eli5 Why do we have pressure points?
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Pressure points are where larger nerves are able to be compressed. When you pinch a nerve, it temporarily stops the signal from travelling along the nerve – like putting a kink in a hose to stop the flow of water.
So the message is never delivered. Why is this important? Because this explains why when we pinch a nerve, we often feel numbness or tingling distal (farther away from) to the point that is affected.
Knots in muscles can often have this effect, which is why they can be so annoying – but of course someone targeting the nerve is also annoying too 🙂
Pressure points are simply where nerves are more sensitive to touch. This may be because there is less muscle on top of the nerves (muscle is energy and resource intensive to build and maintain so our bodies won’t keep muscle where we don’t need it, but muscle also dampens the sensation of touch if it’s between the nerve and the thing doing the pushing,) because there are more nerves in that spot as the nerves conglomorate closer to your spinal cord (meaning more nerves will respond to the same physical touch compared to another location on the body,) because there is inflammation putting other pressure on the nerves (decreasing the needed force to activate the nerves and make them feel pain,) etc.
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