Myofascial Pain and Trigger Points

I had been looking into what causes myofascial trigger points and pain and how working on them relieved the pain. I came across this study, mechanisms of myofascial pain, which gave some great insights into what causes a myofascial trigger point, what keeps them hanging around, what causes them to be painful, and how to get rid of them.

Some of the key things I noted:

Trigger points may occur from muscle overuse, trauma, psychological stress.

They seem to do two main things:

1. Reduce the excitability of the central nervous system

2. The sustained contraction leads to increased metabolic stress and reduces blood flow. This increases myokines, inflammatory cytokines and neurotransmitters.

Working on a trigger point:

• Disrupts dysfunctional endplates

• Increase sarcomere length (too much contraction from sarcomere increases myofascial trigger point)

• Reduces the overlapping actin and myosin filaments

• Decreases acetylcholine levels and neuromuscular junction response

• Reduces sarcomere contraction which increases blood flow and oxygenation

• Activates inhibitory pain pathways

• Decreases neurotransmitters, cytokines and interleukins within the extracellular fluid

• Increase B-endorphin and TNF Alpha, decreases substance P (associated with pain and inflammation)

I highly recommend you take a look into the study and see what your personal take-away's are. You may learn a few things that you can apply on yourself.

Related articles:

• Inflammation

• Training around injuries

• Sleep to lower your risk of injury

• Regular soft tissue work

• A quick way to monitor overtraining