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.