Photographer: Neil Mulligan - Weekend Courier

About pain

There is way more to aches and pains than many people realise! For example there is referred pain, nerve pain and so on.

Trigger points are an example of referred pain:

Trigger points are irritated areas in muscles that send so many pain signals to the nervous system that the system is overloaded, and you actually feel the pain elsewhere (referred pain). The trigger point itself may not feel sore except when you press on it.

A typical example of this is the network of suboccipital muscles at the base of the rear of the cranium. You may not be aware of any pain in this area, but you can definitely feel the headaches that result!

Other muscles which can mislead diagnosis are the scalene muscles and the sternocleidomastoid muscles. The scalene muscles, which elevate the ribs during breathing, refer pain to a multitude of places. Many carpel tunnel operations have been performed when the real cause was trigger points in the scalene muscles. The reason the scalene muscles cause many misdiagnoses is that they don't cause you to feel any pain in the scalene muscles themselves, they only refer pain elsewhere

The sternocleidomastoid muscles help turn your head or lift your head when lying down face up; they are the big muscles at the front of the neck. They refer pain as headaches and contribute to jaw pain, earache, dizziness and sinus problems. As for the scalenes, they are often hard to identify as the cause as they don't cause you pain in the muscle itself, except if you press on the active trigger points.

Nerve pain

Sciatic nerve pain can be caused by compression of the sciatic nerve in the lower back, on exit from the sacrum or, in many cases by a tight piriformis muscle, a muscle deep under your gluteus maximus (in your butt, to use the vernacular!). I have had good success in relieving sciatic nerve pain when caused by a tight piriformis. This can be due to sitting on a wallet for years, or, if the pain is in the right leg, from hours spent driving.

Nerve pains are also common in the arms. There are several places where the compression occurs, such as the carpal tunnel, the elbow, at the attachment of the pectoralis minor muscle, where it passes between the first rib and the clavicle (thoracic outlet syndrome), and where the brachial plexus nerves exit from the cervical spine only to be compressed by tight scalene muscles. There are a number of tests I perform to find out which nerve is being compressed, eg medial, radial or ulnar nerve, and where the compression is occurring. There are strategies for relieving the compression at each of the likely points.

So there you go, remedial massage can in many cases relieve nerve pain without a visit to a neurologist or a surgeon!

As I develop this page, I will be expanding on the topic of pain and the treatments I use to afford relief.