Hal S. Blatman, MD leads a team of specialists and practitioners committed to helping you achieve better health and vitality by treating and eliminating your pain.
 

Muscle tissue is commonly injured, stressed, and traumatized throughout our lives. Pain from these injuries is generated by ”knots” or trigger points that form in the muscle and its fascia, also known as myofascial pain.
 

Myofascial pain syndromes can be the source of, or part of, a number of conditions:

• Fibromyalgia
• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
• Headaches, including migraine and tension headaches
• TMJ syndromes, such as jaw and tooth pain
• Back and leg pain, including cramping and sciatica
• Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy
• Numbness, tingling, burning, or shooting pain in the arms, hands, and legs
• Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
• Phantom Limb Pain

Myofascial pain syndromes cause weakness, restriction of motion, acute (sudden) pain, and chronic (long lasting) pain. They can be felt as numbness, burning, tingling or aching. The pain typically varies with physical activity, changes in weather, quality of sleep and emotional stress.
 

Less active myofascial trigger points can predispose a person to acute pain attacks and cause: muscle weakness and early fatigue (with no sign of muscle wasting), and restriction of motion, with or without pain (i.e. frozen shoulder, tight hamstrings).
 

Often because of pain referral patterns, pain does not come from where it is most intensely felt. For example, trigger points in muscles of the jaw, neck, upper back can cause jaw pain and headaches. Trigger points in the pelvic muscle can cause tailbone, abdominal, groin and interstitial cystitis pain.
 

Additionally, many medical diagnosis are turning out to be myofascial pain conditions, such as: bursitis, arthritis, tendonitis, fibrositis, myositis, tennis elbow, sciatica, pinched nerve, growing pains, and thoracic outlet syndrome.
 

Our Approach
 

We recognize that every patient and body is unique. That’s why we customize treatment plans to meet your needs.
 

Generally, the process of unlocking trigger points starts with a complete assessment and medical history. Based on your input, we’ll identify your specific pain trigger points, “unlock” them and then stretch the injured muscles to their normal resting length. In many cases, healing can be accelerated by trigger point injections, where a local anesthetic (Novocain) is injected into muscle trigger points to help them release.
 

Once the trigger points are unlocked and pain is stabilized, physical conditioning and strengthening become possible. You will be taught a combination of stretches, exercises, dietary changes, and acupressure techniques to supplement the treatments you receive in our office.
 

We believe that patient education and personal effort are the most important ingredients for successful treatment.
 

In many cases, our patients quickly resume their normal activities completely pain free, while in others, an approach combining judicious use of medication, treatment and lifestyle changes can dramatically improve patient mobility and quality of life.