Janet G. Travell

Trigger Point Therapy What are Trigger Points? Commonly referred to as myofascial trigger points in the medical profession, these locations on your body are a common cause of discomfort and pain. These areas commonly produce referred pain, meaning that pain from this area can be found in other muscle groups and joints away from the source of the pain itself. This is why myofascial discomfort in one’s spine or shoulder often causes headaches and neck pain. What Causes This Pain? This intense pain

Janet Travell, M.D. and Dr. David Simons, M.D., called the Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: Trigger Point Manual. The studies of dry needling as a pain relief modality by Travell and Simons began in the 1940s, but were published in this manual much later in1992 and edited in 1999 for the manual’s second edition. In this book, Dr. Travell and Simons introduce this new term of dry needling in order to differentiate between

inconsistent research studies about trigger point diagnosis through palpation and physical examination.14 Myofascial trigger points (MTrPs) are widely accepted by clinicians and researchers as a primary source of regional neuro-musculoskeletal pain.15, 16 Travell and Simons define MTrPs as ‘hyperirritable points located in taut bands of skeletal muscle, which when compressed, produce a referred pain characteristic of that muscle and a pain that the subject recognizes.15, 17 MTrPs are theorized to develop in