Chronic conditions can be complex and less responsive to treatment, but even some of these issues can be resolved in as little as 6 weeks. You may not experience immediate relief from one session, but you should feel the improvement the next day. It may take several sessions to completely eliminate a trigger point. After each session, it is important to drink plenty of water to help flush out waste material from your muscles.
This is because the biochemical environment of the activation points is acidic and contains many metabolites that cause pain. Keep in mind that the clinical trials they are based on would have considered that success was due to pain relief rather than the elimination of trigger points. Trigger points are usually very tender to the touch and can refer pain to other parts of the body. This strategy may be especially beneficial when an injection at the trigger point is initially used to reduce pain in people who are unable to perform physical therapy or stretching due to severe pain.
So trigger point massage is an experimental treatment for pain, but it's worth trying anyway. Research indicates that no one really knows the exact tissue that makes you feel the trigger points. As long as you don't experience any negative reaction, you should massage any trigger points that seem to need it at least twice a day, and up to half a dozen times a day. Quintner, Cohen and Bove believe that the most popular theory about the nature of trigger points (muscle tissue injuries) is “flawed both in reasoning and in science, and that treatment based on that idea achieves results “indistinguishable” from the placebo effect.
Myofascial pain and trigger points are very common and occur in approximately 85% of people at some point in their lives. On the other hand, some people don't get significant results with trigger point release therapy until at least three days after treatment, which is the case with most acute problems. Ask about physical therapy to help treat your triggers and start participating in an active treatment program to make a positive difference with your triggers. Sometimes, trigger points become very sensitive, and some people feel severe pain in areas where they have trigger points. I have more than 30 clinical studies on the various therapies with triggers and releases, but unfortunately, since they have chosen to set their goals as (temporary) relief rather than elimination, they are of little use.