Trigger Points, Tight Knots, and Chiropractic Care

Have you ever had tight knots in your shoulder muscles?  Sensitive trigger points in your trapezious? Of course you have; everyone has.  But what causes it?  Do you think your muscles just ball up into rock hard knots because you’ve been sitting all day?  What about when they go away?

Believe me, I know what this feels like too.  I remember being a college student, before receiving regular chiropractic care.  I use to sit at my desk studying and using an antique computer to type papers. My muscles use to ball up too.  I use to rub them.  No help.  I use to stretch.  No help.  I had to let them calm down on their own.  I was 20 years old, and this was happening!

It wasn’t until I got into chiropractic college and I started getting regular chiropractic adjustments that these finally went away.  I got my neck adjusted, and I got my ribs adjusted.  I got them adjusted once a week.  And, I hit the books hard.  In my first two years of chiropractic college I got nothing less than A’s and B’s.  You would find me in the library in the evenings and at seminars on the weekends.

And I never had a problem with trigger points in my neck muscles ever again.

Among different manual therapies aimed at inactivating muscle TrPs, ischemic compression and spinal manipulation have shown moderately strong evidence for immediate pain relief.

New research shows that when you have parts of the spine not moving well, then you’ll have more knots in your muscles.  They go hand in hand.  Because my neck and ribs weren’t moving well, my muscles got trigger points.  This is the body’s innate way of telling you that things need to move better. 

Reduction of joint mobility appears related to local muscles innervated from the segment, which suggests that muscle and joint impairments may be indivisible and related disorders in pain patients.

When there’s poor movement in the neck, there’s a reflex that goes from the joints in the spine, to the spinal cord, and back out to the muscles that support the spine.  This reflex has the muscles tightening down and guarding the area so it can heal and stabilize itself against further injury.  the body perceives poor posture, locked up joints, and achy muscles as injury.

Two clinical studies have investigated the relationship between the presence of muscle TrPs and joint hypomobility in patients with neck pain. Both studies reported that all patients exhibited segmental hypo-mobility at C3-C4 zygapophyseal joint and TrPs in the upper trapezius, sternocleidomastoid, or levator scapulae muscles.

Because chiropractic care restores normal motion that flushes out inflammatory chemicals, and provides a reflex relaxation of the muscles and pain gate, it also helps to break the reflex causing trigger point knots in the shoulders.

There is scientific evidence showing change in muscle sensitivity in muscle TrP after spinal manipulation, which suggests that clinicians should include treatment of joint hypomobility in the management of TrPs.

Quotes taken from Interaction between Trigger Points and Joint Hypomobility: A Clinical Perspective.

Todd Lloyd, DC
Trigger point doctor in Sonoma, CA