Hi,
The more I figure out TOS, the more apparent is that its these scalene muscles which are the cause of all my problems and for many of us.
Dr Sanders noted scar tissue, in his examinations. Y'all are more knowledgeable than me about it.
They get tight & everything goes haywire.
Its like this - we have compressions at multiple levels thanks to our crappy computer/modern era lifestyle - but somehow while these would have caused RSI gradually, they didn't flare up beyond a point, because the hose pipe of nerve signals right at the top coming through the scalenes, kept the pressure going to get all the signals to each muscle.
Then one fine day, you get a whiplash injury, or stress out too much over work hunched over & its "game over, game over man" - as that dude in Aliens said. Suddenly, pain & problems are the new normal.
Now each time i took an estim shot right to the scalenes (I used a zapper called the InterX) - my symptoms cleared right up. In 2011, my hand pain went down to a 3/10 and my upper trapezius started behaving normally (it's that pain BTW which makes me go bonkers and makes me feel disabled).
Now, I tried a RSI program with therabands using the Flextend protocol. While it seems to have helped somewhat, my hand pains/arm pains/chest pains all came running with a vengeance.
In hindsight, I was "spasming" or pulling on my scalenes.
So, the million $ question - how do we fix them?
Has anybody tried a comprehensive, multimonth effort focused on:
1. Deep tissue massage (myotherapy)
2. Ultrasound
3. Electrotherapy (if need be to despasm the muscles and make them more amenable to be worked on)
4. Gapapentin etc to reduce nerve pain while muscle work is going on
Now, in another thread, Chroma mentioned that "grinding" his chest muscles/pec minor helped to keep that compression under control.
This gentleman got his RSI under control by extreme "grinding" the muscle under question and stretching away.
http://rsicure.sabhlokcity.com/
(I believe RSI & TOS have a commonality in that they involve adhesions and muscular dysfunction/weakness; people with RSI are more likely to get TOS and it worsens TOS to the point its unbearable).
Reason I believe it might work is because of the gent above (his 7 year effort to cure his RSI via myo therapy - but note he didn't have nerve dysfunction) and also other accounts i have read of massage therapy breaking down TOS (Stoxen's blog f.e.).
So the question is, have folks here tried a multi month/year effort to slowly massage the scalenes and make them nice little muscles again? Could this work? Thoughts ideas welcome.
Tips, what to avoid also welcome. We are in this boat together.