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Understanding Muscle Injuries:

There are three ways in which injuries of the soft tissues in the body can arise:

• 1 - Acute Conditions: pulls, tears, crush injuries.
• 2 - Repetitive Stress: accumulations of small tears over time (micro-trauma).
• 3 - Posture: Your body's response to bad posture and stresses that occur over time directly related to the way one holds their body, and the body's response to it.

Each of these can cause the body to produce scar tissue. Scar tissue is a tough, dense network of collagen fibers that develops to repair/protect the area that has been injured.  Excess scar tissue can prevent the muscles and other structures from working properly, which can lead to changes in normal movement, muscle shortening and weakness, misalignment of bones, and even disruption of the movement/structures in the surrounding areas. A compromised muscle, or muscles, not only places more tension on the tendons that attach muscle to bone, which can cause tendonitis/tendonosis, but can irritate nerves that pass though or supply the muscle.  This injury process can cause the following symptoms:

• Loss of range of motion;
• Loss of strength;
• Aching, pain, tingling, numbness;
• Swelling;
• Spreading of symptoms if untreated;
• Further injury.

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