Are Muscle Adhesions Keeping You In Pain?

The body is a complex mechanism to figure out when you're in pain and don't know why. Muscles can get tense, bruises can form, and nerves can become inflamed. However, it's possible to troubleshoot all these possibilities and still have regular pain in your body. If this sounds like something you're going through, it's possible that you may have muscular adhesions that are causing your discomfort.

What Adhesions Are

Adhesions, in their basic essence, are thick tissue that forms in the fascia that holds the inside of the body together. This thick tissue forms when the body has undergone an injury, trauma, or there's been a problem in the surrounding area, like an inflamed nerve.

This thick tissue is designed to help protect your body from further damage, but it can unfortunately cause pain.

How They Cause Problems

Adhesions got their name because of the way they act—they adhere themselves to surrounding tissue. In normal, healthy bodies, the fascia and the muscles rub smoothly against each other, practically gliding over each other's surfaces. However, if the fascia develops adhesions of scar tissue, it becomes rough and uneven. With this texture, it can't easily slide over the muscle tissue anymore. As a result, trying to extend your muscles to bend, reach, or do anything can be painful, and it can limit your mobility.

Although it's uncommon to be able to feel adhesions yourself, a skilled doctor can determine if you have scar tissue adhesions.

What To Do About It

If you think you might have scar tissue adhesions or are simply in a great deal of pain and don't know why, you should visit a massage therapist. Massage therapists recognize the need for the whole body to be treated in order for the spine to reach its best alignment. As a result, many massage therapists perform a therapy called Active Release Technique (ART) that's specifically designed to break up scar tissue.

Your massage therapist will run some scans or x-rays to determine if you have any underlying problems. From there, a physical exam will help them to determine if you have adhesions. If any are found, they will use ART to help pull those adhesions away from the muscle and to allow the body to heal the fascia naturally once the scar tissue is broken up.

Adhesions can be extremely painful, even if you don't know that you have them. If you've been trying to get relief for your pain and haven't gotten good results, contact a massage therapist clinic, such as Haring Marc DC, and ask about Active Release Technique to find out if it can help you.


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