Muscles cause pain from your head to your toes!

It's really true, muscles cause pain from your head to your toes! 18 years of working with people at the Julstro Muscular Therapy Center, at sporting events and on athletic forums, and at workshops around the USA, has proven it over and over. The good news is, once we locate the source of the pain (a spasm in the muscle) we can quickly figure out how to self-treat it. And it works the vast majority of times, preventing further complications and eliminating pain.

The messages on this blog will discuss common problems that I see every day, and explain why muscles are causing conditions such as shinsplints, bursitis, tendonitis, sciatica, Achilles tendonitis, hip pain, etc., etc.

It helps if you have a general knowledge of how muscles work. If you read "Know Your Body and Become Pain Free - How Your Body Moves" you'll understand why muscles are the cause of a vast majority of aches and pains.

Let's start today with defining a word that is thrown about as a diagnosis, but is actually just a definition. The term is "tendonitis" and it means an inflammation at the point where a muscle merges into the tendon , or where a tendon inserts into a bone.

While it's true that you may have an inflammation, it's not saying "why" you have an inflammation. As muscles get tighter and tighter, for example from exercising or doing a repetitive motion at work, a strain is placed on the tendon. As the muscle continues to pull, the tendon is being strained at the insertion point, and an inflammation forms. However, taking medication for the inflammation isn't going to work until the strain is removed from the tendon.

I always explain this by showing how pulling on your hair will cause a headache, but you don't need to take aspirin, you just need to let go of your hair. It's the same with muscles pulling on the tendon at the bone. You don't need medications, you just need to take the strain off the tendon. That's what this blog is all about, explaining where the muscle is tying into knots and placing a strain on either the tendon, or pressing down on a nerve.