What is a muscle knot actually? A pain in the neck, but not a knot.
As humans age, daily work, smartphones, and even pillows can seem to have it out for our necks. Bad posture, repetitive motions, or even just one wrong move involving this part of the body can trigger tenderness, tension, and pain. If you’re experiencing such sensations, you might say you have a knot in your neck. But is anything actually getting knotted up in there? The short answer is no. “Muscles are never tied into knots,” said Ara Nazarian, who runs the musculoskeletal research lab at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Yet, “they can feel that way due to the accumulation of tight muscle fibers within a specific area.” Nazarian, also a professor of orthopedic surgery at Harvard Medical School, told Popular Science that when neck knots—or myofascial trigger points—occur, “a specific portion of the muscle contracts similarly.” In other words, what’s commonly called a knot is actually an area of contracted muscle fibers that can’t fully relax. This phenomenon, Nazarian explained, might feel like a bump, lump, or band beneath your skin. If …
