STRESS = PAIN = STRESS = PAIN PART 10: SPOONS ANALOGY

5 and a half years ago my wife fell ill with an auto immune disease called Guillain Barre Syndrome which pretty much leaves you paralysed. From that she has a very crappy case of chronic fatigue and no immune system, so a little cough for us is the full blown flu for her.

About a month ago she came across an article another woman wrote who has chronic fatigue syndrome where she talks about spoons.

When we get up we can slide ride out of bed, have some breakfast, jump in the shower, do some emails, walk to work, all without breaking a sweat. We can carry out whatever endeavors we need to do for that day and be fine with it, besides some slight tiredness come the end of the day. 

We have unlimited spoons pretty much.

For those with chronic fatigue, they have a limited amount of spoons to use each day with some days being slightly better and some days being way worse. So where we might use 100 spoons during a given day with all the things we do, they might only have say, 12 spoons of which do the same amount of stuff with.

You might say 12 doesn’t really go into 100 and you’d be right, so what they need to do is to decide what they’ll spend their 12 spoons on, meaning they have to prioritise what they’ll do each day.

Now I’m not saying you need to limit your spoonage everyday, but when you record a poor HRV reading then it’s telling you that you have less spoons to play with then yesterday. 

When you record a good HRV reading it’s telling you that you have extra spoons to play with for that day.

I think the spoon thing is a great analogy for all of this which is why I put this in!

STRESS = PAIN = STRESS = PAIN PART 9: HEART RATE VARIABILITY

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is used extensively during elite sport as it can provide an in-depth look at an athletes readiness to perform on any given day. Each player will react to the same stimulus differently so this is a great tool in individualising training loads and intensity for each player.

I use it every day as I’m still competing as a local sportsman and all you need to do is simply download an app (there’s plenty of them nowadays) and take a daily reading upon waking.

As this is geared towards sport performance most of them will give you a reading of “train hard today”, “train, but take it easy” and “take the day off.”

It will establish a baseline score from your daily readings from which it bases it's daily training advice from. Generally if you register a score above your baseline it will suggest for you to train hard that day. If you have a lower reading then yesterday then it will suggest to train, but take it easy. If you’re below baseline or you’ve registered a decreased score 2 days in a row then it will suggest for you to take the day off training.

I think this is something that everybody can benefit from. Even if you don’t exercise, it still gives you an insight into how stress has affected your body and how you’re dealing with it. You can also correlate these periods of less than stellar HRV scores with your work and lifestyle. When you’re on holiday you’ll more than likely test as fresh as a daisy but on that day where you’ve been up til 1am prepping for a huge presentation you have first thing in the morning, then you’ll test badly from poor sleep, high stress and lack of regeneration.

Remember stress in any form affects the body somehow!

Most, if not all of these app’s will also record resting heart rate (RHR) at the same time which is another great indicator to keep track of. Generally an elevated RHR above your baseline will again correlate with times of high stress, poor sleep etc.

As mentioned earlier, high stress can decrease immunity and you probably already know that you normally get sick in times of high (physical or mental) workloads. HRV and RHR readings can actually let you know you're getting sick before it actually happens so that you can be proactive (instead of reactive), making it priority to get extra rest before it gets out of control (bed ridden etc).

The app I use is HRV4Training which is only on iPhone for now.

STRESS = PAIN = STRESS = PAIN PART 8: HOW TO DECREASE PAIN

      

When addressing pain, especially chronic pain, then heading off to the physio or a chiro, isn’t going to solve all your problems.

The first thing you need to is to educate yourself on pain, how it develops and how it impacts the body in different ways. Remember that the actual muscle tissue is often fine and it’s your response that needs to be addressed so by simply understanding pain you may fear it less, and your perception of it might be altered resulting in faster and more sustainable recovery times.

Included in this re-educating portion has to be the language that is used to describe pain. Language feeds your beliefs such as “gardening hurts my back” which we now know doesn’t hurt your back – it’s the perception that it does that usually ends up causing the pain sensation.

Imagery of your pain can also have a negative effect and works similar to negative language related to pain. If you have a bout of lower back pain and you mentally image an injury there, then it can feed the evaluating and processing within the brain. It has been found that in chronic back pain sufferers, simply looking a back injury can induce pain in their own backs!

The second thing to do is to keep moving because by purposefully "not" moving, the body gets no positive input into thinking that the perception of danger can be decreased. The actual movements you do does not really matter either, it could be walking, it could be running, it could be jumping but just make sure that it is pain free movement. Performing movements that cause pain can cause a continuation of danger signals being sent out of which we are trying to actually dial down.

Once the initial pain sensation and/or threat has been put to bed then slowly re-introduce the movements that were causing pain in the hope of changing the negative perception of it into a positive one. Do not avoid them forever as that is how neurotags can develop.  You’ll want to use what’s called graded exposure for this where you might need to break down movements into segments before getting back to the full movement. 

So if squatting is a movement you avoided because of a sore back then you might start by simply lowering down 3 – 4 inches and working yourself down over time as your confidence with the movement increases and you become more comfortable with it.

During recovery there is every chance of a flare up or 2 but if you’ve done it right then the severity of the flare up will be minimal and you’ll now have the tools in place to deal with it leading to faster recovery.

Getting back to the central nervous system, being in pain will mean you’ll pretty much be in a constant state of sympathetic dominance which means you’re body will be working a lot harder than it should be just to function on very basic level.

Walking to the letterbox can become a workout in itself and with the body under constant threat, it gets zero chance to rest and regenerate. So when you’re not being active you’re should be trying to get the body as relaxed as it can be with diaphragmatic breathing and anything else you find relaxing (music etc). 

This will hopefully shift the body into a parasympathetic dominant state which is the only way you can regenerate.