Marketing

DJ Wright

Technical Writing

STAB MY MUSCLE!?

Muscle knots, muscle spasms, or cramps is medically called myofascial (myo-muscle and fascial-tissue) trigger points. A muscle knot or cramp is when fibers of a muscle group contract or tighten while the rest of the muscle attempts to relax or stretch. These muscle knots can be cause by an unexpected trauma, working out, or even from sleeping the “wrong way”. We all experience a muscle knot or cramp in your life. These occurrences could make us walk a little funny perhaps, with a limp for a couple of days or at worst a muscle spasm could limit the way we live our life. What can we do to heal faster, to recover without missing a beat? Comment by Joshua Karsten: are Comment by Joshua Karsten: happens when Comment by Joshua Karsten: caused Comment by Joshua Karsten: “wrong way.” The period always goes inside the quote mark when used at the end of the sentence. Who are you quoting? Add a citation or remove the quotes. Comment by Joshua Karsten: Unnecessary Comment by Joshua Karsten: Lives…we = lives. Comment by Joshua Karsten: Good intro. Use a heading to let the user know it is an introduction. In your introduction…let the reader know what they are about to read….it takes you a while to get to the point of it all after visiting a phys therapist…then you finally get to the stabbing part.

You might stretch three times a day, or preform yoga every Sunday, no matter what you do. You still suffer from a muscle knot. The next step would be to seek farther medical care. In this case I would suggest visiting a Physical Therapy Clinic. Physical Therapy has many avenues and a wide scope of rehab practices so for the simplicity of this article we will focus on therapy as delivering medical solutions in the way of educating and providing physical therapeutic techniques to treat or rehab ones muscles, joints, or injuries that limit their way of life. Such as sitting in a chair, walking or being able to reach above their head. Having a muscle knot, or spasm could prevent you from walking to turning your head while you drive or limit your ability to pick something off the floor. Comment by Joshua Karsten: Further Comment by Joshua Karsten: Missing a comma Comment by Joshua Karsten: I suggest…speak in the active voice Comment by Joshua Karsten: THis is a run-on sentence. Break it up to be less confusing. Comment by Joshua Karsten: This is not a complete sentence. Comment by Joshua Karsten: Active voice. Try: Muscle knots and spasms prevent…

Next time this happens and you find yourself in a physical therapy office ask the Therapist about, “dry needling.” What is dry needling or more correctly defined as trigger point dry needling (TDN)? In short this invasive technique is where a skilled therapist takes a needle, much a like an acupuncture needle and drives the needle into your muscle fibers. Comment by Joshua Karsten: Active voice Ask your therapist, next time you… Comment by Joshua Karsten: Dry needling! This is the topic you are describing, correct? This should be in the intro. The back ground info is important as to why you may choose this process, but your description needs to focus on what dry needling is and how the process works. Comment by Joshua Karsten: Missing a comma Comment by Joshua Karsten: Process, not a place.

Before “dry” needling you could say therapist and physicians used “wet” needling. (Needling is being used as an action such as “injection”) A wet injection would be finding a muscle knot and injecting a liquid steroid into the area. This would cause the surrounding muscle fibers to release the contraction and by the time steroid wears off the muscle fiber has relaxed to normal (normal being the state of which the muscle was before the injury). In dry needling the steroid is not present. Thus there is no need to injection anything into the muscle. In 1940, Karel Lewit, MD, DSc. Displayed how the simple insertion of a “dry” needle carried more therapeutic benefit than the injected medication. Comment by Joshua Karsten: Wet injection finds…active voice Comment by Joshua Karsten: This causes Comment by Joshua Karsten: Missing commas. Comment by Joshua Karsten: The steroid is not present in dry needling. Comment by Joshua Karsten: Comma Comment by Joshua Karsten: Font?

Comment by Joshua Karsten: Label your graphic as Figure 1., provide an explanation and cite it if it is not your original work.

The first step of TDN is coming to the conclusion that this type of therapy is needed. The therapist would evaluate the patient and decide that TDN would overall benefit the patient recovery and rehab. Once the patient agrees to the treatment, the therapist would prepare the site of the needling. This usually involves wiping the site with an alcohol pad and putting gloves on. These are common precautions that the medical field would practice. Since the muscle knot is usually not involving the entirety of the muscle. The therapist would manually touch the muscle from the surface of the skin and attempt to feel for abnormal firmness. The patient’s vocal or visual discomfort would also assist in finding the best location for inserting the muscle knot. Once the site or location has been decided the therapy will carefully insert the needle. Depending on the severity of the muscle knot the needle could cause the muscle to contract or flex more and will bend the needle. Once the needle is in the muscle there are micro trauma to the muscle and capsule bleeding occurs. Bleed with aid in the healing process. Some therapist will twist the needle and by doing this causes the connective tissue in the muscle to stretch. Stretching the connective tissue will cause the muscle to release pain relieving chemicals. Through the micro trauma the muscle may twitch. This twitch is believed to be the muscle fibers response to muscle fibers stretching. As the chemicals are being released and as the fiber of the muscle that was once contracted continue to stretch due to the twitches the muscle then starts relax or return to the normalcy of the surrounding muscles. Blood flow is increased by the micro trauma which will also increase the oxygenated blood to the muscle. The blood will also cause myosin to be release, allowing the muscle to relax the contracted fibers as well. Comment by Joshua Karsten: Therapist evaluates Comment by Joshua Karsten: Decide Comment by Joshua Karsten: Not a complete sentance Comment by Joshua Karsten: Manually touches…the word “would” is not necessary Comment by Joshua Karsten: Assists Comment by Joshua Karsten: The therapist will…when…. Active voice. Avoid frontloading your sentances Comment by Joshua Karsten: The needle could cause…depending on… Avoid frontloading…speak in active voice. Comment by Joshua Karsten: Again…frontloading Comment by Joshua Karsten: Therapists Comment by Joshua Karsten: Fix your sentence structure to speak in active voice. This will make the description easier to understand and less wordy.

Following treatment a long gentle stretch of the muscle group is recommended. TDN is an aggressive treatment and should be consulted with a doctor or therapist before attempt and accepting risks. There are also so much more chemical reactions that takes place during a TDN treatment. I hope you have a basic understanding of the process and how theoretically on would benefit from the advances of intramuscular therapy.

Comment by Joshua Karsten: Figure 2., title and citation

@blueskypt

Resources: Comment by Joshua Karsten: List your references in APA format.

https://colepaintherapygroup.com/about-dry-needling/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzPpG8B5DE4

https://blueskypt.com/physical-therapy-treatments/trigger-point-dry-needling/