Atlas Pain Relief Centre

Muscular Pain, Weakness and Muscle Spasm Tamworth or Lichfield?

Muscle damage is often referred to as a “pulled muscle, muscle twinge or muscle strain”

Muscular pain is generally not serious but can be very uncomfortable and painful.  Generally an injured muscle will be more painful if exercised but will require a certain amount of movement to enable it to repair effectively.

Muscular Weakness is generally related to motor nerve compression or damage. Wasting and weakness may follow if the motor nerve is compromised and loss of movement from the affected joint could be the end result.

Tamworth Physiotherapists and Tamworth Osteopaths at Atlas Pain Relief Centre in Tamworth Staffordshire are experienced in soft tissue injuries and sports injuries. Customers from Tamworth, Lichfield, Atherstone, Polesworth, Kingsbury, Swadlincote, Brownhills, Sutton Coldfield and Birmingham are regular visitors for muscular injury treatment and massage  Atlas acupuncturists can use acupuncture to treat muscular pain.

Muscle spasms can occur, especially in the lumbar region, as a form of guarding action.  This mechanism is designed to protect you from using the body part concerned if it is injured.  Back pain and in particular low back pain can stimulate a muscular spasm which will pull your spine out of shape and this normally will be enough to encourage you to get help.

Trigger points in muscles are another painful condition which can result in direct pain or referred pain elsewhere.  Tamworth Osteopaths can help release these painful areas within the muscles which can give acute pain.  Deep tissue sports massage is often employed as a treatment for this condition

The standard medical response to muscular injuries is still mostly pain killers, anti-inflammatory drugs, and rest. The medication does little more than numb the pain and suppress the inflammation. The symptoms are effectively reduced, but these are the symptoms of the injury—not the injury itself.

Drugs can actually slow the healing process, and too much rest can be counterproductive as well, since muscle tissue needs a certain amount of movement as it heals, and will begin to atrophy (shrink) if not used.

For your muscles to function properly, all of their fibres need to be aligned in the same direction.

When you have a muscle that has been injured however, the initial repair process creates a “patch” of random scar tissue fibres over the injury site.  Like a weak link in a chain, the random alignment of these new fibres becomes a “weak link” in your muscle and can tether to the adjacent uninjured muscle fibres leaving it highly susceptible to re-injury.

For an injured muscle to regain maximum strength and flexibility, the scar tissue needs to become aligned and integrated with the muscle fibres. Oddly, our bodies do not have an efficient internal mechanism for accomplishing this. It’s somewhat haphazard, gradually improving over time but often not resolving completely, which can become quite a problem.

The problem is that the nervous system essentially “over reacts” to even microscopic areas of scar tissue, by keeping the muscle in a shortened, inflamed, and usually painful state. The inflammation process is the first stage of healing and by keeping the muscle short, the nervous system is trying to protect it from further harm, these reactions however, can continue well past the point of being productive—in fact they can continue indefinitely.

Even a small muscular injury can lead to a chronic pain pattern which persists for months or even years, because the nervous “system stays on alert,” waiting for the scar tissue to heal completely and become aligned with the surrounding muscle tissue.