In my practice, I find an array of health pain issues in clients, including back pain, knee pain, ankle/foot, shoulder, neck pain and more. Explaining why unresolved injuries occur has helped my clients understand how the injury process works and what to do to resolve it.
An injury is damage to some tissue in the body. It can be a muscle, ligament, tendon, and/or joint. The damage might express itself as swelling, micro-tearing, inflammation and/or rupture. Pain comes after the injury, while things out of alignment are often the precursor. Stress on the muscle may have led to the injury, as well as being a reaction to the pain after. Excessive muscle tension can make you more vulnerable.
While at a meeting recently, I asked if anyone had injuries. Most said no, but they had a lot of pain in different parts of their body due to aging. They thought that an injury was the result of an accident or some event that caused the injury. Many injuries, or I would say, most chronic injuries are the result of a long process of wear and tear, or misuse of the body. It can present itself by doing something like cooking or vacuuming, or just working at a computer for too many hours. This can happen in many ways and have nothing to do with an accident. Whether the pain is in the shoulders, low back, neck, knees or another location, each new exertion creates a small tear that heals with adhesive “glue-like” scar tissue. Then, the scarred-down tissue scars again and again with each new stressful activity. This cycle can occur hundreds and hundreds of times in a few months, creating a painful matted scar. So, when someone has chronic pain, it will have healed with a culprit of adhesive scar tissue with random patterns, and adheres to adjacent structures.
About two-thirds of all visits to the primary physician are the result of muscular skeleton pain. There are two parts to addressing an injury or pain. One involves reducing the swelling in the area, hence the anti-inflammatory pill or icing. The second is addressing the adhesive scarred and matted ligaments and/or tendons. Once the “glue-like” scarred tissue has been eliminated and full range of motion has been achieved, the pain will reside. At Optimal Health Restoration, we address the core of the pain with soft tissue remodeling.
The perfect Valentine’s gift expressed to a loved one, and truly a loving thing to do, is to offer a health restoration package to someone with unresolved chronic pain.
Cyndi Boyd, CMT, Optimal Health Restoration