by Laurie Boris

Created on: April 02, 2009

You wake up one morning and try to get out of bed, only to discover that one of your shoulders is frozen into place. As if during the night all of your bones fused together. You're in pretty good shape and can't recall any recent injuries that could have left you in this condition. You also can't lift your arm. Not only does this make your job - let alone driving to your job - difficult, but it limits your wardrobe choices to garments that either slip easily over your head or button up the front. Not the simplest of tasks. And going to work naked is frowned upon, even on Casual Fridays.

Making the situation worse is the reaction you get from your doctor. He merely shrugs, writes you a prescription for pills that do nothing, then refers you to specialist after specialist before you simply give up. You just resign yourself to being forever like the Tin Man in "The Wizard of Oz," with the words "oil can" squeaking out the side of your mouth.

Then one day, you take your stiff, sorry self to a massage therapist, because a friend of yours went and felt a ton better afterward. He or she pokes around, reviews your history, and suggests that you might have a condition called "chronic myofascial pain syndrome." (Also known as "MPS.")

And you ask, "What the heck is that?"

It starts with your myofascia. The myofascia is a thin system of membranes that surrounds all of your muscles, tendons and ligaments. It protects them from injury, and also aids in the circulation of blood and elimination of waste materials such as lactic acid. Think of it as a kind of flexible netting that holds all of your insides together. Normally, the myofascia allows movement of muscles through their full range of motion. But sometimes, following childbirth, injury, or long periods of misuse or poor posture, the myofascia may harden, twist, form adhesions or knots (often called "trigger points"), or get "stuck" to the muscles or other soft tissue. This can limit your mobility and increase your chances of getting injured.

The medical community, according to Dr. Devin Starlanyl, a leading authority on fibromyalgia and myofascial pain, classifies MPS as a neuromuscular disease. While the exact cause is not known, it's characterized by those trigger points mentioned above, which are knot-like constrictions in the myofascia and muscles that inhibit normal muscle movement, exacerbate injuries and cause pain. The localized area is starved for oxygen, which causes more pain and immobility. The lymphatic system

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