13/02/2024
Muscle Pain: It May Actually Be Your Fascia
You might attribute a painful neck or a backache to tired muscles or stiff joints. But these symptoms can also be caused by a part of your body you probably haven’t heard of: the fascia. Until recently, this network of tissue throughout the body received very little attention despite its major role in every move you make.
What is fascia?
Fascia is a thin casing of connective tissue that surrounds and holds every organ, blood vessel, bone, nerve fiber and muscle in place. The tissue does more than provide internal structure; fascia has nerves that make it almost as sensitive as skin. When stressed, it tightens up.
Although fascia looks like one sheet of tissue, it’s actually made up of multiple layers with liquid in between called hyaluronan. It’s designed to stretch as you move. But there are certain things that cause fascia to thicken and become sticky. When it dries up and tightens around muscles, it can limit mobility and cause painful knots to develop.
Ways to Relieve Fascia Pain
There are various strategies that work to loosen up painful knots, such as:
Heat therapy: Apply a heating pad to the affected area or take a warm shower or bath.
Yoga therapy: See a highly trained yoga therapist to get a regimen of yoga poses targeted to treat your area of pain. (Yoga therapy works in the same manner as physical therapy — the therapist creates a routine and you practice it at home between visits.)
Foam rolling: Try a foam roller, a cylinder of hard foam that you roll your body over to release tension. It’s a form of self-massage. You can also do this with a lacrosse ball.
Massage therapy: Schedule multiple therapeutic massage sessions with an experienced therapist who can find and apply pressure to release knots.
Acupuncture: The insertion of acupuncture needles into trigger points can cause tense tissue fibers to relax.
Treating fascia pain often requires using more than one therapy. A patient’s treatment plan may include a combination of things such as heat therapy, an anti-inflammatory diet, yoga therapy and massage therapy.
