Muscle Spasm and Pain

Which came first, the muscle spasm or the pain?

Every muscle in your body is attached to a bone, but just like the chicken and the egg, a muscle spasm can cause pain and pain can cause a muscle spasm!

Often, when we experience pain a muscle spasm pulls nearby joints out of place, causing a condition known as joint sublaxation. Similarly, if a joint is sublaxated, nearby muscles may spasm in response.

Does it matter which happened first?
Usually, by the time pain has caused you to look for help from the doctor or therapist the cycle of pain and spasm has already begun. Pain causes spasm which pulls joints out of alignment, which more spasm and more pain!

Ultimately, the body accommodates to this cycle and the muscles stay tightened in the contracted state. After two days of spasm, the muscles will adapt to their new unnatural painful state and resist relaxation. The pain may even subside a bit during this adaptation, but now the body is adjusting to the muscles and the joints that are now in improper positions. Individuals can live for years unaware of the problem (as I did!). Many people only seek help when the pain becomes intolerable.

The longer that a muscle is in spasm, the longer it takes to treat the area that is sublaxated. The muscle tissue actually resists the normal relaxed position of the bones. Therefore the longer the condition has been tolerated the more treatments are likely to be required, but not necessarily with all people. Once the pain and spasm cycle has been broken, your muscles can return to their natural pain free state.

Muscle Spasm & Other Conditions
Muscle spasm in specific muscles can have other effects on the body. For example, if the muscles of the neck go into spasm, it can lead to muscle tension headaches. Spasm in the scalene muscles (in the front of the neck) can put pressure on nearby nerves and blood vessels, resulting in numbness, pain or tingling in the arms or hands. Spasms of the small piriformis muscle in the buttocks can cause sciatica pain. If the diaphragm muscle spasms, hiccups may result.

When muscles in the bask spasm, spinal bones can be pulled out of alignment and the result can be interference with nerve function. Imbalances in the muscle groups can also lead to poor posture, which can cause further complications.

There are many conditions that result from these muscle spasms throughout the body. Also, once these conditions become normal for the body, other pressures will be place on internal organs giving rise to a mountain of further imbalances in the body.

Exercises to:
Treat Sciatica
General Mobility Exercises
Neck Exercises

We will continue this thread on Muscle Spasms and Pain and offer the best form of pain relief from experience with our members. If you have a particular treatment that you favour for muscle spasms, please write in and let us know!

The day-to-day issues

Hey, fellow ScoNuts.

Sorry for my lack of posts, but minus the surgery, there's nothing very interesting about my day-to-day life. At least, nothing none of you aren't already painfully familiar with.

I moved in with my boyfriend, and he's being wonderful to me. He does everything for me, despite my protests; consequently, I have become even more sedentary (I didn't realize that was possible), so my pain has skyrocketed. I know I'm gaining weight, too. I still don't have insurance, but I have the option to buy a policy from the company that used to insure me. Of course, who's going to insure me with a spine like mine? At best, it'll be labeled a preexisting condition and excluded completely. So I have to apply and be approved for disability before I can go back to St. Louis, and God only knows how many years that will take.

Dr. Bones wanted me to wait ten more years, and now it looks like I might have to. :( I've got some tips about good disability lawyers, though, so I'm not without hope. I just know all too well how frustrating and drawn-out the process is.

My biggest problem now is trying to get stronger and healthier. Eating better is where I've decided start, then exercising. I have yet to find my exercise plan among all of the moving boxes. Everyone says walk, but I actually find that to be one of the most painful things to do, which leads to the issue of pain control. I really want to lose the extra weight I've been putting on and strengthen my muscles, which will lessen my pain, but the smallest things are excruciating to me now and make starting that process difficult.

I love my TENS unit, but the stickies are $60 a pack, and the way I use it, they don't last long. Insurance never covered much of the cost anyway, so I don't use the TENS much anymore. Thermacare heat wraps work great, but you can't adjust their position after you stick them on. I'm also starting to build up tolerance to my pills.

I've found having a drink to be an effective muscle relaxer, but it's not very practical as a long-term solution. And on, and on...

I'll try to post occasionally, but I don't feel like I have much to say now. I realized yesterday that I would be in St. Louis right now, had things gone differently. It's such a bummer. Catch me on Twitter, @oddcupcake. I'm a little bit more interesting there.

AIS - Nervous Systems

Scoliosos Journal discusses the pathogenesis of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis in girls - a double neuro-osseous theory involving disharmony between two nervous systems, somatic and autonomic expressed in the spine and trunk: possible dependency on sympathetic nervous system and hormones with implications for medical therapy.

Authors: R Geoffrey Burwell, Ranjit K Aujla, Michael P Grevitt, Peter H Dangerfield, Alan Moulton, Tabitha L Randell and Susan I Anderson

Published: 31 October 2009

Anthropometric data from three groups of adolescent girls - preoperative adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS), screened for scoliosis and normals were analysed by comparing skeletal data between higher and lower body mass index subsets. Unexpected findings for each of skeletal maturation, asymmetries and overgrowth are not explained by prevailing theories of AIS pathogenesis.

A speculative pathogenetic theory for girls is formulated after surveying evidence including:
(1) the thoracospinal concept for right thoracic AIS in girls;
(2) the new neuroskeletal biology relating the sympathetic nervous system to bone formation/resorption and bone growth;
(3) white adipose tissue storing triglycerides and the adiposity hormone leptin which functions as satiety hormone and sentinel of energy balance to the hypothalamus for long-term adiposity; and
(4) central leptin resistance in obesity and possibly in healthy females. The new theory states that AIS in girls results from developmental disharmony expressed in spine and trunk between autonomic and somatic nervous systems. The autonomic component of this double neuro-osseous theory for AIS pathogenesis in girls involves selectively increased sensitivity of the hypothalamus to circulating leptin (genetically-determined up-regulation possibly involving inhibitory or sensitizing intracellular molecules, such as SOC3, PTP-1B and SH2B1 respectively), with asymmetry as an adverse response (hormesis); this asymmetry is routed bilaterally via the sympathetic nervous system to the growing axial skeleton where it may initiate the scoliosis deformity (leptin-hypothalamic-sympathetic nervous system concept = LHS concept).

In some younger preoperative AIS girls, the hypothalamic up-regulation to circulating leptin also involves the somatotropic (growth hormone/IGF) axis which exaggerates the sympathetically-induced asymmetric skeletal effects and contributes to curve progression, a concept with therapeutic implications. In the somatic nervous system, dysfunction of a postural mechanism involving the central body schema fails to control, or may induce, the spinal deformity of AIS in girls (escalator concept). Biomechanical factors affecting ribs and/or vertebrae and spinal cord during growth may localize AIS to the thoracic spine and contribute to sagittal spinal shape alterations.

The developmental disharmony in spine and trunk is compounded by any osteopenia, biomechanical spinal growth modulation, disc degeneration and platelet calmodulin dysfunction. Methods for testing the theory are outlined. Implications are discussed for neuroendocrine dysfunctions, osteopontin, sympathoactivation, medical therapy, Rett and Prader-Willi syndromes, infantile idiopathic scoliosis, and human evolution. AIS pathogenesis in girls is predicated on two putative normal mechanisms involved in trunk growth, each acquired in evolution and unique to humans.

Download the complete article as a PDF and read more about the pathogenesis of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis in girls - a double neuro-osseous theory involving disharmony between two nervous systems, somatic and autonomic expressed in the spine and trunk: possible dependency on sympathetic nervous system and hormones with implications for medical therapy

Disability Living Allowance Under Threat

Senior minister confirms DLA is under threat

Published: 15 October 2009

The truth is finally out. A senior government minister this week confirmed to the House of Lords that axing DLA has definitely not been ruled out, directly contradicting care minister Phil Hope’s earlier claim that DLA is safe

Last month we reported that care minister Phil Hope had told a Disability Now reporter in an off-the-cuff exchange at the Labour Party conference that:

"DLA is not under threat and people can be very happy".

(“DLA is not under threat . . . be very happy” says government minister)

Since then, however, there has been an alarming lack of official confirmation that DLA is not one of the disability benefits that the government intends to axe in order to fund the proposed new national care service.

The reason for that lack of confirmation is now clear: Phil Hope's 'don't worry, be happy' statement does not reflect government policy.

Lord McKenzie of Luton, parliamentary under-secretary of state for the DWP, was responding to a question from veteran disability campaigner Lord Ashley of Stoke, who had asked which disability benefits the government are 'considering integrating into the wider social care budget in England'.

Lord McKenzie replied:

"At this stage, we do not want to rule out any options and so are considering all disability benefits."

Later in the same debate, Lord Low of Dalston specifically referred to the "reported statement by the Minister for Care Services that disability living allowance is not under threat" and asked for confirmation that neither component of disability living allowance "is being considered as a possible source of funding for social care".

Once again, Lord McKenzie’s response was in direct contradiction of Hope's "be very happy" statement:

"My Lords, as I said in answer to the first Question, currently no particular benefit is ruled out of consideration."

The minister did go on to add, somewhat cryptically:

"We are conscious of the fact that DLA is overwhelmingly used by people who are under 65, and obviously care needs are overwhelmingly for people who are older."

Whilst there is still much – deliberate – uncertainty around their precise intentions, Lord McKenzie's statement represents the first clear admission by the government that axing DLA is a real possibility.

Had it not been for the thousands of emails and letters sent by Benefits and Work campaigners to MPs, disability organisations and the Big Care Debate website there is no doubt that the threat to DLA would have remained hidden behind a curtain of political spin until it was too late to do anything about it.

Now the truth is finally and officially out in the open and there's still time to for you to act.

Post your comments on the Big Care Debate website


Sign the No 10 petition DLA & AA Petition

You can read the whole transcript of the short debate on the They Work For You website

Assessment of Angle velocity in girls with AIS

ScoliosisJournal report about Correction: Assessment of angle velocity in girls with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis

Authors: Ferran Escalada, Ester Marco, Roser Belmonte, Esther Duarte, Josep Ma Muniesa, Roser Boza, Marta Tejero and Enric Cáceres

Publiushed: 10 October 2009

Background
Although it has been demonstrated that the peak height velocity (PHV) is a predictive factor of progression in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS), little is known about the usefulness of angle progression in clinical practice. The purpose of this study was to establish a relationship between height and angle velocities, as well as to determine if peak angle velocity (PAV) occurs at the same time than PHV.

Methods
A retrospective study of a cohort of girls with idiopathic scoliotic curves greater than 10°. Data of 132 girls who participated in a previous retrospective study about growth in AIS were used to calculate height and angle velocities. Relationship between height and angle velocities was estimated by the use of a Linear Mixed Model.

Results
PHV and PAV take place simultaneously 1 year before menarche in progressive curves managed with a brace in AIS. Changes in angle velocity are influenced by changes in height growth velocity, in such a way that as from 6 months post-menarche, height growth velocity in this group of girls estimates curve progression velocity (β-coefficient -0.88, p = 0.04).

Conclusion
As from 6 months post-menarche, there is an inverse relationship between height velocity and curve progression in the group of AIS girls with progressive curves managed with a brace. Because height velocity is decreasing from 1 year before menarche, this finding corroborates that at the end of puberty, there is still a risk of progression in this group of girls despite bracing. The assessment of both height and angle velocity might be useful in clinical practice at the time of assessing brace effectiveness and how long bracing has to be indicated.

Correction
After publication of this work [1], we noted that we inadvertently failed to include the complete list of all coauthors. The full list of authors has now been added and the Authors' contributions and Competing interests section modified accordingly.

Competing Interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Authors' Contributions
FE conceived and designed the study, performed analysis and interpretation of data, carried the assessments and gave final approval of the version to be published. EM contributed to acquisition, analysis and interpretation of data and was involved in drafting the manuscript. RBe contributed to design, analysis and interpretation of data and reviewed the article critically for important intellectual content. ED and JMM revised critically for important intellectual contents. RBo and MT contributed to acquisition of data and analysis. EC participated in its design, revised critically for intellectual contents and gave final approval of the version to be published. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Read more about the assessment of angle velocity in girls with Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis

Medical Marijuana: The Debate Continues

Medical marijuana debate has multiple dimensions: medical, political, personal

Linda Yelvington rattles off her list of ailments: Severe scoliosis. A prosthetic hip. Cervical degenerative disc disease. DeQuerin’s syndrome in both wrists. Arthritis. Breathing problems from diminished lung capacity because of scoliosis.

The 54-year-old woman then rattles off a list of painkillers she has taken for her health problems.

Author: Derek Spellman

Linda Yelvington rattles off her list of ailments: Severe scoliosis. A prosthetic hip. Cervical degenerative disc disease. DeQuerin’s syndrome in both wrists. Arthritis. Breathing problems from diminished lung capacity because of scoliosis.

The 54-year-old woman then rattles off a list of painkillers she has taken for her health problems.

“None of them are working right,” Yelvington said of the legal drugs, listing some of their side effects.

It has been several months since she has taken her preferred painkiller — marijuana — because it's not legal in Missouri, USA.

She contends it works just as well, if not better, with fewer side effects. Yelvington, who started taking marijuana years ago, is well-versed in studies about marijuana's medicinal use.

Asked if the issue of legalizing marijuana for medical use is personal or political for her, she replied, “I think it’s a compassion issue.”

Activists, meanwhile, are gathering support for a statewide initiative that would ask Missouri voters to approve medical marijuana.

The forthcoming debate will likely have two dimensions — one medical and political. Both will be personal.

‘Not harmless’

On the medical debate, both sides cite research and a roster of supporters to back their claims.

A local physician said a lot depends on whether the discussion is about someone who is terminally ill and in agony or whether it is about someone who will have to deal with the long-term effects of using the drug.

“Marijuana is not harmless,” added Matthew Miller, a medical oncologist from Freeman Health System.

The medical debate is also attended by a political debate about whether the marijuana issue is an act of compassion for the dying, or a Trojan horse for outright legalization of recreational use of the drug.

Yelvington, a member of the Joplin chapter of the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws (NORML), acknowledged that she would likely advocate for the outright legalization of marijuana even if she didn’t have medical problems. She also acknowledged that the debates over medical marijuana and outright legalization overlap.

Still, she and a number of activists said they believe the two issues can be separated to an extent. They also reject claims that one automatically leads to the other.


I must interject here: the people against Marijuana always claim that it will lead to Cocaine, Heroine, Crack etc. Let me throw a spanner into the works here, does tobacco lead to harder drugs? Smoking tobacco is worse than smoking THC's (found in Marijuana for pain). The people that move to harder drugs is usually due to something else not because they smoked dope - get real people! The people who are drug addicts are not usually people in chronic pain from an illness, all you need do is look around at the drug addicts and see for yourself! On another note the people who say we should not allow people in chronic pain to use Marijuana are usually pain free themselves so I ask -what do they know anyway? Are OTC drugs any better? Are the drugs prescribed by Drs any better for our health? Drs claim "drugs prescribed are herbal anyway because majority of the content is from a plant" well back at ya where Marijuana is concerned, this too is a plant that grows wild so why disallow people to use it?

But there are skeptics.

Notoriety
The Joplin area gained a measure of notoriety in recent years for marijuana activism. Joplin has been host to the Cannabis Revival and already seen one push to put a question to voters about lessening penalties for possession of the drug. That petition did not get the required number of signatures for the ballot.

Missouri Southern State University recently ranked No. 20 on High Times magazine's list of the top 20 colleges for marijuana activism. And earlier this year, the then-mayor of Cliff Village, south of Joplin, claimed that his board of trustees had passed a "symbolic" ordinance that would have legalized the drug inside the village for medical use, although a number of residents later disputed whether that ordinance was ever actually passed.

Yelvington, who moved to Goodman from Kentucky in March, said she first experimented with marijuana decades ago, as many others did.

"I didn’t equate it with pain relief at the time," she said, although in later years she said she discovered it worked better for her as an antiphlegmatic and for curbing depression and muscle spasms.

But now that she is lives in Southwest Missouri, she turns to legal painkillers.

"I have to, because I can’t have medical marijuana in Joplin," she said.

Yelvington said she has family in Missouri and she would like to stay, but she has not ruled out moving to California, Colorado or New Mexico, which have medical marijuana laws in place. Ten other states also allow some form of medical marijuana, according to NORML.

But even in states that have legalized medical marijuana, it is still technically illegal for doctors to prescribe their patients marijuana under federal law, according to Keith Stroup, the legal counsel and founder of NORML. Instead, in those states, patients must have proof that doctors "recommend" marijuana for their patients.

But the patient is still "left to your own imagination" in how they go about obtaining the marijuana, Stroup said.

A few states allow the operation of not-for-profit "dispensaries" that act as cooperatives to supply patients, but otherwise a patient either must grow the plant themselves, have a designated caregiver cultivate the plant or obtain it on the black market, Stroup said.

Even patients in those 13 states who use medical marijuana are still violating federal law, Stroup said. The practical effect, though, is one of sparing the patients from penalties under local and state laws, which spares them from federal investigation. More than 99 percent of marijuana cases are handled on the state and local level, he said.

I hope this lady wins her fight against medical marijuana and I also hope the people who are against can just stop to think for one minute how they would cope if they had chronic pain to fight every day they woke up!

I had Scoliosis surgery 20 years ago and I have suffered as a result ever since, all I have ever been offered is pills, pills and more chuffing pills. I have tried marijuana for pain and have to agree that it works better for muscle spasms (a common complaint of mine).

Well, crap.

Well, my fame as a blogger seems to be short-lived. Unfortunately I've lost my health insurance, and I won't be having surgery after all. I found out about two weeks ago, but it's been hard to organize my thoughts since then. At first I was extremely relieved, which really surprised me. I hadn't realized I was that scared. Now I'm just crushed. I'm really depressed about it. I had a muscle spasm an hour ago, and it lasted over 15 minutes. I can finally move again, but it's still hurting. Oh, well. Dr. Bones wanted me to wait ten years anyway. Hopefully Dr. STL will still be practicing in ten years.