Worse before better?

[Calceolaria]

Did someone on here say pain worsensvbefore there is an improvement with sports massage therapy? For how long, approx?

[Hidden]

I had a deep tissue massage and felt like I'd be hit by a bus for about 2 days and then I woke up feeling like a new woman.

How long since your massage?

[Calceolaria in reply to Hidden]

Tuesday evening, so that would fit! Here's looking forward to tomorrow then. Thanks.

[earthwitch]

I guess it depends on the cause of the pain. I know if I had that deep tissue sports massage it would wreck me for weeks, but that is because my pain is coming from inflammatory spondyloarthritis and enthesitis.

[Calceolaria]

My pain is arthritis, widespread through the lumbar spine and neck, with accompanying muscle tension and tenderness in the shoulders, trapezius, psoas and everywhere nearby. I don't have the inflammatory markers, for what its worth. I've tried lots of things to try and make it bearable and some days are OK, though its hard to remember them when having bad days/weeks/months. Thanks for response. Keep well.

[Hidden in reply to Calceolaria]

I agree with earthwitch. I have rheumatoid and I have learned what is acceptable pain i.e. Muscle pain after exercise and bad pain which - for me - is directly in the joints, swelling etc.

Does this pain feel bearable?

[Hidden]

Hi Calceolaria,

Yes, unfortunately that is the nature of muscles.

It has to do with your body blueprint. On a cellular level each cell knows it's job and does it's job well. That is it's blueprint. When we have an injury, our body responds by immobilising the area. Muscles tension. In normal body behaviour this last a few hours to a few days, then things are back to normal. In chronic pain, because the tension/immobility thing is prolonged, the brain and the cells recognise this as a new blueprint.

Muscle manipulation is a way to break this pattern and return the body to nortmal status. Muscles work in pairs so for every tense muscle there is a weak muscle. So on a cellular level, your muscle cell is happy with it's new tense status because it thinks that is the blueprint fot it's job. Along comes a sports physio, who manipulates it, the muscle cell doesn't like it because it thinks it's being asked to do something different to it's proper job.

On the other side, the weak muscles are being asked to do some work, which again they don't like because they were happy letting the opposite muscle do all the work.

It's a huge change your body is going through to re educate it to loose tension and use muscles in balance. Every time the muscle is moved from what the cells think is the normal state, it reacts because it thinks it is abnormal. The muscle is treating the new relaxed state as an injury.

Unfortunately everybody is different. I've bern having manipulations and treatments for 14 years and still get a reaction the next day. It lasts a few hours and It feels like the area is bruised. But the early ones were 2 - 3 times worse than the actual pain. It took a few months to settle down to a short time.

But each time when the reaction settles you should be feeling looser, more mobility with the muscle, less pain generally. The chirto told me it would take the same length of time as I had the chronic pain for things to settle to normal. In that time, my pain levels have dropped to 20%, which is as pain free as I'll get due to skeletal abnortmalities. Without those, I would have been pain free a while back.

I do remember in the early days feeling like I was getting nowhere, that things were a lot worse for a while. Some nerves were damaged and were reawakened by being freed from the muscle tension. That caused me a couple of months of urinary incontinence, certainly was a low point. But in time and with more treatment, it sorted itself out.

The treatment was explained to me like peeling an onion - working on things that caused compensation pain, then nerves, peeling away all the layers that have built up, till all you are left with is the original injury. Then when that is worked on, your pain will be gone.

Another therapist explained it like this. Get a ballon and stick a piece of sellotape on it. Blow it up. The balloon becomes mis shaped because the sellotape stops it from stretching. This is your tight muscle. The rest of the ballon is stretched too much, this is all the other muscles in your body - compensation. Treatments are the removal of the sellotape. It has to be done slowly so the ballon does not burst and the other muscles have a chance to return to normal. The more the sellotape is removed, the more normal the balloon appears. If it's removed from the top, bottom, sides, then the balloon will be mis shaped in differernt ways. This is the reaction, the transition between unnatural and natural muscle use.

Keep at it, one day you will wake up feeling so much better, anything that re educates your body to behave normally has to be a good thing. Along the way you will learn to read your pain, you'll get to know your limitations and what sets it off, and what keeps it away.

[Calceolaria]

I'm hoping for something like that. Thanks Zanna.