DR. CHRIS MANGO: Hi. This is Dr. Chris Mango, here in New York City. On behalf of Expert Village, we're going to be taking a look at trigger points today. The last muscle, the trunk stabilizer, which we're going to look at is the rectus abdominis, more commonly known as your abs. We're going to take a look it at here. It runs from the pubic crest all the way up to the xiphoid process, which is the bottom part of the sternum. Now, the muscles run north and south from the body and are, as you know, responsible for flexion. They also help maintain the curve in your low back. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to take a look at where to find the trigger points. There are quite a few but we're going to focus on two important ones: one being right on the bottom and the other one being up top. The reason I'm showing those is because those are the common ones that represent bands of pain that could show across your low back. That's in here and here. So now let's take a look at how to find the trigger points. Now, you're going to want to make sure you're comfortable with your patient here because this one gets a little low. So, another thing you can do is just have the patient cover up, and then, from here, what you want to do is you want to find the bone or the pubic bone, which is right here. You'll feel a distinct difference from muscle to bone. Then you come to either one side or the other and up a little ways and press, and that'll be your trigger point. Now, you want to be careful too because you have a lot of organs in here, so you don't want to press too hard. Now, let me show the other trigger point in the muscle. To find this one, you need to find the xiphoid process which is the bottom part of the sternum. It's a point, and then your ribs follow here. So just come down, intersect it a little bit right here, and you'll feel it in here. So that was five trunk stabilizers we took a look at. Now, let's take a look at some shoulder muscles.
