Muscle pain: understanding its nature, diagnosis and treatment

The old concept of a pain-spasm-pain cycle does not stand up to experimental verification either from a physiologic point of view or from a clinical point of view.

Physiologic studies show that muscle pain tends to inhibit, not facilitate, reflex contractile activity of the same muscle ...

In 1989, Ernest Johnson, editor of the American Journal of Physical Medicine, summarized overwhelming evidence that the common perception of muscle pain being closely related to muscle spasm is a myth and that the myth has been strongly encouraged by commercial interests.