Pain, Hamstring Strain Prognosis, Massage, and Muscle Damage
February 23, 2012 
4 Comments
This week’s stuff you should read comes from Joe Brence, The Sports Physiotherapist, and Patrick Ward.
All About Pain
For those following the discussion in the comments section of the trigger point dry needling for lateral epicondylitis post, you’ll be familiar with Joe Brence. He has written a nice article on Erson’s website all about pain. Joe did a great job with this post and really put a lot of time into the article, I thought it was really informative. Be sure to also read Erson’s response, which I agree with. Be sure to also read the comments sections. This sure does seem to be a popular topic lately!
Mechanism of Injury and Prognosis after Hamstring Strain
The Sports Physiotherapist has a nice article on how the mechanism of injury impacts the prognosis after hamstring strain. I couldn’t agree more. The mechanism of the injury impacts the prognosis and my treatment programs.
Massage and Inflammation Due to Muscle Damage
Patrick Ward writes a nice post reviewing the recent study showing that massage has a positive effect on muscle damage. This is a pretty exciting study that Patrick provides his thoughts and insight towards.
Thanks for the link Mike! Glad we agree, we can’t forget periphery and mechanics. Lorimer’s example of a soldier making it back to base being severely wounded, yet feeling no pain until he gets back does indicate the power of the mind, but it doesn’t mean he wasn’t wounded in the first place!
Ha, i like that example!
Great post Mike and bravo to the all of the author as I enjoyed reading everyone’s work.
On the topic of pain, I would encourage everyone to read the work of Dr. Herbert Spiegel, who was a pioneer in the field of psychiatry and hypnosis (not the Mesmeric nonsense) as he discussed Lorimer’s point exactly in a manuscript.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17786657
Dr. Spiegel was a mentor of mine and has a lecture series named after him at Columbia University. It shocks me that his work is rarely referenced in the pain literature as he was talking about this stuff several decades ago. The paper that I provided the link to above is a must read!!!
One other article worth reading that pertains to the recent massage article receiving alot of attention is the Butterfield et al article from 2008 as it’s an impact paper pertaining to masssage albeit done in a rat model. Happy weekend everyone!!!
The exact article that I referenced re: applying pressure to muscles was done by Tom Best’s group…
Butterfield et al 2008: Cyclic compressive loading facilitates recovery after eccentric exercise.
Hope this helps you defend your manual work the next time someone tries to attack it. Its great that we are starting to get some objective data on this front to defend our work and avoid speaking on opinion because “Bold and confident opinions are still just opinions.”