HEMME APPROACH TO SOFT-TISSUE THERAPY

4
PAIN CYCLES
Seven reasons why pain cycles are difficult to treat:
1. The mechanisms that cause pain cycles are difficult to locate.
2. Pain cycles are both chronic and acute at the same time.
3. Muscular imbalance perpetuates pain cycles.
4. Reflexogenic activity perpetuates pain cycles.
5. Setbacks and reversals are common when treating pain cycles.
6. The methods for treating soft-tissue injuries are often deficient.
7. More research is needed to validate methods of therapy.
The mechanisms that cause pain cycles are difficult to locate.
(A) The areas where patients feel pain are rarely the origins of pain. Pain
felt in the shoulder, elbow, or hand is often referred to these areas by injuries
to the neck. Treating the pain without treating the causes of pain produces
little more than symptomatic relief. The key to effective therapy is treating the
sources of pain first and the symptoms last.
(B) It is possible to have multiple sources of pain. A patient can
experience local pain and referred pain in the same body part at the same time.
Not only can untreated sources act synergistically to intensify pain, but they
can also reactivate sources that became quiescent after treatment. If all sources
of pain are not neutralized concurrently, the pain is likely to continue.
(C) The areas where patients feel pain can migrate during the course of
therapy. As muscles in one area become more functional, antagonistic or
synergistic muscles may experience unaccustomed loading, stretching, or
compression that causes pain. As hypersensitive areas become less sensitive
to pain because of therapy, areas of lower sensitivity become more apparent.
It is also possible for areas of high sensitivity to be obscured by
widespread pain. If the tissue damage that triggered a pain cycle is confined to
a single area, the last tissues to normalize are frequently those that suffered the
initial insult and propagated the widespread pain.
HEMME Approach to Soft-Tissue Therapy