SaveYourself.ca • Sensible advice for aches, pains & injuries
This is a listing of updates made to the trigger points tutorial prior to 2010. They are provided for historical interest only, and as a “paper trail” demonstrating how the documents have been maintained. All newer updates are listed in the tutorial itself. Note: most of the links to specific locations within the trigger points tutorial will not work, as they are from obsolete editions.
Thursday, December 31, 2009 — Minor update: just added a couple of references, Calandre et al and Fernández-de-Las-Peñas et al, to substantiate the relationship between migraines and trigger points.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009 — A substantial new section makes the case for self-treatment: Fundamental limitations of trigger point therapy, and how to take advantage of them
Wednesday, November 25, 2009 — Upgraded the quality of the writing in an important section, Trigger point diagnosis is not reliable … but it may not matter that much.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 — A little smorg of updates today: (1) A lovely new illustration by Shayne Letain for the introduction! Look for the man with toxic waste signs sticking into his back. And (2) a new case study section with a fascinating success story, demonstrating “a terribly important basic piece of wisdom to ‘get’ for anyone who is prone to muscle pain.” And (3) just a bit of updating of the tools sections with the idea of a “bucket of balls.”
Friday, October 23, 2009 — As promised last week, there are now four new advanced sections about the use of medications to treat trigger point pain. These are major new sections with a whole bunch of useful information for patients and pros. This is the kind of content update that I particularly hope motivates past customers to pay a for a subscription renewal — at a low renewal price, which available to all past customers forever.
Also, all discussion of Botox (especially the Botox section) was updated with new scientific evidence that it’s not as effective a therapy for trigger point pain as we all hoped.
Friday, October 16, 2009 — Two new sections: “Muscle knots are not inflammatory: the myth of the inflamed myofascial trigger point” and “Common medications that might make a difference (and might not).” More advanced medication information to follow soon: this is just a summary of the basics so far.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009 — A substantial new section today: Trigger point diagnosis is not reliable … but it may not matter that much. I wrote about this a while back on the front page and it will be there and free for a while longer, but I’ve also added more information here and included some references to other studies.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009 — Several minor updates and refinements, not in any particular section.
Saturday, August 15, 2009 — It’s come to my attention that the trigger point treatment method of dry needling doesn’t have as much going for it as I used to think. I discuss the (lack of) evidence and problems in an overhaul of the section How about dry Needling and Intramuscular Stimulation (IMS) therapy? Since Dr. Chan Gunn is the doctor behind one of the most popular methods of dry needling (IMS), I also revised a section which was inspired by his ideas, “The bamboo cage” theory of muscle pain.
Thursday, August 13, 2009 — Completely re-wrote the section How about myofascial release and fascial stretching? which is accompanied by a new (free) general review of the clinical importance of fascia.
Friday, July 24, 2009 — Rewrote the section How about chiropractic joint adjustment and popping? It’s been condensed into more finely tuned summary, and links out to a new “special supplement” to the tutorial: a separate article covering the topic in much greater detail, accessible to tutorial customers only. As the SaveYourself.ca inventory of tutorials expands, such special supplements will be a useful new way of providing detailed information without repeating it in multiple tutorials. Please think of the special supplement as a part of the tutorial, that just happens to be on another page.
Thursday, July 16, 2009 — Physiatrists and rheumatologists added to Types of therapists and doctors and their relationship to trigger point therapy.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009 — Major bibliography update. The SaveYourself.ca bibliography has long been the largest of its kind. It contains an incredible amount of surprisingly readable information about musculoskeletal health science, and it is now possible for visitors to search and sort the bibliography with powerful new features. For instance, every source about trigger points referenced in this tutorial can now easily be displayed in a single search, with a variety of options.
Friday, June 12, 2009 — New section: “Quick-start trigger points” (access for customers only) describing the clinical characteristics and significance of extremely fast-activating and severe trigger points.
Monday, May 18, 2009 — Added an important point to the section, “From the frying pan of injury pain to the fire of trigger point pain,” about injuries that are so severely complicated and overshadowed by trigger point pain that the victims literally don’t even know that there is a physical trauma at the heart of the problem. This is also discussed in the recent article Widespread Chronic Pelvic Pain In a Runner With a Surprising Cause.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009 — The visual design of the site was upgraded over the past several days. Although this is not an update to the content of this tutorial, it is nevertheless a significant upgrade for all of them — like publishing new editions of books with better typesetting and layout. The new design is even cleaner and reader-friendly; it now looks that good in most web browsers; and pages load as much as 50% faster. Many under-the-hood improvements will make it much easier for me to improve tutorial content. The tutorials are now well-oiled machines of digital publishing goodness, vastly superior to the low-production values of most eBooks. More information about the upgrade is published on the front page.
Monday, March 16, 2009 — Minor update. Added information about a massage tool product, the ShiatsuBag, an 18" round satin-Lycra bag of massage balls. You can read the full review or buy one now for USD $39.95 at ShiatsuBag.com, because it’s a bag of massage balls and you simply must have one.
Sunday, February 15, 2009 — Another new advanced tip section today: “Don’t be fooled by reverse referral.” This one’s a head trip. It’s so confusing, I left it out of earlier versions of the tutorial simply because I still didn’t know how to explain it. But I decided it was time to tackle it, and here you go — I think I more or less got the point across.
Monday, February 9, 2009 — This tutorial has always been strong in the “practical tips and tricks” department. Well, play to your strengths! Lately I’ve been in the mood to add even more tips, and here’s another one today, “Focussing on one trouble spot versus ‘a little bit of everything’ — which is the better strategy?”
Tuesday, February 3, 2009 — Added new information about Traumeel, a popular but questionable remedy that I often get asked about. See the section, “Reality checks: some self-treatments that don’t work at all (or not nearly as well as you would hope) ,” or the free article, Does Arnica Cream Work for Pain?.
Monday, February 2, 2009 — Improvements to the section, “How about acupuncture?” Some optimism about acupuncture was removed from the section, and an important new reference was added. Recent scientific evidence has continued to hammer away at acupuncture, and optimism about it can no longer be justified. You can read about the most recent acupuncture evidence in, Does Acupuncture Work for Pain?.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009 — New section! “Don’t get hung up on anatomy, and be persistent.” Sounds like a bit of a no-brainer, but there’s a couple ideas in there that patients often need to hear. It’s a nice addition in the “tip” category that really should have been there before.
Thursday, December 4, 2008 — A new section, “From the frying pan of injury pain to the fire of trigger point pain,” helps readers understand the unholy relationship between injury and trigger points. For readers who have been injured, this is an important addition to the tutorial. Similar information is also available in the form of a story in the article Into the Fire: Trigger point pain as a major injury complication, and how I finally “miraculously” healed from a serious and stubborn shoulder injury by untying the muscle knots. There is some overlap between the new section here and the stand-alone article, but they both offer different information in different ways. If you are injured, read both!
Monday, November 17, 2008 — Added some information about some nice self-massage tools built by Allan Saltzman of YogaTools.com in the section, “Beyond the tennis ball: some of the best commercial massage tools,” as well as some self-massage tools and products I don’t like, in the (now independent and expanded) section “Commercial massage tools to avoid.”
Saturday, September 20, 2008 — Added some information about the relationship between myofascial pain syndrome and disease that obviously affect the harmony of the musculoskeletal system, using Parkinson’s disease as an example. See the section “Are you a “triggery” person? The relationship between trigger points and other physiological disorders and diseases, especially fibromyalgia.”
Monday, August 18, 2008 — Corrections and minor improvements have been made by the hundreds since the publication of the last major upgrade, which was three weeks ago. The polishing never really ends!
Monday, July 28, 2008 — Massive upgrade published. This is by far the largest single update a SaveYourself.ca tutorial has ever gone through. The trigger points tutorial has more than doubled the amount of information it offers, and is now book-length at around 80,000 words. Every single customer who ever purchased the tutorial received 2 weeks of free access to the upgraded tutorial. Here’s a summary of everything that’s changed:
October 2007 through May, 2008 — Fifteen substantive updates were published over eight months. All of them were made more or less made obsolete by and rolled into the major update of the whole tutorial, published July 28, 2008.