Muscle fatigue: the cause doctors usually overlook- and what you can do about it

How common are trigger points

Studies show that is you have some sort of pain syndrome such as back, neck or shoulder pain you will almost certainly have many trigger points. However, studies also show that trigger points are extremely common in people without pain.

Supporting studies

Trigger points are certainly a huge cause of muscle fatigue because:

• they are shown to be very common (even in people without pain), and
• they are shown to cause muscles to quickly lose strength, fatigue and become painful.

This is confirmed by these further studies.

Study one: trigger points reducing endurance (1)

This study investigated the rate of fatigue in shoulder muscles of otherwise healthy pain free adults. They found that when trigger points were present the endurance of the muscles was reduced.

Doctors don't find trigger points

The problem

Information about trigger points is typically excluded from medical journals, so doctors are not informed and do not diagnose them. This problem is made worse because as well as fatigue trigger points are a major cause of conditions such as fibromyalgia, low back pain, shoulder pain, Tennis elbow, headaches and many others. Because doctors don't understand and diagnose these the cause of many problems is not found and inappropriate treatments are given. The inappropriate treatments are usually drugs. Drug companies heavily influence all the information doctors receive.

How to treat your trigger points

We have a guide to the best trigger point therapies which includes professional alternatives. We've also got a very comprehensive guide How to treat trigger points at home. This gives treatment alternatives for those who have and haven't got the proper equipment. Please check this out for hints, precautions and good management strategies. What we'll do here is show you the basics of the best trigger point therapy, which happens to be something you can do yourself.

The easiest and best way to treat your trigger points

1. Get some guidance
2. The effective therapy you can do at home
3. Keep repeating until all the trigger points are gone

Professional guidance

Trigger points are often part of more complex musculoskeletal problems so there may be other issues that need to be dealt with. Also, there may be things that cause or perpetuate your trigger points that need to be identified and taken care of. Therefore, to stay safe and get the best results please get some advice from a professional who deals with these issues.

An effective therapy you can do at home

You'll see in the next section that trigger points can be very tough and stubborn to get rid of. Because of that you will need a therapy that is:

1. very effective
2. you can do yourself (or the large number of treatments will be very expensive).

By far your best option is to use a vibration massager such as one of our General Purpose Massagers or Ultimate Quad Head Massagers

Keep repeating until all the trigger points are gone

Although trigger point therapies often give relief this usually just stops them hurting. As soon as they are aggravated again the pain comes back. This is true whether it's a home treatment you got off Youtube or a series of treatments such as needles or laser. The only way to get rid of trigger points is to keep applying the therapy for long after the pain goes.

References

1. Hagberg, M. and Kvarnstrom, S. (1984) ‘Muscular endurance and electromyographic fatigue in myofascial shoulder pain’, Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, pp. 522–525.
2. Celik, D. and Yeldan, P. (2011) ‘The relationship between latent trigger point and muscle strength in healthy subjects: A double-blind study’, Journal of Back and Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation, 24(4), pp. 251–256.
3. Ge HY1, Arendt-Nielsen L, Madeleine P. Accelerated muscle fatigability of latent myofascial trigger points in humans. Pain Med. 2012 Jul;13(7):957-64
4. Zuil-Escobar, J. C. et al. (2018) ‘Muscles Recruitment Pattern in People with and Without Active Upper Trapezius Myofascial Trigger Points in the Standing Posture’, Journal of Physical Therapy Science. Elsevier Ltd, 13(1), pp. 1–9.
5. Wan, J. J. et al. (2017) ‘Muscle fatigue: General understanding and treatment’, Experimental and Molecular Medicine. Nature Publishing Group, 49(10), pp. e384-11.
6. Bron, C., de Gast, A., Dommerholt, J. et al. Treatment of myofascial trigger points in patients with chronic shoulder pain: a randomized, controlled trial. BMC Med 9, 8 (2011