Myofascial Pain Syndrome Support Group
Myofascial Pain Syndrome (or MPS) is a term used to describe one of the conditions characterized by chronic pain. It is associated with and caused by "trigger points" (TrPs), sensitive and painful areas between the muscle and fascia. The symptoms can range from referred pain through myofascial trigger points to specific pains in other areas of the body. It may be related...
I am a Certified Myofascial Trigger Point Therapist and found this group a while ago. I post some advice here and there, but do not always read the posts. I offer the letter I send to people who find our organization (NAMTPT) and are very disappointed to find no well trained therapist in their state, let alone their city. It is very very frustrating indeed!
Myofascial Trigger Point Therapists ARE the experts in the area of myofascial pain. Plain and simple. Of course not all experts in the field are in our organization, some do not even know that we have been in existence for over 25 years, we are indeed looking for those experts.
Anyway, the letter I send has many suggestions for books, self care and other orgs that have therapists that do similar work.
If in the future anyone in charge here would like to repost this, feel free. I would not want anyone to not find treatment or relief just because I am busy and not reading the posts.
If anyone has more to add to my list, please email me directly at cmtpt@mac.com with NAMTPT in the subject so I can add the info to my list.
*****
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I am responding to your request about Trigger Point Therapist in your area. Sadly the training programs are few and far between, this means there are not enough well trained therapists. You will find them listed in the "member directory that can be found athttp://www.myofascialtherapy.org/. You will see a blue box on the left side. Hopefully you may be able to see someone close to you in that listing.
Here are the suggestions that i send people when they have come up with no MTPT in their area.
I have had people drive long distances for treatment. Maybe even consider taking a vacation in the place where there is a therapist that sounds very helpful to you. The advantage to that is that once a professional finds the trigger points and you understand what they feel like and where they are, you can better treat yourself.
If it is a possibility for you, consider traveling to a therapist and getting several treatments. Set up the appointments so that the therapist knows you are going to want to spend a lot of the time on ways that you can treat yourself when you go home. Bring a friend that is willing to learn some simple techniques with you.
There are tools such as my favorite:
The Backnobberhttp://www.pressurepositive.com/ comes with a book and a tool that I can say may have saved my life. I was in a lot of pain 15 years ago, this tool is very very helpful.
You can also email the therapists on the directory list and ask if they know of anyone close to you if they are not close enough. There may be someone that they know that is good, but not in our organization. Another possibility is to send me another note and I will post your request on our professional email group which includes some therapist that are not on the website listing.
You may also find some help by joining the myotherapy yahoo group:
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/grou... On this group there are other folks with myofascial pain and therapists that are doing trigger point work. You can ask questions and request help. This group is not affiliated with the NAMTPT in any way.
You may tryto find a therapist at
http://www.myopainseminars.com/semi...
http://www.bonnieprudden.com/helpli...
http://www.nmtcenter.com/practitioner/
www.painschool.com
www.myopain.com
therapyworksonline.com
http://www.aims-llc.org/index.htm American Institute for Myofascial Studies
Hands-on Seminars
http://homepages.sover.net/~devstar...
fibromyalgia and myofascial pain
There are some doctors that understand trigger points well and are addressing trigger points as a very possible cause of your pain:
http://www.painreliefhome.net/
Our website also lists several training programs and you might try contacting them for a lead.
I can't personally vouch for any practitioners listed in these sites but it is a good start.Ask them about their training. I hope this helps.
Another possibility is to come to the training programs yourself or encourage a friend or loved one to do so. That may sound far-reaching, but that is actually what most of us have done. So many MTPT where having pain themselves (some debilitating) and found it so extremely helpful that we changed our lives and went to school to learn to help ourselves and others! (part of class is working on each other)
You can also look for books by
**Sharon Sauer CMTPT, Mary Biancalana CMTPT (myopain.com) Trigger Point Therapy for Low Back Pain: A Self-treatment Workbook (New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook) (Paperback) ISBN 978-1-57224-563-1The book listed above is the ONLY Harbinger Press Trigger Point book written by Certified Myofascial Trigger Point Therapists!
Donna Finando Trigger Point Self-Care Manual
Valerie Delaune Trigger Point Therapy for Headaches & Migraines: Your Self-Treatment Workbook for Pain Relief (Paperback)
Claire Davies Trigger Point Therapy Workbook and Frozen Shoulder Workbook... big help for self care.
We also have several therapists in the organization writing books, so in the future you will be seeing more and more well written books on the subject.
Self care tools and books http://www.pressurepositive.com/
Posture correcting insoles : http://www.mortonsfoot.com
Please let me know if I can help you further or if you are having problems. cmtpt@zbzoom.net
In Service
Mary Jo
If you find someone that is good and very helpful, please either have them contact me or send me their contact info. We are always looking for other therapists that we can be in contact with.
*****
Myofascial Trigger Point Therapists ARE the experts in the area of myofascial pain. Plain and simple. Of course not all experts in the field are in our organization, some do not even know that we have been in existence for over 25 years, we are indeed looking for those experts.
Anyway, the letter I send has many suggestions for books, self care and other orgs that have therapists that do similar work.
If in the future anyone in charge here would like to repost this, feel free. I would not want anyone to not find treatment or relief just because I am busy and not reading the posts.
If anyone has more to add to my list, please email me directly at cmtpt@mac.com with NAMTPT in the subject so I can add the info to my list.
*****
***********
I am responding to your request about Trigger Point Therapist in your area. Sadly the training programs are few and far between, this means there are not enough well trained therapists. You will find them listed in the "member directory that can be found athttp://www.myofascialtherapy.org/. You will see a blue box on the left side. Hopefully you may be able to see someone close to you in that listing.
Here are the suggestions that i send people when they have come up with no MTPT in their area.
I have had people drive long distances for treatment. Maybe even consider taking a vacation in the place where there is a therapist that sounds very helpful to you. The advantage to that is that once a professional finds the trigger points and you understand what they feel like and where they are, you can better treat yourself.
If it is a possibility for you, consider traveling to a therapist and getting several treatments. Set up the appointments so that the therapist knows you are going to want to spend a lot of the time on ways that you can treat yourself when you go home. Bring a friend that is willing to learn some simple techniques with you.
There are tools such as my favorite:
The Backnobberhttp://www.pressurepositive.com/ comes with a book and a tool that I can say may have saved my life. I was in a lot of pain 15 years ago, this tool is very very helpful.
You can also email the therapists on the directory list and ask if they know of anyone close to you if they are not close enough. There may be someone that they know that is good, but not in our organization. Another possibility is to send me another note and I will post your request on our professional email group which includes some therapist that are not on the website listing.
You may also find some help by joining the myotherapy yahoo group:
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/grou... On this group there are other folks with myofascial pain and therapists that are doing trigger point work. You can ask questions and request help. This group is not affiliated with the NAMTPT in any way.
You may tryto find a therapist at
http://www.myopainseminars.com/semi...
http://www.bonnieprudden.com/helpli...
http://www.nmtcenter.com/practitioner/
www.painschool.com
www.myopain.com
therapyworksonline.com
http://www.aims-llc.org/index.htm American Institute for Myofascial Studies
Hands-on Seminars
http://homepages.sover.net/~devstar...
fibromyalgia and myofascial pain
There are some doctors that understand trigger points well and are addressing trigger points as a very possible cause of your pain:
http://www.painreliefhome.net/
Our website also lists several training programs and you might try contacting them for a lead.
I can't personally vouch for any practitioners listed in these sites but it is a good start.Ask them about their training. I hope this helps.
Another possibility is to come to the training programs yourself or encourage a friend or loved one to do so. That may sound far-reaching, but that is actually what most of us have done. So many MTPT where having pain themselves (some debilitating) and found it so extremely helpful that we changed our lives and went to school to learn to help ourselves and others! (part of class is working on each other)
You can also look for books by
**Sharon Sauer CMTPT, Mary Biancalana CMTPT (myopain.com) Trigger Point Therapy for Low Back Pain: A Self-treatment Workbook (New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook) (Paperback) ISBN 978-1-57224-563-1The book listed above is the ONLY Harbinger Press Trigger Point book written by Certified Myofascial Trigger Point Therapists!
Donna Finando Trigger Point Self-Care Manual
Valerie Delaune Trigger Point Therapy for Headaches & Migraines: Your Self-Treatment Workbook for Pain Relief (Paperback)
Claire Davies Trigger Point Therapy Workbook and Frozen Shoulder Workbook... big help for self care.
We also have several therapists in the organization writing books, so in the future you will be seeing more and more well written books on the subject.
Self care tools and books http://www.pressurepositive.com/
Posture correcting insoles : http://www.mortonsfoot.com
Please let me know if I can help you further or if you are having problems. cmtpt@zbzoom.net
In Service
Mary Jo
If you find someone that is good and very helpful, please either have them contact me or send me their contact info. We are always looking for other therapists that we can be in contact with.
*****
i'm always grateful for new information but think i'm hallucinating as I'm sure i've just read the same post two or three times.
alot of us that have ended up staying in this group have 'atypical' myofascial problems (e.g. myself not being able to withstand trigger point massage - the backnobber is an instrument of torture for me and guareenteed to force a 4-week long flare up no matter how gently i use it) so we've all had to become expert in our own condition(s) - as of course there are usually multiple co-morbidities as well. I call it 'the unpeeling an onion effect'.
apologies if this is too strong a sentence ( i admit to being drugged up to the eyeballs right now). I'm both a midwife and a craniosacral therapist but would never describe myself as an expert in either field because there's still so much to learn. and that's despite the fact that legally in the uk the midwife is the expert in normal pregnancy, birth and labour rather than the doctor. I dunno, maybe it just came accross a little strongly for me. once again, apologies if that sounds harsh, it's not meant to. i respect your clinical experience and welcome comments as they come to you. you must have a wealth of experience that i would find very useful, more so than just the standard patient letter.
with respect,
pumpkin
I think it's an excellent idea to try and bring practitioners of myofascial trigger points under one umbrella and therefore applaud the efforts of the hard work I know will have gone into it.
I am assuming that the term 'certified' is the same as 'registered' in relation to craniosacral therapy. it provides some assurance to the public but not as much as a legal (statutory) title such as doctor, midwife, nurse, allied health professional, etc.
As I said before, rather than the generic patient letter I would be interested in details, but that's just me. I like to ask 'why'.
Pumpkin
LOL (line in "Gone with the Wind)
If you don't remember or didn't see it nevermind. I am in a pain induced silly mood.
I am not an expert, but WE are the experts. Janet Travell suggested the name of the NAMTPT, she and David Simons came to our conventions, the other Doctors work with us and we take their courses. There is a national exam which many of us have taken and are Certified. It is a national certification and we invite anyone to take it.... even after graduating, it is not easy, many do not pass.
It is far more than being "registered". People concider Clair Davies an expert because he wrote a good book, bet he would not have been able to pass the exam, he got too many things wrong.
Of course, you are an expert at your condition, every condition is different. If the proper use of a backnobber would flare you up for 4 weeks, you have some major issues that are not trigger points. Many people do TrP massage and are frightening. They have no idea what they are doing. They do what they were taught in massage school, THAT is NOT proper training. If a person insists on pressing too hard, they are doing it wrong!
There are always going to be people that I cant help, conditions that dont respond, but many many pain issues and conditions have all or a good portion of the pain coming from trigger points and most of it is mis-diagnosed!
People have teeth filed down year after year (to adjust their bite) when treating the trigger points could have solved their TMJ, people are treated for years had surgery is done when their pelvic pain was caused by trigger points, nerves are moved and never fix the pain, when trigger points caused the tightness of the muscle that was impinging the nerve to begin with.
Every day I learn more, I am far from the top of the class, but if you can deliver a baby and save the life of a mother and child, I will call you an expert. Of course, you are not going to be the expert all the time and the surgical team might be the experts that are needed. We should all know our limits.If someone does not respond as expected, I refer back to the doc or to another.
Sometimes improper treatment, medications, surgeries etc can make things much worse, it is most always better to start with the least invasive treatment. Trigger point therapy seldom makes someone worse. It might make them sore for a day or 2, because neither I nor they can tell that I am using too much pressure. It feels good at the time, but they are so toxic that they get really sore or simply feel like C%&P the next day. I can usually tell how to touch them right away, but sometimes they think the pressure is fine, only to find the next day that it was too much. Most all the time the next session is much better (unless they wait too long as we are staring from scratch again)
I didnt mean to come on so strong as to offend you, I am sorry. no offense meant or taken. If I had the all inclusive answer, I would be so rich, I would simply have a clinic taking up 10 city blocks and have folks waiting for months to get in... no treatment, modality or drug is the answer to all pain.
Perhaps the reason they call it "atypical" is because there are so many perpetuating factors in your case that it has moved far beyond myofascial pain or the docs are still not truly finding the real CAUSE, or only part of the problem is myofascial. Just as everyone that the docs could not figure out what was wrong in the 90s got the Dx of Fibro, now it is myofascial pain.
I am not sure what you mean. I dont type very fast and to type enough to be the answer to all questions is difficult. There is lots of info out there, that is why I posted my letter I use to respond when someone contacts me from the NAMTPT website. It give a person many answers to many questions. THEN if they have specific questions, they can ask. Often I will request that they call as it is much easier and faster. I could type for 30 minutes to answer a questions and find that I went off in the wrong direction.
The other point is that if I give someone all that info and they cant be bothered to do the research, it would be a huge waste of my time to work to guess the questions they have, because they are not going to act on them anyway.
I only get the satisfaction of helping someone on the path to wellness (something that I was grateful to finally have after years and years of pain and migraines.
Like everyone is saying, it's all a personal experience. I have never in my life had any good results in the clinical world. It is too dependent on the cookie cutter approach. I'm not a cookie cutter shape, somebody used a stick to cut me out! What a mess!
you're damn right that people frequently go down the wrong treatment road and end up in a much worse state. I think the fact that there is someone 'out there' trying to inform is brilliant. For me the most important thing is raising the profile of both mps and chronic pain in the medical community, and it's coming, there's alot of good work going on out there and I will support it every step of the way.
I think when we post we're not always looking for crystal clear answers. That's why I call most us 'atypical' as the 'standard' treatment approach doesn't work for us.
I certainly find posting / prattling on just as useful as asking questions. This is a great group and the strength comes from the collective not the individual, so for me I welcome you and your knowledge into the collective rather than rely on you to provide answers to every post (gosh you'd be exhausted if you did that). I think that's what I meant by being more interested in you rather than the generic letter.
I know I prattle on alot, but sometimes a short response works just as good. sometimes a 'we know what your going through' and a hug is better than any words of advice.
I haven't taken any offence, hope you haven't either. I quite like having a respectful professional debate, particularly when we both want the same thing but probably in slightly different ways.