Muscle pain has been present for many years but is not often recognised as the cause of pain. Once identified, it can be treated.
There are many causes of muscle pain some of which are listed below:
- Soft tissue injury and inflammation
- Shortened muscles which are tight and restricting joint movement
- Trigger points within the muscles. Trigger points are a hyperirritable area within a tight band of contracted muscle tissue. Pain from trigger points may be referred to other areas or localised at their site of origin
- Stress and Tension. This is a big precursor of muscle and joint pain in which hypertonic muscles (contracted muscle tissue), causing pain. Trigger points can established themselves and manifest within these tight muscles causing further pain, and system dysfunction
- Tissue injury which has been injured and has not been properly assessed or treated and remains in a sub clinical state restricting function and prone to re-injury.
- Previous musculoskeletal injuries which have not received any treatment and have become chronic