STRESS = PAIN = STRESS = PAIN PART 7: HOW IS PAIN PRODUCED?

The body experiences a sensation where all of the new information of this sensation is sent to the brain for evaluation against the current information you have on this sensation. The current information is made up of what you felt and/or thought about the sensation in the past such as did it hurt, did it not, as well your personal beliefs on this sensation.

Depending on your evaluation the sensation will then be classed as safe or dangerous.

If it is deemed as safe then whatever pain you felt initially will decrease and go away pretty quickly.

If it is deemed as dangerous then the body will go into protection mode where it will send out pain signals to the area as well as shut off range of motion to the area by sending muscles into spasm.

This is all to stop you from doing anymore damage to the area.

This perception of danger will also cause a huge spike in sympathetic nervous system dominance.

Chronic pain occurs when pain perception is still high long after the initial injury, which has probably healed over time, or at the very least, has decreased it danger threat considerably.

Unfortunately when pain perception is still high and you’re still in a somewhat protective mode, then you develop what is called a neurotag. A neurotag is an encoded pattern in your central nervous system based on your evaluation process that can ingrain itself in specific and general movements - think along the lines of back pain while gardening versus back pain from simply bending.

Neurotags can be part of other neurotags that can trigger a similar response meaning if you have a lower back pain neurotag and a slipped disc neurotag, then activating one can activate the other so now you have 2 movements related to pain instead of one. 

Neurotags also reinforce themselves so more pain = more damage = more pain = more damage and so on.

The danger signals actually come from nociceptors and during prolonged bouts of firing such as chronic pain, they can become more sensitive which actually means they require less stimulus to activate and now the movement you used to be able to do with no problems and was perceived as safe, can now become an issue and cause pain.

This can get wired into your central nervous system causing all sorts of pain issues as now you’ll be getting pain signals from doing nothing but you haven’t sustained an injury.

Next Week: How to Decrease Pain.