? for fancypants

& anyone else with sage advice about muscle pain:

Any suggestions for what people with bad knots & spasms in the upper-back / neck / shoulder area can do for themselves to loosen up & minimize pain?

I WILL eventually find a good massage therapist & a good chiropractor; but right now, those just aren't options.

Brief background: fairly serious sideways impact injury in a car accident 18 years ago; spend 10-12 hours a day working at a computer terminal; & I love to read in my spare time, which also seems to aggravate the tension in those areas.

Anyone know anything about do-it-yourself accupressure, for instance?

 

I had a terrible muscle spasm in a shoulder this year. Ice worked great on the spasm when setting around at night.. Then during the day when I worked (of course in my steel toed boots) I would use the self adhesive hot patches. That seemed to help a lot.

 

AK-

Sorry you are having trouble... I've had this when I didn't have a good chair, spent too much time on the computer, used the computer at work for 15 plus hour days etc.. etc.... I would even get numbness in my left hand from it and a huge knot on my scaplae area.

This seemed to help more than anything I could do (on my own anyway)....
I would lie down in my office or at work flat on my back on the floor with my hands straight out beside me and my feet/legs relaxed. I would basically lay there for 20 minutes at a minimum and just tell my body from my feet up to my head to relax and melt into the floor (much like meditating) When feasible, I would take a hot bath and put towels on my back and then when I got out, I would repeat it. It takes a little time, but do it when you can and let me know if it helped. It helped mine, but unfortunately it will come back when I overdo those areas from time to time.

Stress doens't help it, did you need to hear that ?

Merry Christmas

 

Beer.

 

Apply liberally - repeat often.

 

Oh, yeah, I have the problems with numbness in the arms & hands sometimes, too. Not as bad as when I worked in the bookstore, surprisingly--but then I spent a lot of time doing stuff that was really hard on my wrists as well. I have big ole knots in the scapula area, too, both sides. Feels like rocks under there.

Thanks so much for the suggestions (& Mudcat, those heated thingies sound like a good idea, too). I'll just have to force myself to TAKE the time unless I want to be in pain all the time. I know it will feel good. It's the making myself stop doing other things to do it that's the hard part

My honey gave me a wonderful office chair last Christmas, so at least my chair at home is good. The ones at work are horrible, though. Unbelievably bad. Any day I expect one of us to actually fall out of one & get hurt & wind up collecting disability. I'm only half kidding.

Which just made me think of another question:

Would wearing some kind of a posture doohickey--I'm thinking of those elasticized brace-type things that force your shoulders back a bit & keep you from slumping too much--be a good thing? Or would it be more likely to lead the muscles to be "lazier" when the brace is off? I'm wondering if that might be helpful at work, where the hours in hideous chairs are so long.

 

is better for pain. Just sayin'

 

hey ak, sorry i didnt see this sooner...

everyone has given good advice

here's some more

get a tennis ball and lay on it on the floor. put it wherever your knots are. move slow and work out those knots.

alternating heat and ice applications at 10 minute intervals

find a massage school and see if they hold clinics, they are usually cheaper by about half. or volunteer to be worked on at anytime. the teacher may reccommend a student for you to call that could practice on you.

homemedics has a great massage chair for about $100, here you can find them at sams, walmart, belk....if i didnt have access to a mt, i would buy one

stretching is very important, do it often and very slow....let me know if you need some sample stretches. also, do yoga if you can and have time, even if it is in your home from a tv show. very relaxing and helps your body focus and stretches you.

take care and merry christmas AK

 

Fibramyalgia?

 

Thanks so much! I've been stumped about how to put some pressure on the knots to help loosen them without having someone else available to help. I never would have thought of a tennis ball

I have borrowed a hand-held massager that's quite good. The only problem is that it's awkward to hold it where I need it. No cracks from the peanut gallery There are places where it would be easy to hold & apply it, but it would cause immediate death....

Not that I know of. I don't know much of anything about this except that it's painful as hell. I'll do a little surfing for info, but if you know a good resource on it, please let me know.

Thanks for all the help, everyone