Our muscles can become dry!?

You probably haven’t heard of the term “ischaemic nociception”. It’s a bit of a mouthful. It essentially has two parts – ischemia means a lack of blood flow and nociception refers to potential danger messages that get processed by your brain. Nociception sometimes manifests as a pain experience.

Ischaemic nociception means your muscles simply need to be washed and flushed out with fresh blood and oxygen.

Here’s how it works: when we hold a static position for a long time (think prolonged sitting, lying etc.) we can get a drop in the pH in our tissues. Our muscles can become dry! An unpleasant consequence of inflammation, lactic acid, and ischemia is this acidosis in the tissues. Our body operates within quite narrow ranges and this is especially true with tissue pH. A pH of 7.4 and there’s no ischaemic nociception. But go anywhere below 7 and it becomes reactive. Nociception occurs via sensitive acid sensing ion channels (ASICs). These ASICs are widely distributed throughout the nervous system, but in this case, we are focusing on those found in the peripheral tissues.

So what’s the solution?

You need to get moving! When you have dry, acidic muscles you need to flood that tissue with fresh blood! Often this is baked into our programming or evolutionary hardwiring so we move and adjust our body positioning unconsciously. This is why for example when you’re driving a long time you might wriggle on the seat, arch and lean a bit and when you arrive at your destination have a good stretch out.

You’re simply turning the stagnant pond that is your acidic tissue into a flowing river.

So don’t rush for the pain meds; most of the time, movement is the best medicine, supported by the assurance that everything will work out and that there are lots of things you can do to help. If you’re struggling with pain that seems to be related to dry, acidic tissues you may also need to improve the “plumbing” to the area. This means, to effectively flush out the area you may benefit from increased capillary density in the tissue. This vascular bed in skeletal muscle functions to supply blood and oxygen to muscle fibres and exercise can catalyse this capillary growth.

Specifically, it’s improved with exercise that creates some oxidative stress; you must target the painful area of the body with demanding exercise. For example, if you have ischaemic nociception that develops in the thoracic area of your back with prolonged sitting, you may benefit from some time on the rower. You’d be looking at roughly a 10-30% increase in capillary density from 1-2 months of training.

We know it can be difficult to find a therapist you can trust knows what they’re doing. We’ve helped countless patients get on top of their pain and would love to help you with yours. If you need any help with pain or injury, we’ve got your back.