Trigger points are probably one of the most overlooked areas in health care. A trigger point is a hypersensitive area in a hypertensive muscles. In other words, it is a very sensitive painful area often referred to as a “muscle knot”. Trigger points are brought on by stress. Stress can come in the form of mental stress, physical stress or chemical stress. Physical stress can be repetition like swinging a tennis racquet, typing on a keyboard, turning a screw driver etc. Mental stress is self explanatory, think of the everyday pit falls that bring about tension and chaos and you pinpointed the definition. Finally, chemical stress can be any chemical that affects the body. Cigarette smoke, noxious odors and perfumes, chemical cleaners all fall under this category. The thing that all 3 stresses have in common is the ability to decrease oxygen and blood flow to the muscles and cause a knot to form. When this knot is placed under stress, it becomes oxygen deprived and becomes a very painful condition. Intense localized pain can be accompanied by radiating pain to distal areas. Conditions like sciatica, carpal tunnel syndrome, Fibromyalgia, migraine headaches and pinched nerve pain can all be mimicked by trigger points.

To further complicate things, trigger points rarely respond to pain and anti inflammatory medications. For medicine to be effective, it must be carried in the blood stream. Trigger points don’t receive proper blood flow, so medications often fail to provide relief. Trigger point therapy consist of isolating the center of the trigger point and applying pressure to restore normal oxygen and blood flow to the damaged area. Acupuncture needle placement can also effectively shut down the raging agony that is often encompassed with this condition. Trigger Point therapy can be performed by a variety of practitioners, but many health care providers do not provide this service or they are not trained well enough to effectively find and remedy the hidden sources of this painful condition.