Living with arthritis can feel like a constant negotiation. It’s the stiffness that greets you in the morning, the persistent ache that can turn simple tasks into chores, and the uncertainty about what activities might cause a flare-up. When a joint is painful, our entire body adapts, and often, it’s these adaptations that contribute significantly to our daily discomfort.
While arthritis is a condition of the joint itself, the pain you feel is often a complex story involving the structures all around it. At Elite Myotherapy, we focus on unravelling that story. Our approach centres on managing the secondary pain and dysfunction in the surrounding muscles and tissues, which can be a game-changer for improving your quality of life.
Understanding Arthritic Pain: It’s More Than Just the Joint
When we talk about arthritis, we’re often referring to Osteoarthritis, the “wear and tear” condition where the cartilage within a joint begins to break down. This can lead to pain, swelling, and reduced movement in the joint.
In response to this, your body initiates a protective strategy called “muscle guarding.”
Think of it as your body’s own internal bracing system. The muscles around the painful joint instinctively tighten up to protect it from further pain or injury. While helpful in the short term, this becomes a problem when the guarding is constant. This chronic tension leads to:
- Its own source of pain and aching.
- The development of painful trigger points (knots) in the muscle.
- Reduced circulation to the area.
- Increased stiffness and a greater loss of movement.
This creates a vicious cycle: the joint hurts, so the muscles tighten, which causes more pain and stiffness, making you want to move even less.
The Myotherapy Philosophy: Treating the Cause of Your Discomfort
It is crucial to understand that Myotherapy does not “cure” the arthritic condition within the joint. Instead, it offers a highly effective, hands-on approach to breaking the pain cycle by addressing the muscular and soft tissue components of your pain.
Our Myotherapists conduct a thorough assessment, looking not just at the sore joint but at your overall posture, movement patterns, and biomechanics. This helps us understand why certain muscles are overworked and contributing to your discomfort, allowing us to create a treatment plan tailored specifically to you.
How Myotherapy Techniques Provide Relief
A Myotherapist uses a range of techniques to reduce pain, improve mobility, and restore function.
Hands-On Pain Relief
Through skilled soft tissue manipulation, myofascial release, and trigger point therapy, we can directly target the tight, “guarded” muscles. This works to release knots, ease tension, improve blood flow to the area, and calm down pain signals being sent to the brain.
Improving Range of Motion
Stiffness is a major complaint for arthritis sufferers. We use gentle, safe joint mobilisation techniques to encourage the joint to move more freely through its natural range, helping to reduce that feeling of being “stuck” or “locked.”
Strengthening and Stabilising
A key part of long-term management is ensuring the muscles around the joint are strong enough to provide proper support. Weak muscles force the joint to take on more load, increasing pain. We can prescribe specific, safe corrective exercises to strengthen these supporting muscles, effectively creating a natural brace for the joint.
Taking a Step Towards Better Movement
Living with arthritis doesn’t have to mean living with debilitating pain. By focusing on the muscles and soft tissues affected by the condition, Myotherapy provides a powerful strategy for managing your symptoms. The goal is simple: to reduce your pain, improve your ability to move freely, and empower you to get back to the activities you love with more confidence and less discomfort.
If you are struggling with arthritic joint pain, book a consultation to discuss a personalised plan that can help you move beyond the ache.
