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Muscles
by Tasso Spanos, CMTPT
A low back pain and bloated abdomen might have the same cause and the same solution!
If you have been reading my articles in Boomers, you have learned that traumatized muscles can cause the development of hyperirritable spots called myofascial trigger points. When activated by some sudden “wrong” movement, these trigger points can refer pain, weakness, and autonomic phenomena to another part of the body, thereby confusing the medical practitioner. Over 200 different traumatized muscles can refer pain to different parts of the body.
One muscle, the rectus abdominis (stretches from the pubic bone to the front of ribs 5, 6, and 7), can develop trigger points that refer pain to across the lower back, like a belt. This muscle can be traumatized by visceral disease or a blow or an operation to the abdomen, causing it to shatter. When any muscle is shortened, it loses its strength and can hold cellular fluid. The large rectus abdominis muscle can retain lots of fluid and enlarge the abdomen beyond the surrounding fat.
If this shortened muscle is subjected to strengthening exercises like sit ups or crunches, it will shorten even further causing additional cellular fluid to accumulate. So sit ups to an injured abdominal muscle will make it even bigger, and must be avoided. The proper lengthening exercise is a sit down, or half of a sit up. One uses only their hands to get up and only the stomach muscles to go down.
When I demonstrated the helpful effects of this exercise on Pittsburgh Today, we had hundreds of requests for the exercise that helped low back pain and made the stomach “smaller”. Today ,we share this exercise with you. After one month, when you can go down backwards slowly without pain, you may move your hands from reaching in front of you, to placing them on your chest. This, of course, is more difficult.
Trigger points in the rectus abdominis muscle can also cause the seemingly, unrelated symptoms of constipation, nausea, or irritable bowel syndrome. Remember no sit ups, only sit downs.
Tasso Spanos, CMTPT, is a certified Myofascial Trigger Point Therapist. You can reach him at (412) 431-9180.
Tasso will be speaking at the Whole Health Expo, Pittsburgh ExpoMart, on “Solving Chronic Pain Quickly With Myofascial Point Therapy” on April 30th and “Helping Fibromyalgic Patients” on May 1st.
