Get things moving again
We all damage our bodies from time to time. Whether you’ve tripped while walking from the kitchen to the lounge and twisted something or overdone the jogging and developed a painful part, it’s easy to over-stretch, strain or tear your soft tissue.
The problem is that life goes on and, unless the injury is bad enough to require a visit to the doctor, we just tend to get on with it. Not only does it take time for soft tissues to heal, but the damage is compounded as your body tries to reduce the pain – usually by reducing the movement in the damaged part.
Your body is a highly sophisticated ‘machine’, all the parts are designed to move smoothly together, so when one part is damaged, everything around it is affected. That’s why we limp when we’ve strained an ankle or avoid gripping when there’s a wrist, arm or shoulder strain. Although I do know of a little girl who would limp even with a cut on her finger – but she was only four!
Instead of your soft tissues moving freely, the fascia – the membrane that wraps around all your organs, muscles and ligaments – gets stuck. This prevents movement and results in more pain.
Random aches and pains
Sometimes you end up with a pain that you can’t attribute to an injury or particular event. You’ve probably woken up occasionally with a stiff neck from sleeping in a position that’s caused soft tissues to get stuck. If you sit with your smartphone in one hand for an extended period you can find the muscles in your upper arm and shoulder ‘complain’ and, these days, we all know about the fallout from sitting hunched over a keyboard for hours.
Effectively this is the same as favouring an injured area – but without the injury! You’re in one position, perhaps with tensed muscles, and the result is pain.
If any of this sounds familiar, then you’ll know that these aches and pains sometimes go away on their own, but unless you change your habits, more often they’ll just get worse.
Release, relieve and restore
Typically people resort to heat creams, anti-inflammatory tablets and massage to relieve aches and pains, but all these are doing is dealing with the symptoms.
A more effective way to treat these kinds of injury is myo-fascial release (MFR), which works on releasing the soft tissues which have got stuck and restores a wider range of movement. It’s fine to use the anti-inflammatory treatments to help the tissues heal, but they won’t heal as quickly if everything is stuck.
If you are prone to aches and pains in particular areas then learning a series of moving stretches can also help to keep things moving.