The Cause of Muscle Pain

The maintenance of muscle tone is an obscure, rarely-regarded, automatic system that all too often goes awry and runs out of control, and can create many other serious problems in the human body. It is typically the cause of muscle pain, muscle spasm, muscle weakness, joint pain, skeletal misalignment and other common problems.

Although skeletal muscle is contracted voluntarily, the cerebellum maintains a (purportedly) tiny amount of automatic, unconscious contraction. (Cardiac and smooth muscle are contracted involuntarily but those processes are not coordinated by the cerebellum.)

In order to provide this consistent, automatic contraction of a small number of skeletal muscle fibers within all muscles, the cerebellum utilizes nerve bodies embedded within the muscles. This is the system of muscle tone, existing primarily to keep our joints intact, but it also helps maintains posture against gravity.

The system is designed to consistently send information from the muscles to the cerebellum as to the amount of automatic contraction, or ‘tone’, being produced in each muscle; the brain then compares this amount with its pre-programmed requirement, and makes adjustments accordingly, either automatically relaxing or contracting more fibers in the muscle to hit its pre-set value.

But when circulation is impaired in the muscle for any number of reasons – overuse, injury, and underuse being primary – lactic acid, a caustic by-product of the metabolism, accumulates in muscles; without adequate circulation, the departure of spent blood and metabolic byproducts out of muscle tissue is obstructed. If the lactic acid reaches a high-enough concentration level in the muscle, it floods into the spindle nerve bodies and tends to get trapped there by the membrane surrounding the spindle organ. Remember, it is the spindle’s job is to communicate with the cerebellum through its little feedback nerves as to how much tone the brain is asking for at any moment.

But once inundated in the spindle, the lactic acid sickens these nerves to the cerebellum, weakening and distorting their signal back to the brain. The cerebellum interprets the weak signal to mean that it, the brain, is not automatically contracting enough fibers in that particular muscle (upon which the spindle is reporting) to maintain a proper amount of muscle tone (the pre-set requirement). So the cerebellum orders up more contraction through the motor nerves.

It’s important to know that for the duration of contraction, many muscles squeeze like fists around the little veins within the muscle (which is why we warn against holding static contractions); therefore, more contraction in more fibers results in even less circulation in the muscle, and in more lactic acid being produced and trapped in the spindle; this further weakens the signal from the feedback nerves. The cerebellum does not remember that just seconds ago it tightened that very muscle because it is an “in-the-moment” automatic brain.

As the cerebellum reacts to each moment, ordering up more contraction, a vicious, unending cycle of ever-increasing, self-sustaining spasm begins, that intensifies and grows larger over time, and is permanent unless treated.

That’s where we come in: NeuroSoma® repairs, or resets, the flowerspray nerve endings through precise stimulation to these specific nerve beds, thereby reinstating feedback loops to the cerebellum. The brain reads the new information and reacts accordingly by relaxing the muscles. We’re getting into the system that has run amok, as opposed to attempting to mash the muscle softer or stretch it longer, which does not work; muscle tissue cannot be mashed softer or stretched longer (if a therapist feels muscle soften under constant pressure, it’s because the fast-twitch fibers are exhausting!). Anyway, the muscle is working fine, and in fact it’s overworking in constant contraction; it just needs to be allowed to relax. This malfunction is an inside job between brain and nerve body; NeuroSoma® accesses and corrects that circuitry.