Category Archives: diagnosis

A trigger point is almost mistaken for a tumor

By Paul Ingraham | Published: June 25, 2010
Trigger points (muscle knots) can causes surprisingly severe symptoms. A physician sent me her own interesting story: I narrowly escaped a breast biopsy because of trigger points in the pectoralis major. I’d had bad chest pain for a month. I was on the table, permit signed, draped. The doctor wasn’t sure: she said she wanted another [...]
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New article: The Trigger Point Symptom Checker

By Paul Ingraham | Published: May 27, 2010
I interviewed creator Jeff Lutz about The Trigger Point Products Symptom Checker, a unique online reference tool to help both patients and professionals visually identify the “muscle knots” that may be causing pain, stiffness and other symptoms, and appropriate massage tools to assist in self-treatment. Read the interview. Visit The Trigger Point Symptom Checker.
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What are the worst case scenarios for myofascial pain syndrome?

By Paul Ingraham | Published: January 12, 2010
This post is an excerpt from my book-length tutorial about trigger points (muscle knots). I heavily revised these sections over the last couple months, inspired by comments made by Dr. Mark Crislip at the Science-Based Medicine conference last July, and by a growing awareness of the importance of pain system dysfunction — the idea that, [...]
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“Someone is going to have to explain these patients to me someday.”

By Paul Ingraham | Published: December 15, 2009
After years of exposure to an entire world full of patients reading this website, many of whom call and write to tell me their stories, it is obvious that the worst cases of muscle pain are very severe indeed. In a few unlucky patients, trigger points (muscle knots) seem to have taken over the whole [...]
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Do subscapularis trigger points (muscle knots) cause frozen shoulder?

By Paul Ingraham | Published: December 8, 2009
Drs. Janet Travell and David Simons are famous for the “big red books,” their seminal muscle pain text in two volumes. Those texts suggest that the subscapularis muscle of the shoulder may be a major factor in frozen shoulder (adhesive capsulitis). It is the only detailed case for such a relationship that I know of. [...]
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Problems and limitations of trigger point therapy, and how to take advantage of them

By Paul Ingraham | Published: December 1, 2009
A few days ago, I reported on the evidence that trigger point (muscle knot) diagnosis is unreliable, and that it’s difficult to treat what you can’t find. That led me to some surprisingly fresh ideas about why SaveYourself.ca exists. I’ve been writing a few thousand words per week on this subject matter for a decade, [...]
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Trigger point (muscle knot) diagnosis is a tricky business

By Paul Ingraham | Published: November 25, 2009
I reported on this study back in August: a 2009 survey of the accuracy of muscle knot diagnosis for the Clinical Journal of Pain. I’m highlighting it again because I think this is one of the most important nuggets of science I’ve come across this year — it’s going to make my top ten list [...]
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