The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook: Your Self-Treatment Guide for Pain Relief

Good self-help tool.

I consider this book to be a useful self-help tool for treating trigger points, or irritable spots in the muscle. It has many, many pictures which help guide the reader to common places in the muscles where these things are at. From there, you can use a ball, massage them with your fingers, or even use this tool called a Thera-Cane to get to those hard to reach places.

All in all a handy book for treating trigger points, another good lesson here is that sometimes muscle trigger points can mimick more serious ailments, when the problem is really just in the muscle. Also recommend The 5-Minute Plantar Fasciitis Solution if you suffer from plantar fasciitis pain.

11 out of 11 people found this review helpful.

Great book for all!

I recommend this book because everybody can use it. I first bought it to use in massage therapy school and used it many times. Now on my own, I refer back to this book everybody, to give guidance to my clients. My clients usually end up buying this book anyway.

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

trigger points - an interesting concept

Still reviewing this book so shouldn't give more opinion

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Trigger points are everywhere.

This book is about how to deal with those annoying little things in the muscle known as trigger points. I don't know it anyone really knows what they are for sure, short of them being irritable spots in the muscles, but this book will show you how you can treat them. One caveat though- the little buggers have a tendency to come back, so I also recommend other things to try such as stretching and strengthening exercises. Lots of great pictures in this book.

1 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Thank you, Claire Davies

I swear by this book. I am a professional cellist and this book has solved, or at least dramatically improved problems with headaches, thoracic outlet syndrome, 'frozen shoulder' like symptoms, as well as ear,leg, foot and tmj problems. For me, the only drawback is that people think I'm a freak as I'm constantly digging my fingers into my neck or rolling a tennis ball around on my arm.

1 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

'Trigger Happy'

Feel a sore ¿knot¿ in your neck? Back? Leg? Then you likely know trigger points. Headaches? Sore back? Hip? Then you likely know trigger points. Why not get to know them better ¿ and help them move out! The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook clearly explains trigger points, how to locate them, and how to de-activate them. There are well over 100 muscles identified (including pronunciations) in this book. The delightful news is that you don¿t need to learn them all (or how to pronounce them) before you begin! Thanks to the smartly-designed illustrations and easy-to-understand guidelines, you can begin the healing process right away! Being a colossal skeptic, I am hesitant whenever I encounter an exaggerated claim...but here goes. This book has actually changed my life! And I¿m confident it will continue to do so. Within two days of using this book, I felt genuine relief from my long-time companion: pain. As a great believer in the ¿patient, heal thyself¿ approach, I have tried many remedies over the years ¿ including massage, reflexology and accupressure. I continued the search. I was aware of trigger points and some of the mischief they can cause, however, it was not until I came across this book that I actually understood trigger points. This book has changed my life ¿ and I¿m thrilled to have found it! Can this book change your life? Yes. Will this book change your life? I encourage even the most skeptic of skeptics to give it a try. You will be glad you did. Mr. Davies and his daughter, Amber, have given us the tools to help us help ourselves heal. They note on page 45: ¿You deserve to be pain free. Give yourself this gift.¿ It¿s in your hands ¿ literally. A piece of advice...get yourself a good highlighter. You¿ll want one. Happy healing! (You can find Chapter One of the book, which describes Mr. Davies¿ journey from pain, online.)

1 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Try the unconventional method

This is great if you have issues that a doctor can't or won't deal with other than an RX. Try this. Really good for muscle pain and deep issues.

Awesome book...Highly Recommended 5 stars!

Bought this book because I was sick of having little aches and pains that a doctor would only give me pills to treat. Also, my chiropractor had me getting massages and myofasica release treatments...this book is a perfect addition to all of my natural treatments. You owe it to yourself to have this book as a great reference tool!

Jane

Reading this book led me to a greater understanding of Migraine headaches and the muscle structure that predominantly is the cause.

This book is the solution to understanding and treating chronic headaches without pharmaceutical intervention. It addresses the source of the problem; tense muscles. Be it either from incorrect posture or repetitive job stress. An important note though, be prepared to follow the author's suggestions on the frequency of manipulating the muscle(s) that are causing the pain. This will teach the reader to be more observant of their own movements which in all probability are the cause of their problems. Self awareness is the best teacher.

For anyone that has muscular pain

I have recommended this book to everyone I know. It is a must have if you have any type of muscular pain. It is easy to read and provides wonderful information.

I found this book very helpful

I first saw this book at my massage therapist office. Since purchasing the book I have been able to help myself with self massages before they get unbearable. The photos and the guides made it very easy to perform the messages. The book is written so everyone can understand.

Best resource I have yet found!

As a Massage Therapy student, I am always looking for a new resource of information. This book has been as beneficial to me as the textbooks that the schools teach out of. Whether you are a seasoned professional, a student, or simply looking to get rid of some of your personal pain I highly reccommend this book. Jerry Indiana

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Bonnie Prudden did it first

Yes, trigger point therapy does work. I've used it on myself, relatives, and friends, with excellent results. It would be nice though if Davies credited Bonnie Prudden, whose books 'Pain Erasure' and 'Myotherapy' were the first to demonstrate how Dr. Travel's work could be applied using finger pressure rather than injections.

It has taught me more than school

Currently I go to school for massage therapy. i feel it has futhered my education in trigger point therapy. It gives many different probems that relate to certain trigger points that doctors may mislabel. I have been working on my own trigger points and feel the difference between the weeks that I have time to work on my self and the weeks I don't. Everyone is entitled to their own oppinion. Not to mention it has given a better understanding of muscles to include in my education.

Helpful for clinicians and patients!

I wholeheartedly recommend this book, both to people suffering from pain *and* to clinicians dealing with myofascial conditions. I am a licenced physical therapist that has worked with myofascial pain for over 10 years. Myofascial pain is a poorly understood problem even within the medical field, and, admittedly, clinically useful research on the topic has been slow in coming. Clinically, however, I have found manual trigger point therapy to be extremely safe and effective in assisting patients in their recovery from acute and chronic pain conditions. One thing that seems true of myofascial pain, however, is its unfortunate and frustrating tendency to re-occur over time. These re-occurences will often happen most inconveniently when the suffering person does not have access to skilled professional care. This is where the assistance provided by this book is so valuable; patients can learn how to safely and effectively treat their own trigger points with their own hands (and use of certain "tools", some as simple as a tennis ball). Mr. Davies' book gives very clear descriptions of what trigger points are and how they contribute to pain. Muscle anatomy and function are described with clarity and excellent illustrations. Step by step instructions are given on which muscles to check for sensitivity depending on what body region is hurting. This information (as well as other extremely useful information) is referenced out of the classic, medically authored "bibles" of trigger point treatment by Drs. Janet Travell and David Simons. Instruction is provided on how to search each muscle for the sensitive knots known as "trigger points" and guidelines provided for effective and safe massage treatment for those points. Probably most importantly, details are provided on how to reduce strain on involved muscles through analysis and alteration of postural and mechanical factors that can keep a pain problem active despite quality treatment. The book is extremely well organized and easy to read with the author generously sharing his own personal history battling chronic pain, as well as many other case histories of people successfully helped by the methods in the book. I cannot recommend this book higly enough. If you are at all unsure about purchasing it, I'd encourage trying to borrow or check it out from a library first; I am very confident that after you have read and applied the information in this title, you will be eager to own your own copy!

Where's the evidence?

Trigger points and trigger point therapy are very controversial. As a licensed physical therapist, a certified clinical instructor that teaches physical therapy students, and many years experience treating chronic pain patients, I feel as though I have an opinion other potential buyers might benefit from. The book is about irritable spots in the muscles called trigger points that purportedly cause pain. The book contends that they can be found and self treated through massage techniques. This book also says that it is a proven technique. Proven in medicine means that it has passed the rigors of the randomized controlled trial, that is a study where patients treated with trigger point therapy had less pain than a control group that got no treatment. Medicine has used the randomized controlled trial to prove treatments such as by-pass surgeries or medications as being effective. After checking huge medical data bases such as Medline for randomized,controlled trials on trigger point therapy, I could find none whatsoever, nor are there any listed in the reference section in the book which starts on page 253. I therefore see no sound proof that triggerpoint therapy is really "proven". A few other fundamental problems remain as well. The book blames trigger points on pain when many studies, including an article in the Sept. 1994 issue of "Pain" journal shows trigger points to occur very frequently in people with NO pain, raising serious questions if these little buggers really cause any trouble at all. Another purpose of the book is to teach the reader to find their own trigger points. Many studies, including one in the Oct. 1992 issue of "Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation" show that even two trained medical professionals have trouble agreeing on who does and doesn't have a trigger point. With much published reliability problems, I seriously doubt one can gain the skill of finding a trigger point just by reading a book (if its even possible at all) when trained medical professionals have difficulty. Having taken a good look at this book and finding many inherent problems with trigger points and TP therapy published in peer reviewed journals, I cannot recommend this book as a valid way to treat chronic pain. I let readers weigh the evidence for themselves and hope this review helps out.

Saved from Disability

I want to share my enthusiasm for this book. Following the self-treatment methods in Clair Davies¿s book has saved me from a future of pain and disability and has also helped several of my friends. About a year and a half ago a terrible fall strained and tore the muscles and ligaments in my groin and hips and also the medial meniscus in my left knee. After an orthopedic surgeon restored the knee, he prescribed physical therapy. However, this made my muscles more painful. Last winter, after little improvement, I consulted a ¿Pain Management Specialist¿ MD who injected cortisone into my back and prescribed hydrotherapy. Again the exercises made my legs and hips more painful. So he told me to get a hip replacement or I would end up in a wheelchair. Unfortunately there are no medical specialists dealing with muscles and ligaments. Looking for help at Barnes & Noble, I ran across Clair Davies¿s book. It was easy to locate my trigger points because of their electric-shock tingle. After I massaged them, I felt much less pain and was immediately able to sleep on my left side for the first time since the accident. And improvement has continued. Now I'm painting my condo--without a wheelchair. Both doctors did their best, as did the physical therapists who tried to help me--but all in vain. The work of Travell and Simon on trigger points seems to have been largely ignored by the medical profession, possibly because the recommended treatment is cumbersome. Clair Davies¿s book, with its practical suggestions, is a godsend. Obviously physicians and physical therapists could better help their patients if they studied it. I have excitedly told others about the book, and a ripple effect has ensued. For instance, a neighbor, faced with selling her cherished second-floor condo because she could not take the stairs, has now canceled the sale and is recommending the book to her friends who are in turn recommending it to others. And a cousin, whose life had been circumscribed by dizziness that her doctors could not explain, recovered during one evening¿s massage, startling her visiting daughters and causing them to buy their own copies of the book. I think others will benefit, too. I highly recommend it.

Agreed, touch can't be taught in a book, but don't disregard just because YOU don't understand :-)~

As Noted in AAFP (that is American Acedemy of Family Physicians) Hopefully this will help with those of you who don't understand trigger points. Trigger points are discrete, focal, hyperirritable spots located in a taut band of skeletal muscle. The spots are painful on compression and can produce referred pain, referred tenderness, motor dysfunction, and autonomic phenomena. Trigger points are classified as being active or latent, depending on their clinical characteristics. An active trigger point causes pain at rest. It is tender to palpation with a referred pain pattern that is similar to the patient's pain complaint. This referred pain is felt not at the site of the trigger-point origin, but remote from it. The pain is often described as spreading or radiating. Referred pain is an important characteristic of a trigger point. It differentiates a trigger point from a tender point, which is associated with pain at the site of palpation only. DUH :) Just Kidding. Attention Doctors that keep telling people the pain is in their head. You should worry because when the word gets out and is accepted by "the system" alot of $ will go into our pockets , and not into MRI's and your referals;) I wish you all well. May God bless all who love to help people :)

Everyone has a trigger point 'cause nobody likes being poked.

This interesting self-treatment book shows you how to find trigger points (TP's) in your muscles to get rid of your pain. I looked at this book as both a medical professional and someone who has pain and hopefully my opinion can benefit potential buyers of this book. The first thing to remember when reading a book that offers a medical treatment is does it work? "Work" meaning, is there adequate proof from studies showing that trigger point therapy really decreases pain? To answer that question we turn to the research which to date has not shown any techniques in this book to decrease pain in a clinical controlled trial. I don't think you'd really want to take an antibiotic or have that hip replaced unless it had been shown to work, so why would you want to try trigger point therapy without some proof either? The second thing to keep in mind is the placebo effect. Studies show that if you give ANY pain treatment, such as a pain pill, at least 30% of people will consistently get pain relief every time- a true testament to the power of belief and the placebo effect. This most surely explains the positive reviews you might hear about TP therapy. One must remember to rely upon controlled trials when choosing a treatment and not anecdotal evidence. I seriously doubt anybody would undergo chemo therapy on the basis of stories or a few people telling them "I tried it and it works." Another issue that must be dealt with is that this book intents to teach the reader to find their own TP's. I'm skeptical about this as studies looking at a wide variety of professionals have shown conclusively that its hard to even get two trained medical professionals such as neurologists, physical therapists, rheumatologists or chiropractors, to agree on who and who doesn't have a trigger point. Just checkout the Oct. 1992 issue of Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, the March 2000 issue of Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, or the January 1997 issue of Pain- to name a few of the better conducted studies. And finally there's the issue that this book blames your pain of TP's despite the fact that both latent and active TP's are found abundantly in people with NO pain. A 1992 study in the June issue of The Journal of Rheumatology found many TP's in people with no pain raising doubts if they really cause pain at all. More astounding though, is the fact that David Simons, who wrote the foreward to this book participated in the study! After looking at this book and finding that it contradicts much published literature that few people ever get a chance to read, I simply cannot recommend this book as a way of treating anyone's pain until more research clearly proves otherwise. Maybe a lot of doctors and physical therapists don't use TP therapy because they HAVE read the literature.

Practical Help in Treating Chronic Muscle Pain

I have struggled with chronic myofascial pain syndrome for over five years. Unfortunately, the medical community often treated my condition like a sports injury. Prescribed stretches and strengthening exercises, although done faithfully, were not relieving my pain. Any direct use of the effected muscles just brought on more spasm and pain. It was through reading this book that I first learned about trigger points in muscles with chronic pain, and the importance of dealing with them first. Only after breaking up existing trigger points will stretching and strengthening be effective. This book has helped me a great deal. It is very well presented and filled with practical methods I could do at home to help treat muscle pain. The many illustrations are an effective compliment to the text. The self-massage techniques presented are non-invasive, require no drugs, and utilize just hands or simple tools such as the humble tennis ball. I can¿t tell you how much pain relief I¿ve gotten from learning how and where to use this inexpensive item on trigger points in my back and shoulder. The book is filled with this kind of practical help, all thoroughly and clearly explained. This book does not insult the scientific mind; rather it summarizes some important medical literature for us. I was impressed that this book is based on the published work of two medical doctors, Travell and Simons. Dr. Travell was the personal physician of President John F. Kennedy. Travell was able to effectively treat the President¿s chronic back pain using trigger point techniques. I thank Clair Davies for giving us an effective tool to treat long-standing muscle pain. I am impressed with the care that has gone into writing this book. I consider it a valuable reference and wouldn¿t be without it. I use it daily and have noticed a consistent decrease in my level of pain.