Frazz by Jef Mallett for August 20, 2024

When I pull a pec, it’s out of the fridge… and it’s a slice of pecorino romano.

I get that with dislocated rib heads. Really annoying.

The term Referred Pain is new to me, but it’s supposed to be just a pain, not a knot.

When a knot does knot make sense.

How did he manage that? All he ever does is cardio.

Why you feel a heart attack in the arms and shoulders…

Wow, Caulfield doesn’t know everything?!?

I think I pulled a pec of pickled peppers.

Serves Frazz right for saying he felt like a million bucks. He should have known better!

Better get checked to make sure its not cardiac in nature or at worst a dissecting aneurysm

If you have a knot in your back due to a pulled pec, that isn’t really referred pain. That’s compensation — a mechanical problem, not a neurological phenomenon. It’s not unusual to develop a muscle spasm (a “knot”) distant from the original muscle or joint injury due to other muscles compensating for the original injury. They’re having to operate abnormally, after all, and oftentimes it’s not even something you’re doing consciously.

Referred pain is different. This is when you perceive pain somewhere other than the actual point of origin, and it’s more of a neurological thing — it’s complicated, but the simplified version is that your brain is misperceiving the signals it is receiving. The pain is real, but mapped incorrectly for various reasons. The most universal example is probably the ice cream headache, and probably the most important example to remember is probably the referred pain of a myocardial infarction (which can be perceived in the jaw and left arm instead of the chest).

Maybe he’s having a heart attack. If you ask anyone in emergency medicine, they will tell you that you must be tested to confirm that it is not a heart attack.

What does it mean when a little kid knows about “pecs”?

Caulfield gives pains in the neck a new meaning.