Muscle knots, also known as myofascial trigger points, can cause extensive discomfort in your neck, shoulders and back. When a muscle fiber is slightly damaged for whatever reason, it is difficult for it to function correctly. When this happens, the fiber contracts and forms the knot.

There a number of reasons you could get these knots in your muscles. They can include:

Dehydration

Your muscles can become too dehydrated to relax. That’s because your muscles fibers are basically microcosms of the human body; they cannot function without water. Just like the dehydrated human body, muscle fibers begin to break down when in need of water. They will remain tight and painful until they are hydrated with adequate water replenishment.

Weight Training

When you weight train, you get a lot of overstimulation, especially when doing back and shoulder exercises. As a paradox, when you are making these muscles stronger and bigger, you are effectively doing damage to the muscles fibers. When these heal, they are larger, bigger and stronger than they were before the muscle workout. But for the fibers to heal, they require calcium. But due to the damage they sustain, sometimes the fibers are unable to distribute the calcium throughout itself for a calcium buildup for a subsequent knot.

Your Mattress

A lumpy or uneven mattress can have the same effect as weight training on your muscles. The stress on your back from voids in support or projecting springs damages your muscles fibers, and it requires the same calcium experienced from strength training recovery. This is because the prolonged exposure of roughly eight hours to an uncomfortable mattress, and the subsequent muscle trauma, can cause just as much discomfort as a tough workout.

There are plenty of causes to this kind of muscle pain, but among the best ways to relieve this kind of pain is acupuncture. An acupuncture session can bring major relief to your deep muscle pain in ways a masseuse simply cannot. Drawing on your internal energy pathways, acupuncture relieves muscle tension and rids your muscles of any knots.

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