Laurie's Blogs.

Question:

Can you explain your definition of muscle tone.  In pediatric PT (my specialty) muscle tone is assessed as one tone throughout the body (low, normal, increased, etc).  You start out with one muscle tone and it doesn’t change (unless there’s a neuro or metabolic influence).  So, when you’re doing your assessment (looking at your Orthopedic Physical Assessment Algorithm Tick Sheet) and you’re looking at muscle tone of each area, what are you assessing? Spasms? Trigger points?  Muscle tension?  I’ve always wondered about this.

Answer:

I guess from an orthopaedic standpoint - tone is normal, hypertonic, or hypotonic: 

Hypertonic can be muscle spasm if you wish... and can be either metabolic (i.e. lactic acid build up) or neurologic (i.e. an acute pinched nerve)

Hypotonic can be from reflexive inhibition... due to pain, or injury, or a neuropraxia / axonotmesis / neuronotmesis, or after a prolonged injury & non-use (in which case it would also be associated with atrophy)

Not all ’non-neurologic’ muscle feels the same.  If I went around any class room and felt everyone’s biceps muscles - there would be a huge variance not just in size (hypertrophy or atrophy), but also in tone b/c of overall fitness & conditioning.  As such, one could be very nit picky and say that there would be a great deal of difference even within ’normal’. 

I hope this helps...

 Cheers!

Laurie

Laurie@FourLeg.com