Protective Guarding

Hello and thank you for taking the quiz.

From the little we know about you from this pain quiz, it seems likely that your problem is:

Protective Muscle Guarding

What does that mean? 

You can't fool the body, it knows exactly what is going on in every ounce of tissue you have, and muscle guarding is one of the many ways in which it protects itself. 

Muscle guarding is like placing a splint on a broken leg. The nervous system recognises a something is up, like an unstable joint or a tendon that is becoming inflamed. This is a threat to the health of the tissue, so the nervous system has a couple of options to deal with it: Give you a pain sensation to stop you in your tracks and/or splint the area with muscular tension.

Now, the nervous system is very good a setting up a protective mechanism, like muscle guarding but it isn't always that good at removing it when the tissue has healed. Sometimes the guarding will last one or two days, other times it remains active for weeks or months on end. The secret is to help the body realise that the threat is over and that the muscles can return to normal. The longer you have this guarding the more time it usually takes to resolve it. Pain and muscle guarding are not completely linked though so, whilst it may take time to release the tension, pain can often reduce very quickly.

Learn more

If you want to learn more, I’ve designed a short email series on the subject that aims to help you learn what you can do about managing this type of problem. Just put your details in the box by clicking this link and I will send the series to you.  

Let us assist you

But if you want to get on and get to improving your situation there is nothing like a pair of eyes on the problem, enabling us to fully assess the tissue. So why not take advantage of our Free Assessment or Pain Management services by clicking the Book Now link below.

In the meantime, I hope you found this page interesting and that you’ll be back to full activity soon.