I'm going to try it this week for my neck pain and I know nothing about it. I'm pretty skeptical but literally nothing has worked for my neck problem and this sounds like the issue. Has anybody tried this? Probably not the best forum to discuss this but I think relieving pain is important for recovery.

I think and have heard it's great for things like this.

The subject came up recently (as well as in past) as it's something I'm considering also.

Have you tried reading about it in (library, for example) books or your favorite search engines?

All I've done so far is watch some YouTube videos of it in action and it seems like it could be effective for what I have going on for sure but you never know cause no other therapy or medication works against this problem.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2017 04:58PM by badassadam.

It's a massage, it'll probably feel good.
A "cure" for anything...probably not.
At least, there's no reliable evidence that it is, and practitioners have gotten into hot water (ethically and legally) for making outrageous claims about it that are completely unsupported by evidence.

So if it won't cost you much, give it a try.
If it will, you decide whether it's worth it or not.
Like I said, it's a massage. And very probably nothing else.

I'm going to give it three tries and nothing more if the change isn't dramatic than thats all I'm doing, thanks for the info especially the part about them getting into trouble making outrageous claims.

Sounds like something on Porn Hub.

It's legit.

You could certainly find someone who doesn't know what he/she is doing, but the discipline is legitimate. Almost all professional sports teams use versions of it for their athletes because it helps with 1) eliminating problems with tight/injured muscles that are self-perpetuating, and 2) accelerating recovery from intense exercise.

It won't mend broken bones or heal torn ligaments, but it can and does loosen muscles that impinge on nerves, interrupt sleep or distort normal movement patterns. I'd look at it as a potential solution for neck pain (assuming it's a muscular problem) and as part of routine maintenance for serious athletes.

Well this is good news I'm pretty sure the neck is a muscular problem but a pretty bad one to the point of pinching nerves where it attaches to the skull. If I'm understanding everything you are saying this should do something to alleviate the pressure and the pain but I'm still almost afraid to get my hopes up.

I wouldn't say it "should" solve your problem, only that it may well do so. There are so many things that could go wrong that there won't be any sure remedy.

But yes, if I were you I would definitely give it a shot. The gym I workout at has a lot of very serious athletes, including some professionals whose names you'd almost certainly recognize. They use the MFR staff routinely.

Alright, God I hope it works it will seriously be life changing, this has been like a ten year riddle of trying to figure out whats causing this pain and then how to stop it with all sorts of different things.

Adam, I have never heard of myofacial release, but apparently, I do it to myself, and it does help.

I do it in two ways. The first is that I explore my face with my fingers until I find a sore spot, and then apply steady, gentle but firm pressure to that spot. Finding a sore spot (sort of like slow finger painting, but using more pressure) is much like the "treatment" itself. slowly, gently, firmly pressing. My thumb is the best choice for the sustained pressure after a sore spot is found. The spots can be anywhere, and I move to different spots in the same "session."

The relief can be immediate, not always, but mostly dependable. It doesn't cost a penny, and the more I did it, the better I got at knowing what works for me. This part will sound strange, but it is what it is. Sometimes the spot that helps is somewhere on the roof of my mouth.

The other way I do it is with an electric massager on the bones of my face and head. This can have a fairly interesting effect.

Strange as it sounds, the spots that work best for me are around my eyes, ears and lower jaw. I "discovered" it once when I had a really intense neck headache, and was rubbing my face in frustration, and thought, "Even my face hurts." I had been unaware that my face was tender, and it went from there. I always knew I was a little nutty.

My spine is deteriorating, I have some level of pain every day, and I usually do these things when pain is keeping me awake, so it's dark and quiet, and I usually fall asleep while doing it.

If doing it yourself doesn't help, you can still go get treatment from someone else, and they may well know other methods that work better. I just wanted to let you know that you may be able to also help yourself, get some relief, while waiting for an appointment with someone.

I have had it done several times by a physical therapist. It definitely works, although I think massage works just as well.

The practitioner applies steady pressure for several minutes to one spot, and then the muscles start moving. It is a very strange feeling when your muscles are moving and your brain isn't telling them to.

Thanks, I wonder what the harm in it is they are talking about at the end.

From the Mayo Clinic:

"Many studies have found that massage, chiropractic manipulation and similar manual therapies work as well as other treatments for back pain. Few studies, however, have tested myofascial release therapy specifically, partly because the exact elements of myofascial release therapy vary from therapist to therapist."

http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/back-pain/expert-answers/myofascial-release/faq-20058136

Well those normal methods don't work for what I have so I have to try something new and this sounds like the issue I'm dealing with so I got to atleast give it a try.

After a 6 hour surgery the Removed tissues edges had reconnected through layers of sutures, and moved muscles and tissues necessarily detached and reconnected or reconstructed sufficient for functioning the scars healed. The tissues mended. The structures moved grew reconnected. Reconstructing strong surfaces mended, but sometimes the area ached when I bend (ed) or reaching
Stretching strong scars needed to keep econstrcucted wounds from falling apart , even the scars could hurt despite damaged in cut across nerves.

Wow. Collateral damage to saving lives.... physical therapy stretching out scars, areas near scars (muscles sutured through all layers) you only see the surface. A physical therapist can find and feel bands of tissue scars tugging into muscles or through surfaces ... this might be fascia or some name. It is tugging strictures of tight strong tissue grown connected with healed scars. The right physical therapist made the next step into reclaiming life for me after my life saving surgery.

Perhaps you can find one too, if that's what you need. A neck a knee a hip a back belly pelvis whatever it is a shoulder after surgery healed you may be sent to recovery in physical therapy. They are geniuses.

my DW was in a Serious, DE-billitating car wreck, and this helped her a lot

It was done by an RN who called it 'Trigger-Point therapy'.

Good Luck!

This all started from a car wreck so if it helped her I hope to god it helps me I go in tomorrow. They said I wont tell a difference after the first session so that's disappointing.

Had abdominal surgery and supposedly it was the fascia that had formed scar tissue and was causing pain.

Cost me $1000 total and the guy came on to me while I was lying on his table. Also it hurt.

Turned out I had broken my pelvis and no one diagnosed it (despite my going to 5 or 6 doctors about the pain and multiple sessions of physical therapy that made the pain worse.)

Oh man that's not good at all

being female I have never worked with a physical therapist that wasn't also female. you know that may sound biased against males however there are constraints not only to physical pain, shared pain, explorations of pain- and after surgery what was, what is, what might have been setting expectations together exploring, adventuring what possibilities the rebuilt body can attain to-

men might know everything, might know how to get there, might be able to communicate, but in physical therapy to facilitate it involves the physical therapists' hands on my body/ on the patients body everywhere as needed.

Hurting isn't acceptable. hurting during a procedure after hurting needing a surgery and hurting healing isn't acceptable because you are going in to face collateral damage from a life saving surgery - which hurt before and after. So having a males hands on or near the surgery site causing pain- i don't know how you could handle it.

priesthood is annoying enough without projecting onto that ( imagining and feeling during the here and now moment- but with a built in resistance to a care taker in the moment now, because of just resentment from another similar stature, similar sex, or similar person who harmed you earlier on in life) i just think its amazing how the lds church can intefere with the here and now- even getting physical therapy, because of lds priesthood issues it makes some care givers less believable...

i hope you are better. What would you suggest doing differently to avoid a repeat for any one else going through this?

Not sure what I would do differently. Had my fractured pelvis been diagnosed, I wouldn't have gone to PT and then to Rolfing.

I've had men and women therapists. I'll take either type. The Rolfer who came on to me was just a jackass. I should have sued for my money back.

Here's how the doctor visits went:

Me: My hip hurts (pointing to my hip bone.)

Doctor(s): That's not your hip. Your hip is inside your body.

Me: Well, it hurts right here (pointing to my hip bone.)

Doctor: Do you have thoughts of suicide?

Me: No, I have thoughts of homicide.

It took a bone scan ordered by a neurologist to diagnose the fractured pelvis. Oddly, it was right where I kept pointing!

I've had a lot of bad diagnoses. When I think a doctor is not listening to me, I go find another doctor. I have a lot to say on this, but it would be too much IRL info.

I know what you mean I only see women for counseling and psychiatry and that may spread to pt pretty soon here and possibly doctors. I just don't get along with men I always have to battle and I've only been wrong a couple times when an MRI showed nothing and that's why I'm going to try myofacial release.

You can do a lot of myofascial work on yourself with balls and rollers. Check out YouTube for ball massage for neck pain. Many people use a tennis ball but I prefer a slightly firmer rubber ball. I am a yoga teacher and we use balls in class fairly often.

I just read the Wikipedia article and was struck by how very different the "background and terminology" section was from the "effectiveness" section. The juxtaposition is in fact bizarre.

As described (accurately) in "background," MFR is a form of massage therapy. As Nevermoinpalmyro notes, it employs foam rollers and lacrosse balls as well as masseuse-mediated massage. This stuff is widely accepted and practiced in every good gym in the US. it is also used by professional sports teams. The purpose is to release "trigger points" which can be self-perpetuating and to increase blood flow to tissues in order to accelerate workout recovery. This stuff works, and there really isn't debate about it.

The "effectiveness" section of the Wikipedia article, however, says that there is insufficient evidence that MFR can successfully treat cancer. I find that stunning. How could massage therapy have that sort of effect?? We've bridged over into insanity here, and I have never met an MFR therapist who would claim such a thing.

Badassadam has a neck problem. Often neck problems result from injured muscle tissues that impinge on nerves. That is something that MFR could resolve either temporarily or possibly permanently. It's worth a shot for him although I am stunned to read that some people think it could cure cancer. I'm also saddened to see the tin-foil hat folks try to hijack the term for their own inscrutable purposes.

I really hope it's not like a tin foil type practice that's why I really want to know if it's legit but for the most part it sounds alright.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The "effectiveness" section of the Wikipedia
> article, however, says that there is insufficient
> evidence that MFR can successfully treat cancer.
> I find that stunning. How could massage therapy
> have that sort of effect?? We've bridged over
> into insanity here, and I have never met an MFR
> therapist who would claim such a thing.

Of course massage therapy *can't* have that sort of effect.
But also of course, some "practitioners" of MR, not content with providing useful massage, started to make woo-woo claims about what it can do. They started claiming it could cure certain cancers. That it could lower your blood pressure (which *almost* is reasonable, except that some of the claims were that you could get off your HBP medication completely with MR several times a day, which is completely false). That it would improve your metabolism, that it would improve your digestion, that it would "increase free radicals" and so PREVENT cancer. And on and on.

It's massage. It can feel really good. It can relax you. It can loosen tight muscles and increase blood flow where you are being massaged. It *can't* do miraculous, wondrous things. And the MR "practitioners" claiming it can are con artists on a par with JS.

You are probably right. It was perhaps inevitable that idiots would take the rhetoric to the far reaches of idiocy.

I will go slightly farther than you, though, with regard to blood pressure. There are therapists who combine MR with meditation. Sometimes if you are dealing with persistent muscular imbalances or trauma, meditation can help prevent, or at least slow, the recurrence of the muscular tightening. Meditation becomes an adjunct to the massage therapy.

In that context, the combination can lower blood pressure--exactly as meditation alone can do. Although the effect is significant and quantifiable, it is not permanent. And there is nothing supernatural about it. It is no more and no less than the effects generated by effective meditation.

I'm self-consciously adding a lot of caveats lest I be read as providing any support for the wackos. MR is massage therapy and can achieve the results of massage therapy; meditation is meditation and can achieve the results that credible research attributes to it. Nothing more.

Make sure you change your pillow to see if this is causing your neck pain. Sleeping on bad pillow can be the cause of neck problems.

I'm sure my sleep and pillow have something to do with it but I have changed pillows a lot it's hard to find a really good one.

Is there a name of a really good pillow that I could go find?

A small roll from the "back" store inside a regular pillow. Works great for me.

Therapuetica is good for side sleeping. I went to a size smaller than recommended since it is so hard and nonflexible.

The "back" store roll inside the pillowcase is my favorite to date. I like to throw out my pillows every 6 months or so.

I just bought a new style I never tried before it seems comfortable hopefully it helps

This book helped us understand my wife's neck problem.

https://www.amazon.com/Myofascial-Pain-Dysfunction-Trigger-Extremities/dp/0683083678

Alright was her problem Myofascial? I tried the therapy today and it's half strange but half makes sense to me so I don't know what to make of it yet, it seemed to reduce my pain a little bit so far so that's good.