trigger points Wed Jul 14th @ 10:00am
More muscle knot squishing science
Odd! Just a couple days after posting about a not-yet-published study of trigger point squishing — quite a rare subject for research — I came across (via @massagetherapy) an almost identical study that is published. They also reported news that makes massage therapists smile:
…using ischemic compression on shoulder trigger points may reduce the symptoms of patients experiencing chronic shoulder pain.
These studies look so much alike that if you put them both in the same cute little sailor suits you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. They’re both rather simple and small, they both studied “ischemic pressure” — pressing and holding a trigger point or “muscle knot” until it’s a bit oxygen-starved — and they both produced an unambiguously thumbs-up of a result.
Indeed, this research showed an impressive treatment effect: a score measuring shoulder discomfort went down a whopping 75% in those treated, compared to a mere 30% reduction in people who received treatment in a nearby location. That’s a humongous difference and a great demonstration of a principle I’m always pimping on SaveYourself.ca: therapies should have no problem demonstrating their benefits in a fair test. The results should impress.
And these results impress.
Mostly.
Caveats!
These glowingly positive results will tend to perpetuate assumptions about the nature of trigger points. Even considered together, these two studies cannot be said to actually “prove” anything. They are still too small and their results might not be due to the actual treatment.
One obvious problem, for instance, is that both experiments compared treatment in the right place to treatment in the wrong place. This flings the door wide open for a major confounding factor: patients with shoulder pain would be well aware the sham treatment is a sham, probably dramatically decreasing their satisfaction and expectation of benefit. Meanwhile, people getting treatment in the “right” place will likely feel much better about the treatment and have much higher hopes: rich soil for a placebo effect.
Unfortunately, it is quite plausible that both of these studies simply showed that poking people’s trigger points gives great placebo.
This science stuff is tricky!
Still, we’ll file it all under “promising.” If the effect was a placebo, it was an awfully potent one.
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