Knots in your muscles or connective tissues are fairly common, especially if you’re under stress or you spend hours hunched over your desk. While they may be common, the pain that results from these little balls of tight tissue is often very uncomfortable. Hot baths, massages, and stretching do provide some relief, but muscle knots can be stubborn, refusing to give up their grip. In these cases, we offer trigger point injections, which go straight to the source of the tension to release it.
At Advanced Spine Care and Pain Management, our team of highly experienced pain management and musculoskeletal experts understands the many issues that can cause pain, including muscle knots. While not necessarily serious, muscle knots can cause considerable discomfort and may even drag surrounding tissues into the discomfort if they’re left untreated.
To fight back against painful knots, we offer trigger point injections, which work almost immediately to relax your tissues and bring you relief.
Muscle knots are also called myofascial trigger points, which means that these areas of high tension can occur in your muscles as well as in your fascia, which are the connective tissues around your muscles.
Knots can occur for many reasons and in almost any tissue, but they most often crop in areas of high tension, such as your:
Muscle knots are most often the result of stress or poor posture, but they can also develop because of overuse or an injury that causes you to favor one area, which places added pressure elsewhere. In this case the tissues that are picking up the slack can develop muscle knots.
No matter how your muscle knot develops, one of the best ways to resolve it is to tackle it directly, which is what we accomplish with our trigger point injections.
If you suspect a muscle knot is causing your pain, we first perform a thorough evaluation to locate the problem and to determine whether there’s tension in your tissue. If we confirm a muscle knot, the good news is that trigger point injection therapy is quick, easy, and brings you immediate relief.
With trigger point injection therapy, we inject a solution, which typically contains an anesthetic and saline, directly into your myofascial tissue. We may also add some steroids to help with inflammation. The anesthetic goes to work immediately to relax your tissue and the steroids control the swelling in the area to keep your tissue from forming a knot again.
We perform this treatment right in our offices, and you’re free to go home directly afterward. We will likely recommend some gentle stretching exercises that you can do at home in order to keep your tissue loose.
If you’re struggling with painful muscle knots, contact one of our offices in Staten Island or Hartsdale, New York, to learn more about trigger point injections.
