Intercostal muscle pain

Just wondering if anyone else gets this and how they treat it. Every time my asthma is bad, I get terrible pains between my ribs. It is particularly bad when I have an acute attack.

My GP gave me strong painkillers but I didn't want to just take painkillers all the time.

Anyway, I went to see a remedial / sports massage therapist last week for therapetic massage. It was fab. She took my medical history and worked for an hour on all of the muscles associated with breathing and, funnily enough, all of those muscles were agony.

It felt so much better afterwards though and can't wait to go back. I am not usually that enthusiastic about complimentary therapies but would certainly recommend this.

Perhaps I should become a kept woman and have my own personal masseuse, and swimming pool, and mansion with wine cellar and ......................getting a bit carried away now!

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Hi there,

I had (as I've mentioned before, so sorry about being repeitive) quite a bad bout of Pleurisy about 18 months ago now, and I still get pain from it fairly often as some of my lung tissue has scarred and sometimes it hurt when i breathe in, although my lungs/chest are free from infection, especially in cold weather and like you, when i have acute attacks its agony.

I find that ibuprofen gel helps me, and not much is abosorbed into the blood and so its not like taking painkillers in that respect, although some people may have problems with allergies and ibuprofen gel.

I find that heat helps, and resting when i bad helps too, although I'm not good at this one. I'm too determined to not let me Asthma and related issues get in the way sometimes and end up over-doing it, but I'm slowly coming to accept when o cant do things and decide to sit out of certain things.

Only other thing I can suggest is sleeping tilted up a bit, as I'm more comfortabe that way and generally sleep better, which makes me feel better all round.

Take care, hope you find something that works!

Claire x