haven’t tried massage yet for your pain, this article will help you select the best massage therapist in your area for your situation.

And, please remember:  Rome wasn’t built in a day.  That means it may take more than one session for you to get the relief you seek.  You may have several areas that are causing your pain and that all need to be “treated.”

Do I believe massage therapy help most pain?  Absolutely, yes!

If a massage professional has a good working knowledge of what causes pain in the carpal tunnel area, he or she can make a world of difference to you!

Most doctors didn’t learn much about about muscles when they were in school (neither did we) and so when they see a patient who has complaints of discomfort it may not occur to them that it could be caused by muscles.

There are internal things that can cause pain on the outside, too.  Gall bladder pain can be felt in the back and you might perceive it to be muscular pain.  Since we sometimes cannot tell what causes a pain, a visit to your doctor may be in order.

But as I mentioned earlier, it’s likely that you have muscle strain or “trigger points” that are causing your pain.  For instance, more people have pain in the carpal tunnel area caused by trigger points in muscles or muscle strain than true carpal tunnel syndrome.

Many massage therapists don’t have the training or background to understand why you have pain.  They will rub on the painful area around your carpal tunnel, your back or head or wherever, but you may not notice much (or any) relief.  Or it helps a bit but in 1 or 2 hours you are back in the same pain.

The reason for that is they are working on the symptoms rather than the cause of your pain.

He or she is working where it hurts, rather than working on the areas that are actually causing your pain.  That’s a common problem with massage therapists.  Some just rub where it hurts and hope it will help.  Sometimes the cause is actually where the pain is, other times not.

There is an article here at Simple Pain Relief  in the “Massage” Category that will help you find a massage therapist who can give you the most benefit–pain relief–for your massage dollar.  Just scroll down on the right side of this page to “Categories” and scroll down to the Massage category.

A skilled, well-trained massage therapist has the tools to relieve your pain.

Of course, the earlier any pain is stopped in its’ tracks, the better the chances of a complete recovery.  Still, I believe in my heart that bodies are very smart and logical and capable of healing when they are given what they need.  I love bodies!  They want to be well.  Sometimes they just need some help.

Here is part of my response to my reader.

“By now you have hopefully received my response by email. I’m glad you finally got a diagnosis. I suggested in the email several things you can do to start the process of healing.”

“It’s really too bad that most of the medical profession doesn’t pay much attention to the roles of muscles in pain syndromes. That’s not something that gets taught much in medical school. That’s why there are muscle specialists.”

“One of the things I suggested beside massage and ice is to buy a copy of the blue trigger point book that is for sale on the right hand side of this site. The muscles that are responsible for causing TTS symptoms are shown and release treatment is demonstrated. The book is for do-it-yourself pain relief.”

“You have a smart body that wants to be well. Right now, it just needs a little help from you. By educating yourself, you have the best chance of getting better, no matter which route you take.”

“Since numbness is involved, and nerves heal very, very slowly, it may take quite a while until you get all of your sensation back. In the meantime, you might start a whole body movement program just to help the rest of your muscles get back into balance, too. I wish you the best and please feel free to contact me again.”

Natural remedies for Tarsal Tunnel Syndrome can include ice, do-it-yourself or professional massage, trigger point therapy and possibly physical therapy.

Here’s an example: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is very often caused by trigger points in your muscles.  The trigger points in this case are in the neck, upper chest, front of the arm and lower arm.  They “fire,” or refer, pain into the area of the carpal tunnel in the wrist.

A “syndrome” is a collection of symptoms.  Symptoms are things like pain, numbness, tingling.  If you can get rid of the symptoms, or the causes (triggers) of the symptoms, you get rid of the syndrome, too.

Trigger points are hyper-irritable (very irritated or crabby) areas of muscle.  Trigger points can also be found in other soft tissues like skin and organs.  Soft tissues are everything except our bones.

What do trigger points do?  They cause pain and symptoms in other parts of the body, sometimes at a far distance from the trigger point.  This is called “referred” pain.

We ALL have the potential to have them, because we all have soft tissues.

When a nagging pain or symptom won’t go away with treatment, that most likely means that a trigger point is causing the pain and needs to be released. Whatever caused the trigger point also needs to be corrected.  Everything has a cause!

When I was making my notes for a recent Carpal Tunnel Radio show, I noticed a relationship between Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and trigger points:  All of the things that cause trigger points also cause Carpal Tunnel Syndrome!  And, so it is with a lot of our body pain.

A great deal of our pain and other uncomfortable symptoms are caused by trigger points.  Trigger points and muscles are largely overlooked by the medical community (your doctor) as a cause of pain.  It’s just not widely taught in medical schools.  In fact, very few doctors understand the roles of muscles in pain syndromes and fewer still understand trigger points.

Here are some of the things that cause (create) trigger points:

* abnormal bone structure that you may have been born with (like a leg or arm length difference or a partially formed spinal bone)
* posture that causes muscle stress (poor or collapsed posture is a very common cause)
* doing repetitive motions, especially doing them incorrectly
* vitamin & mineral deficiencies or incorrect levels of needed nutrients
* thyroid or certain blood disorders
* stress; allergies and chronic infections

How are trigger points treated?  A manual or massage therapist can release trigger points naturally by locating them, pressing into them AND releasing the surrounding muscles that caused them in the first place.  A few doctors use a “spray and stretch” method or injections to release the trigger points.  Sometimes the injections help, sometimes not.  Depends on the knowledge and ability of the doctor.

There is a very good book on self-treating trigger points.  You can learn about it here.  You can release many of your own trigger points when you understand where they are and how to get to them.

And, there are trigger point charts that show the areas they distribute pain to.  A good manual therapist or massage therapist will know by your symptoms where your trigger points are and will be able to release them.  A good therapist will also help you get rid of the cause of the trigger points.

No more trigger points equals no more muscle pain!

When I was getting a presentation ready about the causes of trigger points. I realized that the same things that cause trigger points also cause Carpal Tunnel Syndrome!

So what causes both trigger points and carpal tunnel symptoms?  Here are seven causes:

• Stress.
• Allergies and chronic infections.
• thyroid and blood disorders, like anemia.
• Vitamin and mineral imbalances or deficiencies.
• Doing repetitive movements, incorrectly.
• Asymmetric bone structure: having one leg longer than the other or one-half of your pelvis being smaller than the other.
• Forward-head posture or collapsing-forward posture.  This is very common and it causes a lot of strain on your upper body muscles.  Muscle strain can cause trigger points which “fire” into your hands, arms and wrists.

Certainly, you don’t have all of those, but you may have one or more.

It’s relatively easy to release your trigger points, once you know where there are “hiding out.”

You can go to Carpal Tunnel Radio to listen to a little 15-minute audio about “Carpal Tunnel Triggers” that I did on Thursday, March 5, 2009.  It will give you a lot more information about triggers and trigger points for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

“Because You Deserve to Feel Better!”

There are many causes for headaches. And some of us have sensitive neck muscles or nerves which make us prone to head pain.

Most of our pain problems are caused by muscles which are overstretched. They become taut, which is a type of tight. Trigger points develop. Trigger points are areas of tight muscle which cause pain elsewhere.

Common areas for trigger points which can cause headaches or head pain are in the muscles in the shoulders and neck. These muscles get overstretched because we spend ninety percent of our days with our heads and arms in front of us. The muscles in the front of our bodies shorten from this position. So the poor back and neck muscles get stretched all the time. They complain and ache. Sometimes they develop trigger points. Then we get head pain.

To avoid overstretching your shoulder and neck muscles, try these tips.

When standing, keep your head over your shoulders. Try not to let your head be in front of your body.

Don’t force your head backward. That will probably aggravate your muscles and may cause a headache. Rather, work to develop a curve in your low back toward your abdomen, which will allow your head to move over your shoulders without effort.

When seated, sit upright. Tuck a pillow behind your low back if you need support. Many chairs and couches and car seats make us recline. Then our heads move forward and our necks get strained. We get head pain.

Much of our pain can be eliminated when we understand how our wonderful bodies work, and when we understand what we can do to help ourselves.

You are at the right place.

“Because You Deserve to Feel Better!”