As a Soft Tissue OT, I see a lot of people with “referred pain” and they’ve often been down a very long road trying to get rid of it.
What is “referred pain” you might ask? Essentially, it’s pain being felt in one area that may be originating from an entirely different area all together.
Which can be challenging in itself! For example, pain in the foot can be coming from the muscles in the back of your hip. Pain in the head can be coming from the muscles in your neck. Pain in the front of the shoulder can be coming from a muscle on the back of your shoulder blade or pain wrapping around your lower back can actually be referring from your stomach muscles. You get the idea! The charts in these pictures show some of the more common referred pain patterns in the body.
Referred pain can be one of the most frustrating types of pain for people to experience. Often people will receive treatment on the “obvious” area that seems to be causing the problem, only to have very little change. Even more frustratingly, scans, xrays and even MRIs come back clear and the problem is no closer to being solved. Referred pain is invisible to many scans, diagnostic tests and assessments.
However soft tissue therapy reduces referred pain by working on specific referral patterns and nerve pathways.
I work with many different types of referred pain to relieve symptoms, reduce inflammation and get you back to doing what you’d like to be doing – living life comfortably and well.
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