​How to add IASTM into self management for pain

Pain 

Many of us have pain and try to get it treated somehow or rather. We seek Physiotherapists and then they get you to move in a specific detailed manner, gives you home work to do and you go off doing it for a week or so then recover and you decide not to do it anymore. Some of you find a personal trainer to get back into shape as there is pain caused from the lower back due to the weight that you are carrying from being overweight and sedentary. Some might even go to the Chiropractors to get treatment which is going to help them rid of pain by adjusting you into alignment, go for a few session, get better and then go missing, only to come back again after few months for the same pain that you felt when you first sought out these experts to treat your pain. While some of us may take a DIY approach to our management of pain, we all have pain and we deal with it differently let alone react to the treatment. Sounds awfully familiar doesn't it. Nothing is wrong with any of the choices you make however what you do after may be putting yourself in high risk of re-injuring yourself. I pray that you will stay with me after this sentence, you healed poorly. I know, i used the word, healed(past tense), but the process of healing take one missing link, just a small one, ok maybe two. Still with me i see, good. I will give an example here. 


Case study example
Its the weekend off from the office! You’re playing soccer and you fall down forward and to break the fall you put your hands out and land on your wrist. Sure you get up and play again and nothing happens after 30-40 minutes after the game stops. Its feels sore but eventually you just shrug it off and let it recover like the good old times. The fews week later you start having pain in your shoulders, you see the GP and eventually he gives you anti-inflammatory medication and said to come back if it doesn’t heal. Sure enough it healed and the quality of life returned to normal. You start kiting weights regularly and then few months later, you have a shoulder pain! AGAIN! Your quality of life plummeted downhill as you can’t even lift your arms to put on a tee shirt. This is the best part yet, you think the gym sessions might have contributed to the shoulder pain and you see a Physiotherapist, Chiropractor, Osteopath or whoever and they all take the case the same way. They mobilize and massage your shoulder, asks of you to do some exercises and see them few times a week. Three weeks passes by with combined effort from therapist and yourself. You're waaay better, quality of life seems to be right on track, not exactly the best in range of motion but at least without pain. You go to the gym and try to stretch it out and get some rehab work done after doing some heavy research on google about stretching and increasing range of motion for shoulders. You seem to be on track and somehow in the week to start feeling a tingling sensation in your shoulder blades. That tingling or small pulses of localised sensation is what we call a trigger point. 

Read More