Trigger Points for Fibromyalgia and Chiropractic Care

Trigger Points for Fibromyalgia and Chiropractic Care

Fibromylgia and chiropractic care

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If you’re one of the 4 million people suffering from fibromyalgia, you know how it commands your life. From debilitating pain to constant fatigue, fibromyalgia is a mysterious disease because there’s no clear cause. 

What IS known is it can cause headaches, sleep problems, stiffness, and many other unpleasant conditions. It often accompanies other health concerns like Irritable Bowel Syndrom (IBS) and chronic myofascial pain. 

It turns out, that some people are affected by trigger points for fibromyalgia, and chiropractic care helps them. Other fibro treatments include exercise, stress reduction, medication, and acupuncture.

What are Fibromyalgia Trigger Points?

Trigger points for fibromyalgia are small spots mostly around the joints. For example, you can find common trigger points in the hips, upper chest, upper back, back of the head, and other areas of the body. Trigger points are associated with chronic myofascial pain which is another mysterious disease that affects the muscles. Doctors call these trigger points referral pain because the pain radiates out. 

Imagine having a knot in your shoulder and you have myofascial pain in addition to fibro. In such a case, that shoulder knot can radiate pain across your shoulder if someone touched it. That’s not the same type of pain as tender points. 

What’s the Difference: Trigger Points vs Tender Points?

You’ll hear people use the words trigger points and tender points sometimes interchangeably but they’re not the same thing. 

As mentioned above, trigger points occur from chronic myofascial pain and they can cause pain in other parts of the body. Doctors call this “referred pain.”

Tender points are different. Living up to their name, they’re “tender” areas on your body that can hurt even if someone gently touches you in the area but they don’t tend to radiate pain. These 18 tender points include: 

  • Lower neck in front
  • Knee 
  • Back of the neck and shoulders 
  • Hip bone 
  • Base of the skull 
  • Back of the neck 
  • Other areas 

In the past, doctors relied on testing the tender points as a diagnosis for fibromyalgia but now they realize they are unreliable indicators. Fibromyalgia symptoms change from day to day and no two patients have identical symptoms. 

Ways Chiropractic Care Can Help Fibromyalgia 

Chiro care can help fibromyalgia patients because chiropractic care helps your central nervous system. The adjustments reduce localized pain because they realign your spine. If you imagine the 33 spinal bones along with the interspersed discs, tendons, muscles, and nerves that all connect in your spine, you can why chiropractors say, “the spine is your lifeline.” Everything connects there. 

Everyone’s body gets out of alignment through daily habits. Whether it’s repetitive tasks, hours hunched over a computer, or an accident, a muscle or nerve can shift a millimeter and find itself pressing on a ligament or spinal disc. 

Regular chiropractic adjustments “put everything back.” When your body is in correct alignment, blood flows easier and pumps oxygen into every corner of your body. This helps your brain communicate easier with the cells in your body. 

Your chiropractor can handle adjustments in a sensitive way. They’ll talk you through your most painful systems and devise a plan for managing the pain. If you’re suffering from tender points or trigger points from fibromyalgia, Dr. McQuaite is a Doylestown, Pa. chiropractor who can help. 

 

Can a Chiropractor Help Your Fibromyalgia?

Can a Chiropractor Help Your Fibromyalgia?

Studies say fibromyalgia affects between 3-6 million Americans. For reasons the medical community doesn’t know, it primarily affects women. Symptoms include tenderness in at least 11 points throughout your body, decreased mobility and fatigue. It’s a difficult disease to diagnose.
Many people with fibromyalgia have trouble sleeping, experience brain fog, and chronic headaches among other symptoms. In many cases, it can take years to diagnose because the symptoms are similar to other diseases. As difficult as dealing with it can be, there are relief methods. Some people with this disease, and similar pain-related disorders, use marijuana to help ease the symptoms they may be suffering from. This is definitely an avenue to try if you haven’t already, perhaps with these shatter bars, to see if it’s an effective pain relief for you.

Treating fibromyalgia successfully is usually a multi-part effort. Massage, acupuncture and chiropractic care are all effective approaches to this painful disease with or without conventional medicine. These treatments tend to be the most popular choice amongst people suffering from fibromyalgia. Even though they have been known to make a difference, sometimes it doesn’t have a lasting effect on the pain that is being experienced. To help the pain subside, some people may decide to turn their attention towards a form of marijuana called lindsay og that is supposed to help with chronic pain, such as fibromyalgia. It may be in your best interest to try the treatments listed above before deciding to try alternative pain-relief treatments.

How a Chiropractor Helps

Fibromyalgia Chiropractor ReliefBesides the chronic pain, one of the hallmarks of fibromyalgia is stiffness in your back. Fibromyalgia causes your muscles to stiffen and you lose range of movement. As a result, you move less because it hurts or is difficult, then, the muscles get tighter and you are in more pain.

You can break this cycle with chiropractic care.

Chiropractic care will help you increase your range of movement and reduce pain. The reason why is regular chiropractic care adjusts your spine which helps it to stay mobile. Combine this with massage and regular stretching and most fibromyalgia patients feel relief.

Dr. Frederick Wolfe, University of Kansas School of Medicine has studied the effects of chiropractic care and fibromyalgia. His study asked fibromyalgia patients whether drugs or alternative therapies relieved their pain. The findings? Chiropractic care & lifestyle changes were more effective than medications.

Prescriptions have their place and you may feel they’re necessary for your immediate pain management. However, in the long term, medication only treats the symptoms. In other words, you’re not healing, simply treating the pain.

Good chiropractic care could help you heal. Studies show it relieves the painful symptoms of fibromyalgia as well as helps you feel less fatigue and get a higher quality of sleep.

If you’re suffering from the pain of fibromyalgia, discover how McQuaite Chiropractic can help you feel better and embrace your life.