However most chest pain may not be immediate “serious stuff” but many of us in our panic and knee jerk reactions to pain, spend a lot of time and money in the wrong office getting a wait-and-see diagnosis.  Then after an arduous course of EKG’s, x-rays, physical exams and a plethora of other avenues of investigation, “just to make sure” we are left alone to wait and see.  

So if you get over the obstacles...and comply with all the tests and referrals, and the chest pain persists, especially for more than several days, what do you do about it now? 

Drugs of course are the treatment of choice for most...Drugs to stupefy...and knock out the awareness of pain.... But most chest pain isn’t a heart or lung or other organ problem at all.  Most chest pain is due to physiologic bone and muscle pain. Again, most chest pain is from a musculoskeletal origin.  Muscles and bones are designed to function in a very precise and peculiar manner.  When they cannot fulfill that function, when they cannot express their abilities to be healthy and do their work, we often feel the result of the restrictions as pain.  

Think of our chest wall like this...a jar, the chest wall, is placed over the heart, aorta, the lungs and the esophagus.  Then the bottom of the jar is sealed with a complex muscle sheet called the diaphragm.  The walls of the chest are lashed together with muscles running from the spine to the ribs and the ribs to each other.  

The job of the chest wall is that of breathing.   But even as important, is another job, that of making a strong stable base for us to do work from, because healthy bodies are fit to do work. 

By design, inside our chest we have air bladders we call lungs.  When we wish to do work with our arms, neck and trunk we may inhale deeply, close our mouth and larynx, hold the air in and bear down to create a greater pressure inside than that of the environment around us.  This action stiffens the bell and allows a platform for our extensions such as the arms and neck to have a secure base to perform work from. 

There are 24 ribs, twelve on each side (male and female are the same). The ribs originate from the twelve thoracic vertebral bodies and their discs.  The ribs then reach around and down to the front of our chest to join up to the edge of a cartilage plate.  The plate then joins an edge of a flat bone on the very front of our chest, the sternum.  The seams from the ribs as they join the edges of the cartilage plate and the plate to the edge of the flat bone are prone to respond to shifts in position and may become very painful if the ribs are stressed as they reach around the wall from the spine. 

The ribs of  our body have a multitude of connective joints that allow them to move as we exhale and inhale and splint our chest walls to do work.  In fact in our back we have about 100 joints enhancing the movement of the ribs and their thoracic vertebrae.

Ideally these 100 joints would always be exact in their positions and in their range of motion (ROM).  However our bell jar chest cage is not unlike a wicker basket.  Often we take the wicker basket and twist and distort it’s symmetry.  Imagine the forces that are applied to the “parts” as they join to form our chest at the front, run along our sides and at the joints in the back.

A compromised chest wall often leads to shoulder, neck and arm pain along with limb weakness and loss of function.  Even hand pain may ensue. It certainly reduces our capacity to meet our work potential showing as pains within our shoulders, limbs and neck.