Tight Muscles or a Spinal Problem? How to Tell the Difference

A lot of people assume their pain is “just a tight muscle.” But sometimes that tight muscle is actually protecting something deeper underneath.

In this episode of Ask the Chiropractor, Dr. Brant Hulsebus explains how to tell the difference between true muscle tightness and a spinal joint problem. Learn why muscles tighten in the first place, when stretching and massage really help, and when recurring tightness is actually a clue that your spine is not moving properly.

If you stretch all the time, feel tight in the same spot, or only get temporary relief before the pain comes right back, this episode will help you understand what may really be going on.

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Transcript

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Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here and welcome to another edition of Ask the Chiropractor. Ask The Chiropractor is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford IceHogs. Let's dive into it. Thank you for tuning in. Again, this week's podcast is a question I get a lot in public, not so much in the clinic. Some of you'll hear that I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois, and they'll say, oh, you're a chiropractor., I get this tight muscle. I think it's just a muscle. I don't think it's actually a spinal problem. So today I want to talk about a tight muscle or a spinal problem, how to tell the difference. And again, this is not. The best way to tell the difference, the best way would be to go into a chiropractic clinic and get a chiropractic exam by a chiropractor. That'd be the best way to tell. But many of you have heard me talk about this topic, and I want to do a deep dive just on this. You see a lot of people have a tight muscle. Other people have joint restrictions. When a joint restriction would be, there's something going on in that joint that's not as healthy as it could be, and your muscles have s. Locked up or gotten tight to protect that joint or that area for further damage. So a common thing somebody would say to me is, my muscles are just tight. I think I just need to stretch more. Can you teach me that one stretch I need to do to get rid of this permanently? These are common things I hear all the time, and obviously that's pretty loaded question because again, is it a tight muscle or often trying to protect something bigger underneath and without doing the chiropractic evaluation that wouldn't it be able to tell if that's the case or not? So is it really a muscle problem or is your spine not moving properly? Let's first talk about why muscles tighten up. Why do muscles get tight? A lot of times they do that to protect the joint on your spine. A lot of anybody talks about the disc in the front where the body of the vertebrae is. But the backside, you have two small joints called facet joints, little bit smaller than a dime, but across close to the size of a dime in a thoracic spine. And they sit on either side of where the nerve comes out, they make up the backside of the posterior side of the circle where the nerve comes out. This is another joint besides the disc in the spine, and this has a joint capsule around there, and there's synovial fluid in there. And what happens is this joint could become inflamed from bending, wrong bending and twisting, bending, twisting, and lifting, all those things you're told not to do. You don't really always hurt the disc. A lot of times you hurt the facet and this facet gets all inflamed, and every time you allow it to smack into itself, it gets more inflamed or twist into itself. It gets more inflamed, so the muscles will actually lock up in this area to protect it, to not allow you to continue to hit this joint more and more. Previous podcast I've discussed why I don't care for muscle relaxers. A lot of times because the muscle relaxers, the lower this defense and allow you to hit that joint more cause to get more swollen, more damage, and require more time to recover. Basically, I'm suggesting it's a failed, flawed protocol to take care of this. Another reason why your muscles might be tight is because you might have a weakness somewhere in your stabilization muscles. The muscles that support your structure, I've talked about these stabilization muscles many times, are on your spine. If one of 'em is not doing their job for various different reasons, other muscles will get tight and protect you from causing bigger damage, and now you have a tight muscle. Maybe it's too late. Maybe your disc is already involved and maybe your nerve's irritated, and now that nerve's inflamed. Now that nerve's in stress mode. Now that nerve is suffering well, your body doesn't like that, so it's gonna make the muscles around there a lockup, get tight, protect that nerve, causing muscle tightness. These are all a few examples of why your muscles get tight to protect you. The muscle tightness is not the problem, it's the symptom of a bigger cause. So it's important that we learn that the tight muscles aren't, are often a symptom, not the cause of what's wrong. So what is true muscle tightness? What you know, it is possible to have a tight muscle. There's some characteristics we learn about these muscles when they're just tight, because their muscles tight, right? The muscle could just feel better after you stretch it. If you stretch the muscle and you get a long lasting relief, more than five minutes, more than 10 minutes, and that muscle was tight and it needed to be stretched out. Sometimes people will put heat on these or moist heat, and the muscles relax. They calm down, they feel better. That was a tight muscle. You usually notice this after activity. Like my muscle doesn't bother me at all on my leg until I started doing a whole bunch of stairs. Then it got real sore. That's could be just a tight muscle in your hips if you get a massage and you feel tremendously better after the massage for a long period of time. There's probably nothing underlying that other than a tight muscle, full scar tissue. And you know what? This shoulder used to bother me, but it gradually keeps getting better and better. That's probably tight. Just a tight muscle. How do we get these?, Myself, I got a whole bunch this morning. I get up and go to the gym, down the street, movement fitness, and I work out in the mornings and the next couple hours, my muscles are a little sore from the workout. Not because my spine has a whole bunch of rough things wrong with it. I'm just sore because I use my muscles a lot. But again, I'll stretch, I'll get relief. I'll put the hot wet pack on me, I'll get relief. And the relief will last a long time. More than an hour. Sometimes more than two or three hours might even just go away altogether afterwards. Another area we get this is overuse fatigue. I don't normally do this job, but I did this new job and now I'm really sore. My muscles are tired, overuse technique. I don't normally chop down trees, but I did this weekend and man, am I tired and sore, my muscles are really tight. Again, I would stretch. I would do a little massage, some soft tissue work, and it would go away, and it's just old fashioned muscle soreness. But let's talk about when those things don't happen. Let's talk about when there's a joint restriction or a nerve irritation, and now we're back to the muscle is the symptom not the cause? I do that massage, I do that stretching. Pain comes right back. It's like I didn't even do it 10 minutes later. That's because that muscle went right back to being locked up. because it's doing its job protecting you. It's not sore. It needs to be stretched. I stretch and I only get a couple seconds of relief. As soon as I'm done stretching, it comes right back. Huge clue. There's bigger things going on. Boy, when I get up after sitting too long, I am really stiff. I'm really tight. I can barely able to get moving again. I'm usually hunched over and I have to move a little bit. Then I stand up and get going., Muscle soreness from working out isn't that way. You get up, you move fine, then as you walk around, well after longer, longer, it gets tighter. It doesn't feel like you get better when it's starting a joint it's biomechanically changed when you change your posture and you get up, change your position. Now it's gotta change with you and it has a hard time keeping up. When it's very predictable at the exact same spot over and over again. Like you, the muscle's tight. The whole muscle hurts up and down, but when it hurts right here, right at this spot, when they tell me, move your hand a little bit up, a little bit down, oh, there is where it hurts. That's usually come a joint restriction. Muscles are big and broad, and they distribute to pain throughout them when there's always that spot., Because our workouts change, our physical activity changes. It's not always the same muscles, we do the same workout, all month long. Then next month we change the workout. So I know this month I know what four muscles are gonna hurt after my workout. If the muscles from two months ago hurt after, after every workout, even though we changed the workout. Now I know that I have a joint problem. So it's always right here. Always right there, always right here. Now we know that it's gonna be repetitively the same spot. We have a misalignment. We have joint restriction, sudden flare ups, all of a sudden you're just, boom. It hits you., That's usually because their joints swollen. I've bend in, twist the wrong way, hit that joint. It cause the inflammation, my muscles locked up to protect me. because of the way I moved. These are really, really clues that when the joint starts moving properly, the muscles will tighten up to protect them. These are clues that this is not muscle soreness. This is actually joint restriction. So why does the stretching fail? You know when the joint restrictions there, because it's trying to keep it so the joints restricted, the muscles get tight, the stretching goes in, gives a little bit of relief, but the restrictions stay so the tightness comes right back. This is why, , I'm gonna go back a few weeks and talk about this in more depth, why stretching isn't always the answer, but stretching is not the answer this time because it's the joint is the problem, not the muscle. And as long as the joint's the problem, you can treat the symptom and the muscle, but the joint's gonna keep coming back. Okay, so I said earlier, how would you know if it's this or that? I said, you have to come and do a chiropractic examination. We have to find out what's going on. What would I look for? One, a lot of times you might feel me, go up and down your back with your hand. We call that motion palpation. I'm just going through those vertebrae and feeling what's moving, what's loose and what's not loose. When I come across one that just doesn't want to budge, I know that joint's under stress. I know that joint's fixated. I know it needs a chiropractic adjustment. We talk a lot about, Hey, this foot's longer, this foot's shorter. This shoulder is up high, this shoulders down low. I can see it twist in your hips. We're looking for symmetrical. As you lay on your table, how do you look? Are you twisted? Are you turned? Those are often includes that the joint's not moving properly, so you're not laying down properly. If you tell me, not only is my muscle type, but I've got pain down my leg, like sciatica, then I notice the joint. It's not the muscle. If you tell me I get this neck, this ping went up from my shoulder to my neck, I think that muscle's tight. Yeah. By the way, half my fingers are numb. That's a nerve irritation. That's a joint restriction. That is not a tight muscle. And if you start seeing compensatory patterns, like you're starting to overuse this because this over here isn't working and you're trying to switch and turn yourself around, they're writing reflexes and stuff like that. They're all clues to us. Now, if you're a new patient, we'd probably take your x-rays too and use that as comparison to what we're feeling and what we're seeing. Then we're easily, quickly able to blow it out. Now, if you come in the clinic and you tell me you're tight between your shoulders and your x-rays look great, there's motion pal patients good. Then I send you the massage therapist and they say, Hey, get rid of this muscle tightness for this patient. You get the massage, you feel great, and life goes on. So this is why treating the right problem really matters. If it's a muscle problem, we need to work on the muscles. If it's a joint problem, we need to make the correction in the spine the only person qualified and trained to do, that's a chiropractor, so you can't stretch your way out of a joint misalignment. There's no way. Trust me, if you could, I would love to know it, because I travel, my back gets irritated from time to time and I look for chiropractors in other cities to adjust me. If there was a stretch, I'd use it. I'd use it all the time. My grandfather, when he practiced, he was the only chiropractor around the area. He didn't have anyone to take care of him. He definitely would've used that stretch. So it's not out there. It doesn't exist if it's a muscle soreness. Yeah. My neighbor had a tight muscle. He worked out either the stretch, he felt better. I got this reoccurring pain, the same spot every time I bend or twist the wrong way. It doesn't seem to wanna go away. You teach me the same stretch, it doesn't work for me. Stretch is fine. The application's not. You have a joint misalignment, the other percent of tight muscle. So who's the person that we want to see for this? We wanna see the person that stretches every day and still has problems. So if you're touching all the time, you still have problems. We need to see you. If you're always tight, man, I'm always tight in my lower back. I'm always tight between my neck and shoulders. There's something going on. And if it's reoccurring all the time, same spot. We want to see you. And if you do this and you get temporary relief and the relief is very, very short, after you stretch or rip the soft muscle tissue, we wanna see you because this is all clues that there's misalignment going on. So if you have this or if you know somebody else that has this, make sure you have 'em. Reach out to a chiropractor and don't ask your family doctor about this. because the family doctor doesn't study chiropractic, only a chiropractor studies chiropractic. So if you're having this experiences, the best person to ask and the only person qualified to answer these questions are a chiropractor. So reach out to a local chiropractor. Go to chiropractic.org if you're looking for a chiropractor near you, or if you're in Rockford, Illinois, stop on by and we'll take a look and we'll tell you what we see. because remember, if you have a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, the only person qualified to answer that would be a chiropractor. Thanks for tuning in.