Do you suffer from back pain?

Have you taken some painkillers for it this week? Only for it to come back worse?

Your muscular pain doesn’t have to be this way, taking a painkiller only reduces the symptoms by stopping the nerve signal from said tight muscle to your brain, hence why the pain temporarily reduces. Although the cause of your back pain still needs to be addressed for your pain to go, for good!

Many different treatments help with back pain as the cause can be skeletal as well as muscular. I am speaking from experience here as my spine is curved due to scoliosis. I won’t go into too much detail here, but I will outline some examples.

Starting with skeletal problems – something a massage therapist can’t help with directly, as I only deal with muscular ailments – Osteopaths and Chiropractors are your best options in these cases. As these professionals deal directly with the spine and can work alongside massage therapists to help your case.

How can massage help? Read on!

Let’s say, for example, you have a lot of pain in your left shoulder (image below), and day-to-day activities are affected. There can be many different causes of this pain, don’t you want to find out why the pain is there?

A massage therapist (such as myself) can feel what is called muscular “knots” in this left shoulder example. These “knots” are caused by contracted muscular fibres (see below). With different massage strokes and varying pressures, these muscular “knots” can be released. When “knots” are released, that left shoulder will feel a lot looser, and most of all, the pain will be gone, or at the very least, significantly reduced.

Isn’t that amazing? However, going back to muscular tension, when a muscle is tight, the fibres have become taut, this stops vital nutrients such as oxygen from reaching the rest of the fibre, see image below (https://londonschoolofmassage.blogspot.com/2013/03/treating-knots-for-massage-therapists.html). Toxins also build up in muscle knots, this could be from many different sources that I won’t go into here, the more toxins, the tighter the muscle.

Another cause of muscular tension is repetitive movements, such as playing instruments, guitar, or violin for example, both of which require lots of arm and shoulder movement. Professional sports players have massages regularly due to the high levels of stress on their muscles.

Both toxins and repetitive movements are two examples of what causes pain, but when I apply pressure to said tight muscle, it is usually very tender as the toxins are released. This will cause your skin to go red in the affected area. Refer back to my “New Year, New Energy!” post for massage strokes and side effects.

Once the initial tenderness has reduced, the fibres will be smoother and nutrients will be let back into your muscles, including much-needed oxygen! Smooth fibres and muscles full of nutrients equal stronger muscles and less back pain!

All this can be achieved during your massage sessions, as not only will I be able to reduce the muscular tension, but give you some simple exercises that you can do at home, empowering you to be PRO-active and manage the pain yourself, rather than RE-active. No more painkillers, just your body working as it should.

In conclusion: real, effective pain relief requires you to be PRO-active rather than RE-active. Book your massage and start being PRO-active today.

Many thanks for reading, stay tuned for future empowering posts. To see more information and offers, visit my FB page. Search HealthFull Waves. I look forward to connecting with you and meeting you soon.

Stay healthy massage fans!