Business Innovators Radio - Trigger Points OH MY

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

Trigger Warning: Trigger Points are painful! A Trigger Point is a hypersensitive spot in skeletal muscles that can cause pain and other reactions when stimulated. These spots can be relatively small, but the pain punch that they pack can knock you for a loop. The good news is that if a trigger point is causing you trouble, there are plenty of ways to find relief. In this episode, Dr. Dan, Dr. Riley and Angela discuss trigger points – what they are, how they form over time, and what you can do about them – either on your own or under the care of a health professional. Don’t let trigger points wear you down. Find them, fight them, and feel better!To learn more about this and other hot health topics, follow us on social media and subscribe to our WTH podcast. If you have a specific health question or would like to find out if we can help you with a personal health challenge, check out our office page or contact us at 412-369-0400/ [e-mail]. As always, our mission is to help you Get Healthy and Stay Healthy for a Lifetime!What the Health?!https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/what-the-health/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/trigger-points-oh-my

Welcome to What the Health, where anything health is fair game as we tackle the trends and bust the myths about health and wellness. Here are your hosts, Dr. Dan and Angela Toro. And welcome back to another episode of What the Health. I am Dr. Dan here with my co-host. Angela. And Dr. Riley. Welcome back, everyone. So Angela will give the...

You guys know the drill at this point, but we're here for informational purposes only and no way offering individualized medical advice. Always talk to your trusted healthcare provider before making changes to your routine. Although I feel like what we're talking about today, we would be the trusted health care providers. Yeah, so good. Well, hold on. Dr. Dan has his, you're just writing over to turn the phone off because, of course. We're good, yes, because we have this very high-tech level recording center. As we're puddled in our back office. Look, one day we'll have a space as nice as Joe Rogan, but it is not this day. We put our money into what helps you guys, not the podcast recording equipment.

Yep, one day, maybe. But anyway, you had your funky title for today's podcast. Oh, yeah. So today we are talking about trigger points, IT bands, TFLs, oh my. I was going to say TP, IT, TFL, oh my. But basically, we're going to talk about trigger points today. Big buzzword. So, yeah, big buzzword in the healthcare field.

So why don't we start with the simple definition. We'll talk about the definition of what the heck it actually is. How does it impact your health and well-being and what the heck can you do about it? So this is kind of like the three overarching things that we want to talk about. So does one of you want to start with what the heck a trigger point actually is? Because we can all find them very well based on what we do. Yeah. Honestly, it's funny because we were looking up and there doesn't seem to be one concise,

but essentially it's a hyper irritable spot in a top band of skeletal muscle that can cause pain and other reactions when stimulated. So it's essentially a sensitive area of the body. So it's a lot of, you know, you figure if there's, you know, within that skeletal muscle, it's going to be if it's a, if it's a tight area in general. So we'll talk about kind of the different areas. But you'll notice a common theme is they're all in kind of smaller, areas where maybe different joints come together. So there's a lot of connections coming together and a lot of chances for something to get kind of get pulled on or aggravated. Well, and I think if we kind of go to like, you know, baseline, a very, very basic, you know, anatomy physiology. And, you know, the way that muscles work,

skeletal muscle is voluntary muscle, meaning that I can think a thought in my head. and I can say, hey, I want to bend my arm. And by processing the thought in my head, there's nerve messages called your motor messages that are sent down. And those are some of the fastest nerve impulses in the body. I think it's over like 200 miles an hour or something. I'm going to go back to it. Yeah, I'm going to go back to it. Yeah.

But, yeah, see, it's like we learn all this information, but like the nitty-gritty details don't always stay up there. But yeah, so, you know, those nerve messages go down to the muscle. And I think, hey, I want to bend my arm and bring my hand up towards my face, like the action of, you know, making a bicep, strong bicep position. And those nerve messages then go down to the muscle. There's little neurochemical communications that happen then at the muscle where calcium is released. and then the proteins that the long strands of and bands the long strings that make up a muscle fiber then start to contract and they pull that muscle and contract that muscle so it shortens the joint and then it moves the bone it moves the moves the joints so that's essentially the easy way to think of it but I just talked about the motor neuron so those are the messages going from the brain out to the muscle But then there are also sensory nerves, okay? And those are the nerves going from the body back to the brain,

and that's how the brain picks up all its information about the rest of the body. And there's different types of sensory nerves, really based on the receptors. And so there's temperature receptors, you know, you touch something hot or cold, your body can recognize. is that hot, is that cold? There are pressure. There's chemical receptors, so the body can pick up different information about chemicals going on

in the bloodstream and the surrounding cells. And then there's pressure receptors. So like if I press down on your knee end, you know, just with my finger, you can feel the pressure of my finger, okay? And then there's light touch too. So if I just, yeah, I know, right? So if I just rub my finger like a feather along the surface,

there's light touch. light touch and pressure receptors are different. So, you know, and I think there's a couple, you know, again, going back to the definition, because it's not really settled what a trigger point truly is. I think it's a multi-factor complex, right? Because, you know, when you work a muscle, okay, the idea is you're actually breaking, you're actually tearing a little bit, you're creating these micro-tears in the muscle fibers. And when you start to like break those muscle fibers down, then, you're actually tearing a little bit, you're creating these micro-tears in the muscle fibers down, then, they are actually, they start being built back up in a more dense manner. So not, again, there's a different way, you know, you talk about tone of a muscle versus bulk of a muscle. And there's different ways bodybuilders, you know, gymnasts, men versus women, you know, can bulk versus tone the muscle. But, you know, it's still, when you're working a muscle just in general, you're breaking

it down and then it's being built back up. But that process is mildly inflammatory, right? So you actually, you're breaking down the muscle. So the body goes through a natural inflammation process where because when a cell breaks, okay, then there's a chemical reaction that happens in that area to communicate to the brain that, hey, that area is broken. And so that's where chemicals are released from surrounding immune cells and lymph tissue and blood vessels open up to create a. a swelling and allow, you know, other, you know, chemical transmitters in the body to go to that area to help heal and strengthen and, you know, and heal, you know, essentially heal that area. So when we're thinking about a trigger point, if those muscle, if that muscle tissue breaks down a

little bit, and now you have an increased swelling in that area, and it's starting to build back up in a denser manner, well, now you can actually create like this pocket of swelling that sometimes gets trapped in there, you have those chemical sensors, and you have the actual physical tightness of the muscle. And as muscle is laid down, sometimes if it's being pulled on abnormally, it might be, you know, it might start recovering in an abnormal manner. And so now you've got both the chemicals and the swelling that's trapped in there, but also then the, you know, the tightness of the musculature being pulled, you know, maybe perpendicular. across muscle fibers instead of in a parallel manner.

So I think I kind of exhausted that a little bit. But again, it's still, you know, kind of like, I don't want to say confrontational, but like, you know, exactly what it is, you know, it's still kind of like up in the air. But at the end of the day, you know, it's funny because when you go to a chiropractor, you get a massage therapist, you get a physical therapist that's very in tune with, you know, how to find those, you know, people were always like, well, how do you know, you always go to the right area. You always get,

or we can find an area that might have been pulling and then that refers a shooting, a pain or a throbbing or, I like to use the word pulsing up to the area where they are having pain.

And I think that's what's important to the discussion today because so many people are like, oh, I have a pain. It hurts right here. And then they point to it, but then we can find a trigger point that might be, you know,

several inches or, you know, in a completely different area, you know, even across the spine, you know, opposite side of the body that could be pulling to the area of where they're feeling pain. So I think that's part of the discussion of what we want to, you know, what we want to talk about. So that's kind of the definition of a trigger point. I guess maybe we could get into a little bit about how and why they might get there. Do you have any experience with that? I think it's, you know, like kind of similar to what we look for in the spine. the musculoskeletal system in terms of like micro traumas, you know, macro, so small repetitive traumas or, you know, one big incident like a car crash.

You know, if you're, same with the ligaments, you feel in that whiplash injury and your head swings forward and comes back, you're stretching muscles, ligaments, tendons, all that. You know, the body's going to repair those. So essentially you could get trigger points from that, you know, physical, chemical stresses, like emotional stresses, just, you know, even. mentally when you get stressed out, you tense up, you know, you don't breathe through the diaphragm, you start breathing through the neck and the chest, and then those muscles get irritated, and you can lead to multiple, you know, scalings.

All those in the neck get trigger points, and those are nasty too. Diet along with the chemical, yeah, I mean, I always say I have my sugar spot. It's like around the holidays when it's like, oh my God, I remember that one year of Christmas. Remember it was like Christmas Eve? We were at mom's out. I'm like, oh my god, Dan, I can't breathe. I'm like, I felt like a rib was out. And like, can you just, and you're like, you just said it was like, I was so inflamed that. And it's, oh, it's, yeah, just, you know, things like that.

Again, putting that mass and malice stress. And again, that's probably a preexisting trigger point just from, for me, it's from my ears of punching. So it's that left shoulder, you know. But, you know, again, I think another one, again, repetitive motion, that repetitive physical trauma. So runners, you know, if you have that, that constant. impact fighters with the constant the punching um anybody that does a throwing sport so any one-sided sport yeah golf pitching golf pickleball is now the big buzzword like anything one-sided bowling um one-sided sports although they can be they're in they're a blast right you know we love the golf with you know um

if you you get to go to top golf remember i screwed up my shoulders you But yeah, it's like anything one-sided, it's just the body is not meant to be one, you know, one direction constantly. I mean, that's with someone like Tiger Woods. He's had, you know, five plus back surgeries in his career. And it's like, again, the man's one of the greatest, you know, golf athletes ever. But, you know, wear and tear, that repetitive swing at, you know, he's swinging the club at, you know, how many hundred miles an hour. you know and creating that whip and that ball speed and that twist in the lower spine it's just it's detrimental um down there now that doesn't mean that you can't recover from it and and do you know

specific um you know routines and recoveries but when you're doing that one-sided stuff and interesting you you know you talk about the repetitive movements but how about the repetitive non-movements yeah so you know again sitting in front of a computer and you You mentioned the scalenes, which are muscles just up the side of the neck for those who are listening and don't know what that is. But it's like, you know, we sit and then we slouch, you know, shoulders naturally start to roll forward. The head naturally starts to come forward. And then if you're sitting in a computer using your mouse and maybe reaching for your mouse a little bit or reaching for your keyboard, it's like everything in the front part of the chest tightens and the front part of the neck tightens and it pulls everything forward.

Well, when you have that position set up and you're not getting good healthy mobility, I think that's part of where a trigger point will start to flare up when it's not getting its normal, healthy range of motion, you know, through a stretching and mobility practice, then, you know, when you are using it repetitively, it does start to break down. And in the healing process, it gets stuck. And that's kind of what we then can feel. you know, we can literally feel people are like, oh, how do you know? What are you feeling that you know? That's it. Yeah, I didn't even know that hurt until you touched it. And it's like because, you know, we're taught in school, you know, where medical doctors, you know, again, the first like year and a half to two years of chiropractic and medical education is almost identical in terms of, you know, what you're learning in the classroom.

But where we start to separate where, you know, medical doctors go and study pharmacology and, you know, drugs and surgery. chiropractors are going and studying hands-on on the body and how the mechanics, the biomechanics of the body move and bend. And it's like, and we are taught very specifically when we're feeling down the spine. We're feeling for pockets of inflammation. We're feeling for tightness. You know, we're feeling for asymmetry. We're feeling for, you know, asymmetry of motion. So, you know, we can, I can run my fingers down someone's spine pretty easily and find that, you know,

a pocket of swelling that I know will be tender if I press on it a little bit more. Now again, that's just one, you know, way that we evaluate. Um, but again, once you start to become in tune with what you're looking for, massage therapists have that art too. It's a skill in an art form that you can continue to develop. Some people have it naturally. Some people are kinesthetic learners. And they, they naturally have that ability to, um, start picking that up. But it's like, it's a skill and an art that you can continue to hone. And again, go to a chiropractor or a student chiropractor that's just learning how to do it and they're getting their hands on someone.

And, you know, you can just tell the timidness that they have with evaluating someone versus someone who's been doing it, you know, 10, 20 years. And it's like, you know, boom. I got you. I got the spot. And so the importance of that is, what do we do about it? and what do we do about it and what are they causing you know what is it leading to um you know so i think the importance and we talked about this recently you know have some patients who are

you know being pains in the butt literally right where they've got like a couple points in that lower spine that just don't seem to be dissipating or letting go it's like based off of everything else that we're doing everything is changing nicely but like they just almost seem like they're stuck with that, like one nagging, you know, point that just won't let up. And so, you know, we had that conversation where it's like, check these muscles and some of the tightness in the muscles and see if we can release those to, you know, make an impact because I can't tell you the number of people. You mentioned the knees earlier, Angela. When I was running my marathon, or training for my marathon, I mean, that was over 10 years ago now, I was, I was, you know, I was

getting this pain on the outside of my knees, both sides, almost debilitating to the point where I was, you know, I didn't think I was going to be able to, you know, continue to train and continue to run. Well, I had known about the foam roller, but I wasn't really using it on a regular basis, but I started doing a practice called foam rolling where you're basically, you're, you know, laying on a high-density piece of foam and rolling out the legs, which is the IT bands down the side of the legs. Okay. So now why is that important? Well, those IT bands, they insert, okay? It's basically a broad band of connective tissue that connects the front quadriceps in the thighs to the back of the thighs, the hamstrings, and it goes down the outside of the legs. And because they insert through there,

if you have a buildup of trigger point through that connective tissue or the musculature right underneath that, and it starts to heighten that area, well, that pulling, that tension has to go somewhere. Well, it's going to go to the area where it inserts. So I start hitting trigger points up in my leg, up around my hip, and then it starts releasing my knee pain. And sure enough, I was able to continue to train and able to run my marathon. And so we have people that got come in all the time where it's like, oh, I've got this hip pain, I've got this low back pain, I've got this, you know, butt pain, this knee pain, this ankle pain. And we find, you know, these spots, these trigger points and the musculature surrounding it.

And we spend some time either ourselves or, you know, through stretching. You teach a lot of people how to stretch these muscle groups. You know, we can do adjustments and, you know, pressure work around, you know, around that area. And then we have a massage therapist in our office. Sugar is absolutely amazing. Sugar or massage therapist, not sugar that you eat. But, you know, we can take some time on, like, trying to get those released. And again, that's where.

Trigger Point Therapy is an entire, it's an entire profession, it's an entire like specialty within, you know, massage and, you know, chiropractors, massage therapists, you know. And the way you work with trigger points is very different than what, or can be very different than what you would think. So I know personally, I've been using sugar for years and for, for, I. Sugar and a massage therapist. Yes. And personally, I like deep tissue massages. I like the feel of them. And so for years, she was beating me up because that's what we both thought I needed.

And things, I would be flared up for days. And it's just, I was, like, certain things weren't getting cleared out. And finally, it's like, she was like, I'm going to try, you know. The one day she said, well, I'm going to try something. And she just did this really light, soft tissue pressure were kind of around one of my big trigger points and my low back that. was always an issue. And we literally both felt something just like, it was like it melted.

I can even describe it. And just since then, she's really figured out. She's like, okay, like, I might like the feel of a deep tissue massage while it's happening,

but my body clearly responds much better to the lighter pressure work, especially around those, those really tight areas. Because it's like, when she was going really hard, they were just, it was just intensifying

instead of letting go. And yeah, just might massage, last month. I'm like, I was working out the day before and I'm like, why does my ankle hurt? I didn't do anything. I don't, I'm like, it was just, I was doing step-ups on the box and every time I'm stepping down, like, that really doesn't feel good. So I mentioned it to her and yeah, of course, it was coming up from my, my, my, basically, my, periformis is what you sit on, essentially. So again, if you're sitting all day, it's another common one that's flared up. And so it's like,

you know, I was having all these weird things that were hurting on the left side. And it's, It was all coming from that one spot from my back all the way down to my ankle. And by getting that to release the next day, I'm like, everything was gone. Like, that's amazing. So, yeah, I always call them the magic buttons. I'm like, she finds all the buttons. Yeah, well, that's, you know, my oldest son is starting to, you know, train for the high school, or not high school, the middle school soccer team.

And again, before it's just always been like recreation club stuff. You know, they have practice once a week and a game on the weekend. But now it's like practiced every day, five days a week when they don't have games. And, you know, on the days they don't practice, they've got a game. So it's like, you know, five days a week, he's going hard. And so, and he's a big kid. And so he's been coming home last year. He had a flare up so bad that he was having his heel pain.

Like he couldn't even walk. And so, you know, we took an x-ray of his foot. It was bothering him so bad. We didn't see any fracture. But, you know, we ended up determining that it was his Achilles pulling on his. heel. So he was starting to get that same heel pain on his opposite foot, you know, recently, since he started those practices every day. And then, you know, so I analyzed, you know, his foot and, you know, ankle and then, but I got up into his calf and he had a pretty significant

trigger point up in his calf. So I stretched, you know, did some pressure work on it. You know, he did ice his, you know, ice the Achilles and ice his ankle. You know, so again, we just did some, you know, recovery work on it. And, you know, by within, you know, a couple hours and he woke up this morning, I mean, it's flared up really bad over the last couple days, but he woke up this morning and it was like significantly better. So, you know, that's the kind of stuff that, you know, oh, my heel pain. Well, it's like, do you have trigger points up in the calf muscle? Do you?

Referring pain. Yeah, referring pain. Yeah, referring pain. Yeah, referring to actually coming from. And I think that's the importance of, you know, the referring. pain pattern like you can go and look there's there's books um you know there's massage therapy books that um you know have referral patterns of all these trigger points and again it's an estimate it's not exact on every person but you know people with shoulder pain the number of people that have

shoulder pain that have tightness in their peck minor or peck major your chest muscles um and again when you're when you sit all day and your shoulders are rolled forward and everything gets tight there. Not only does that impact breathing, but again, you can then start to have this shoulder pain, you know, just from sitting in a poor position all day. You know, we mentioned the golf thing, you know, and swinging, you know, swinging a racket, a golf club, but that swinging, whether it's backhand or forehand, you know, you can get tightness in the, you know, in the lat, you know, in some of the smaller musculature, around the shoulder blade. that can impact, you know, pain into the shoulder.

So, um, yeah, I mean, like the biggest thing I think is the fascia, like the fascia, like, the fascia of the body is, at least when I was in school, you know, some of the teachers like, you need to look into this facial work and stuff just because, you know, you have the facial connections from, you know, the front of the body, the back of the body, you know, all the way from the left shoulder down to the right hip. I mean, I think that's why it's crucial to get checked by somebody who kind of understands these true points and how the pain you might be feeling saying the right hip could be coming from that left shoulder.

Sugar's great at doing that. Sure, is massage therapist. She'll find a trigger point in the left shoulder. And if that's tight, you know, Todd, it's going to pull on the fascia in the back that transition to the right hip.

And, you know, it could be as far as planar fasciitis on the right side. It's all because you're altering your gait due to that left shoulder pulling on a hip, you know, as crazy as it sounds. You know, it's scientifically backed. You can look up the fascial, you know, kinetic chain of the body.

body and you kind of start to understand, okay, if I have deficiencies on one side of my body, you know, I could have my symptoms on the other. Yeah. And I think that's important. So fascia, you know, if we're going back to, you know, defining things for people aren't aware, if you peel the skin off of a chicken, okay, you know, a dead one that you're, you know, prepping needs, please. It's like, I'm going to have PETA call us.

We're not offering individualized. If you are prepping a chicken to cook. cook and eat and you peel the skin off of a chicken, that very, very thin white layer that's over the muscle, but it's almost attached to the muscle. Or you, you know, kind of peel like, you know, two layers of the muscle apart and you get the, you know, the white web, it almost looks like a spider web sometimes between the layers of muscle. That is the fascial tissue that Dr. Riley just mentioned. And you're right. And what they taught us in school is that. that it is one continuous web and network of tissue from the top of your scalp down all the way to

the toes. And it interacts between, it's basically the connection point between your muscles, your tendons, your ligaments, your bone, your organs. It literally is one continuous web. It's all the connective tissue that, you know, if it's not one of those things I just mentioned, And it's kind of everything else in between. And again, it is, it's a very fibrous tissue, you know, but very, very strong tissue to hold everything together. You know, so it's really an incredible, you know, organ, you know, or tissue to work with in the body.

And again, it's like when, when you get, when these things get stuck because they're pulling repetitively in an abnormal way, you know, you're, maybe you're out of alignment. And so you're running, you're walking, you're bicycling, you know, all your movements that you're doing out of alignment. Well, things are starting to pull abnormally. So now you can start to create these abnormal pulling patterns. And so then these trigger points will start to show up. And again, a lot of times there's signals that, you know, a muscle or a tissue is, you know, being overused or not being used in the most efficient way possible. And there's ways, you know, with pressure, stretching, breathing.

breathing, you know, good nutrition, so you're not eating sugar. You're not, you know, you're not putting those, you know, chemical toxins in the body that are causing a hyper, you know, inflammatory environment that would, you know, add to the repetition of them flaring up. So, again, trigger points are common in, you know, something like, what's where I'm looking for? Myelgia, right? I mean, that's what they, they literally, like, the diagnosis of fibromyalgia is a certain number of trigger points, right? Yeah. It's like 12 or 15 or more or something, you know, and again, you know, doctors are just, you know, taught to press in to different areas. And again, I think that's a very poor, you know, diagnosis categorization because I think it's just kind of like, oh, you're, I could find, if you wanted me to, I could probably find about 15 trigger points on just about any person that laid down in front of me.

you know if I looked hard enough so you know again it's like why are they so flared up and you know someone's got that in conjunction with fatigue and um you know just muscle achiness and you know headaches and all this other stuff like it's why you've got to look at the part the whole person and the whole situation of what's going on and and you know what you can do about it so so again you know things like you know do you have any specific recommendations then angelo and what else we do with these you know, these trigger points of where, if they show up. I mean, other than massage and the phone ruling, again, working them out, um, the other thing is, so I really like using resistance bands to help

strengthen, because that's the other thing. It's because we talked about it's either overuse or underuse of certain other muscles. So, you know, especially when we're talking about low back. So I think about, you know, um, uh, one of our, one of our sisters, we had many, we have many sisters who come who was having the chronic low back into her adjustments. she'd feel amazing after her adjustments, but then it's just kind of,

the pain would almost come back immediately and went through some basic resistance band exercises just to help strengthen up the, yeah, activate the muscles surrounding the area where she was having the pain. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, wow, yeah, I feel better because again, if those muscles, if all the surrounding muscles are weak, that's just all the tension is going right back to that same point.

So getting the muscle activation, and not necessarily the spot that hurts, but the surrounding areas. You know, knee pain, we talk about all the time. Yes, you want to release that IT band, but you also need to strengthen the quad. You need to strengthen the quad. You need to strengthen all the muscles that...

You know, the glute max is... The glute max and medias. I think gluteis, yeah, nobody works at glute mead. That's the... Gluteis maximus is your butt, that everybody. Big muscle. Yeah, that one people seem to be aware of, but the glute medius is on the side,

and because we live in such a, you know, we sit, we walk, forward. Like, we live in this very forward backwards. We don't do lateral motion side to side. And so that glute medias gets really weak. And then, yeah, that pulls on, pulls on the low back. And and I think it's important to, you know, when you talk about weak, a muscle can be tight and a tight muscle can be weak. Okay. A lot of times people think tightness and they're like, oh, it's strong. It's pulling, right? But no, it's like, yeah, if a muscle is tight because it's kind of, you it's almost like misfiring.

So it's like, you know, you aren't, it's not activating efficiently because it's already, you know, clamped, it's already contracted a certain percentage. And muscles only activate like 40% of the fibers at a time. And again, it's a whole scientific thing in terms of like, you know, what fibers are activated in a timing when the nerve message, you know, goes from the brain down to the muscle and it activates. But like if a certain percentage of those muscle fibers are already activated because they're tight because they're set up in a way that promotes that activation, well, then you've already, you know, you're 20, 30, 40, 50 percent less efficient because those muscles are already firing. Those fibers are already firing. So that's important to understand that just because a muscle is tight doesn't necessarily mean it's strong.

It could be very weak. And so you mentioned the glute meat. So if you sit down in a chair, you know, very, you know, very often, you're not sitting with your feet and knees facing forward. What happens is a lot of times, and you're doing it right now. You take a picture of Dr. Adi. Yeah. So what happens is if you just relax your legs, you know, what happens? You're usually your knees spread apart a little bit.

And so what that, when your knees spread apart, your leg bone, your femur is externally rotating. Well, that external rotation is what lengthens, it shortens the length of the glute meat muscle. Well, now if it's sitting in that position for, you know, two, three, five, ten, eight hours a day. Monday through Friday. Probably weekends do. Well, now it's shortened its length. And again, you can then start to develop trigger points because of the misfiring and the, the basically the relaying down a muscle fibers in a, you know, cross pattern that is not ideal for efficiency of contraction of that muscle.

So now again, you get trigger points and weakness in that glute mead muscle, the periformis muscle, the TFL I mentioned at the beginning, the tensor fasciolata muscle. I always said it sounds like a coffee drink. Yeah, I'll think I'll add that with that. But that's essentially the, you know, the muscle that attaches to the IT band and attaches it to the femur. And so it really sets the tension in the tone of the IT band. And one way to stretch it is, you know, some of the internal rotation of the femur and, you know, doing the pressure work with the foam roller. So, you know, that's the kind of stuff that, you know, you've got over, you know, we always talk about joint and bones in the body. There's, you know, 206 bones in the body, but there's over 600 muscles in the body.

And all those muscles and bones are all interconnected with this facial tissue. And so it's like, you know, you have these aches and pains and yeah, I mean, the easy way to, you know, hush it up is, you know, popinadville or Tylenol or whatever. But, you know, that's not getting to the cause of the problem. It might make you feel better shortly, but, you know, in the short term, but I guarantee in the long term you're doing more damage to your liver, your kidneys, your stomach, and you're not actually solving the problem. So all while you are trying to make yourself feel better, your body is continuing. to get weaker and tighter, more rigid and resistant to change. And as we talked about in our most recent episode, you know, we talked about that adaptation. It's like you are preventing your body from becoming more adaptable.

And so that's what we, you know, that's exactly the opposite of health, right? If you want to promote health, you need to promote your ability to adapt. And the one way we do that is we help to, you know, we help the joints, the muscles, you know, the bones work more efficiently and the nervous system, which coordinates all of it. So it truly is like, you know, it's all connected. How many times do we say that in the office? It truly. It truly is all connected. So, you know, I would say if any of this resonated with you or if you have like a random ache or pain that just will not go away and you've had it looked at, you know, by other medical professionals and you're just not getting to the underlying cause of your aches, your pains,

your stiffness, or why you have a recurring injury, you know, the same injury over and over again. You know, every couple, you know, months or once a month, you have the same, you know, flare-up of a, you know, of a joint stiffness or inflammation. If you're having those repetitive injuries or you're just, or you're just, you know, not feeling as mobile, as flexible as you used to be, like, Those are all, you know, great, those are all signs that your body is screaming at you to get checked by, you know, some professionals who, you know, have some information that could guide you to living a more flexible, mobile, adaptable, healthy life. So if any of that sounded interesting, do not hesitate to reach out. We've got a ton of information on our website, TorahFamilychiropractic.com. Reach out to us directly to answer any questions.

Any more input? But get checked. Yeah. Get checked by your local chiropractic. We have it all here. Chiropractic, massage, functional training. So whatever you need, we can help you out. We're here to help you get healthy and stay healthy.

So thank you so much for stopping by. We will see you at the next one. Take care. You've been listening to What the Health with Dr. Dan and Angela Toro, brought to you by Toro family chiropractic. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www. www. what the health.