SaveYourself.ca • Sensible advice for aches, pains & injuries
published 5/26/10
Despite the profusion of online health care resources, there are only a few that I am keen to endorse. TriggerPointProducts.com is one of the few. Co-founder Jeff Lutz has demonstrated in our conversations that he is an unusually ethical practitioner and entrepreneur, and unusually well-informed about evidence-based medicine. Like me, he’s inclined to undersell — to emphasize the limitations of trigger point therapy, to speak candidly about risks and benefits, and to freely (almost enthusiastically) acknowledge mystery and uncertainty.
I interviewed Jeff about The Trigger Point Products Symptom Checker, a unique online reference tool to help both patients and professionals visually identify the “muscle knots” that may be causing pain, stiffness and other symptoms, and appropriate massage tools to assist in self-treatment. It is the only such reference of its kind online, to the best of my knowledge, and it is an ideal companion to my own e-book on trigger points — which has always lacked reference material, by design. I wanted to focus on principles and concepts, not reference material, particularly because creating a reference resource would have been such a mind-boggling amount of difficult work, and because excellent references have already existed in book and chart form for a long time. But just like my book is a unique online resource, Jeff’s symptom checker is the only online trigger point reference that I know of (aside from another version of it published on the NAMTPT website, which doesn't include product recommendations). Certainly it is the only one created by someone who shares my ethics.
Jeff Lutz has a practice in Greensburg, PA, the Pain Treatment and Wellness Center, and is one of the co-founders of TriggerPointProducts.com. Jeff served for 5.5 years on the Executive Committee of the National Association of Myofascial Trigger Point Therapists and teaches seminars in Myofascial Therapy, and the anatomy course at The Pittsburgh School of Pain Management.
Jeff Lutz has a practice in Greensburg, PA, the Pain Treatment and Wellness Center, and is one of the co-founders of TriggerPointProducts.com. Jeff served for 5.5 years on the Executive Committee of the National Association of Myofascial Trigger Point Therapists and teaches seminars in Myofascial Therapy, and the anatomy course at The Pittsburgh School of Pain Management.
Jeff Lutz It’s is a dynamic tool that helps practitioners and pain sufferers alike to identify the root of pain associated with activated trigger points.
When dealing with pain in the body from trigger points, we found the easiest way for people to identify the problem trigger points is by using pictures. I noticed that in my practice when a client would have a difficult time explaining their pain I would ask them to look at a trigger point diagram on the wall and tell me which pattern of pain looked most like theirs. The patient would look over all the possibilities; suddenly their finger would shoot out like a dart — “That one!”
After doing this enough times, I began to realize the potential for people to identify the muscular aspect of their pain so long as the medium is visual. Because trigger points refer pain in random, yet consistent patterns, we wanted to create a visual type of experience for the user to identify their pain.
There are 45 muscles outlined by the symptom checker (44 bilateral, one central). While this may sound like a small number considering there are over 600 muscles in the body, we have featured the muscles where trigger points most often form — the ones responsible for the vast majority of pain, tightness, and dysfunction.
When a user finds the pain pattern that looks most like their own pain, they can click on the image and read more. If it matches their pain, they can go further and click on a button to learn more, such as self-treatment options, how the muscle may have been injured, and activities to avoid. We are also careful to provide other possible causes of pain. Although we welcome visitors and know that they will find our Symptom Checker very useful, we also offer a warning: not every pain is caused by activated trigger points in muscles.
Jeff Lutz It took about 3 months to compile the information, which is mostly from the works of Drs. Travell and Simons, as well as from a few other select text books and publications in the field. In the Travell and Simons books, every muscle is comprehensively broken down and neatly explained. We wanted to take that information and remove the medical jargon so that it would be understandable to anyone.
I put most of the information together for my professional association, National Association of Myofascial Trigger Point Therapists (NAMTPT) in 2004 , but have to give credit to Sam Stanley, CMTPT who helped me get done in time by completing a couple muscles in the upper body.
Credit for the revision of the symptom checker, to include products, was very much a collaborative effort. Leia and Adam Shilobod, also co-founders, of InTech Solutions helped with a lot of our networking issues and the editing process. My brother, Adam Lutz, last of the co-founders, helped to get the product recommendation feature running smoothly and integrated with the symptom checker. Credit should also go to our web designer and graphic artist, Erich Sillett of Sillett Designs, who was patient enough to help us get all the images completed as well as to Dan Carr and Nick Marshall of Ethix Systems who help make all our programming possible.
Jeff Lutz The symptom checker is mostly converted Travell and Simons, but it does include elements of other prominent practitioners, such as Hans Kraus, MD among others. The product recommendations are from professional experience and are the ones we will really break into through video, blogging, etc in the near future.
Jeff Lutz Eventually we hope that just by launching the symptom checker a person becomes pain free. We’re a long way off.
The plan for the symptom checker is to take what we have now and begin producing still shots and eventually self treatment video routines that may be viewed by anyone. The site and symptom checker will constantly be evolving, but the spirit will stay the same. Let’s face it — muscle is one of the few internal pain generators that a person can manipulate themselves. [Which is precisely why it is such a major focus of this website! — Paul] We will strive to help people understand and better treat their bodies with regards to muscular pain while stressing the importance of getting a good diagnosis and therapists, if needed.
I know what you mean by style and feel of illustrations — to begin we will probably do still shots of someone (hopefully not me, but we do have a bunch of pics with me) using the tools with description. Once we generate some income we can then invest in a good illustrator.
Jeff Lutz The very nature of self treatment requires education, so we didn’t think “if we make this, we can drive more traffic to the site.” It’s more like we just regarded as an essential component of TriggerPointProducts.com — if you’re going to sell trigger point therapy tools, you need to provide educational materials.
When you think about it, we are all pretty well trained to live our lives in a certain way. We know the consequences of our (moral) actions, for the most part, and make decisions from there. When it comes to pain and lifestyle, can a reasonable person explain how to “best” live their lives? Probably not. A person that does everything “right” may develop pain anyway — just like some people who have never smoked still get lung cancer — but we believe there is a less chance of developing pain and dysfunction when certain precautions are taken.
We all play the probability game every day and, because there are so many variables to our lives, it is difficult to blame any one thing or even expect any one therapy to be the end all. I believe the practice to nearly everything requires some ‘artistic flare’ — medicine included. We can site all the studies in the world that show true benefit in medicine, but I’ll bet you money there is another study to refute them — and is on good merit. When it comes to studies, a good practitioner will determine whether or not the study is valid in their paradigm and a great one will expand their paradigm when compelling evidence is present. Everyone diagnoses and evaluates differently based on their training — right?
That being said, we believe the world needs things like the symptom checker, to add another layer of understanding on top of what doctors and therapists are telling people. We believe that as long as we are providing a service that has integrity, the dollars will take care of themselves. Better educated guesses with professional help is what we are promoting. “Stock tips” if you will — better than taking a random guess, most likely!
Jeff Lutz The idea for TriggerPointProducts.com came from a personal experience involving a simple purchase of cutlery. I was ready to purchase a trendy and pricey 9-piece set from a department store. Four hundred bucks for a set of knives, as far as I’m concerned, is a lot of money. I try to purchase good products that will serve me well and will not need to be replaced for a long time, if ever. So one day while walking through the kitchen of the country club where I was employed I thought to ask the sioux chef about knives.
“The knives you are looking to purchase are marketed to target you, the consumer — they come in a nice box, have a nice logo, but are not so great for the job. Check out brand ‘X’ cutlery because they only market to culinary professionals and you will get a much better product for the same money.” So I did and he was way right — not only did I get better knives, but I ended up saving money and am still happy with that purchase today!
So why was the chef able to give me such a great recommendation? Because he spent many years in his field and knows it very well. We are looking to recreate that service on TriggerPointProducts.com — to use our experience to help people find the best tools for self-treating muscle pain. All of the products we carry are high quality and the best we know of for the money, but not necessarily the most expensive. The symptom checker is just a great way of presenting our recommendations in a meaningful context. Got to deal with this kind of pain? Use this kind of tool.
