Muscles.

They are the machines of the body. Every finger movement, every eye blink, every cough, and even every toe wiggle is controlled by your muscles. And usually, it’s not just one muscle involved. It’s tens to hundreds of muscles for even the smallest movement.

Each flick of the finger fires off millions of neurons throughout the brain, spine, and central nervous system to contract and relax these muscle groupings. And all of this is just to scratch your nose.

Muscle Aches & Pains

Now with all the work being done, it doesn’t take much for muscles to become irritated, tight, inflamed, or sore, inhibiting its function and movement. And when one muscle goes down, the others take up the slack. You won’t notice it, but slowly the extra work puts your other muscles in strain and throws off the balance in your body.

The more a muscle has to work to compensate, the more overworked it becomes. The more overworked a muscle gets, the tighter it gets until it tears on a microscopic level. This is what a muscle tear, sprain, strain, or muscle pull is. They are all the same mechanism. A microscopic tearing of the muscle fiber, akin to the fraying of a rope.

Relieving Patterns of Muscle Pain

Ask anyone who has thrown out their back.

The pain is intense and lingers long after the original injury occurred. So what keeps the pain coming back?

Well, your muscles fall into pathoneurological patterns that facilitate trigger points. These trigger points stay in the muscle and keep it in a pattern of spasm and inflammation that can last months or even years!

This muscular imbalance can cause a joint to wear differently than how it was designed, which can bring on arthritis or cause arthritic joints to get worse over time.

Breaking Bad Habits

Pain can be a tricky thing. Just because you have pain in the front of your shoulder radiating down into your hand doesn’t mean that the pain is coming from the front of the shoulder. It might be coming from one or two of the rotator cuff muscles that get easily irritated and can cause pain, tingling, and numbness radiating down into your hand.

That’s okay. Those rotator cuff muscles (infraspinatus and teres minor) are easy to treat if you know how.

Pain, tingling, and numbness radiating from your low back into your stomach, hips, groin, legs, knees, and feet usually come from muscles in the hips and legs (gluteus medius, minimus, tensor fascia lata).

That’s okay as well. These muscles can be easily treated at home with a little know-how. All you need is a tennis ball, foam roller, and some advice to break your muscles out of their bad habits.

Trigger point treatment programs help block the nerve impulses that keep your muscles in spasm, giving them a chance to relax after years of irritation.

Once you treat these painful and irritated muscles, you will be primed to start exercising again. Your body will be balanced; your muscles will be looser and less injury prone. You will be able to get rid of, or at least reduce, most pain throughout your body.

Treat muscle irritation and reduce joint pain. Exercise intelligently. Eat smart. This is the Pain-Free Way.