Turn Off your Pain
Nothing feels comfortable.
When will you finally get your back pain under control; Not just reduced for half a day?
More than 80 percent of the patients I see as a chiropractor have back pain, and I give out this piece of advice to all of them. Move more! A simple solution to a very complex problem.
Of course, the specific advice varies depending on the particular set of circumstances around each patient, but the standard message is always the same.
“Stop or prevent your pain by moving.”
Pain isn’t a marker of tissue damage.
I see people with damaged tissue (tissue is a term for bones, ligaments, muscles, etc. materials that create parts of our body) but no pain. I also see people with pain but no tissue damage. It may sound illogical because most of us have grown up believing the third option only — tissue damage and pain, exist together.
If tissue damage and pain don’t need to exist together, we can assume that your body parts don’t cause pain. So what’s left in your system to drive it?
Your Brain.
Your incredibly smart brain is continually re-writing a map about your movement capabilities. As things change, that map shrinks or expands based on your muscles’ data. Muscles are essential because they generally cross joints and are full of sensors that detect movement and pass it via nerves to your brain.
Re-writing is useful; if you were to lose a finger, your brain would delete the map of how to control that finger. At the same time, new routes would form around specific movements by utilizing other fingers to fill the void in actions like holding a glass.
Not only do brain maps expand and contract over time, but they can also get ‘blurry.’ In as little as 30 to 60 minutes!! Try this if you’re game; tape the fingers of one hand together, so they have to move as a group. After an hour, take it off and attempt to move a finger individually. Difficult right? You’ve just experienced the blurring of your brain map. If that blurring were to last for a while, your fingers would feel painful and stiff.
Studies show the severity of pain we experience is directly related to the amount our map has blurred. Pain serves us as a low usage indicator and a warning system for injury. Makes sense, right? As your tissues move less and become de-conditioned and weaker, they’re more at risk of injury. Your control system makes them painful to protect them.
Pain is a marker of the perceived need to protect, not an attribute of tissue damage
So how do we stop the pain?
We recondition our brain to stop protecting by rebooting its ‘software.’
When inflammation has stopped, and tissue has repaired, it’s time to acknowledge that the ‘hardware’ is functional again. Even with changes such as arthritis, your body can function, and it’s not a valid reason to feel pain; you can change your experience. Reboot the software by taking the hardware to its maximum range, stretch the muscles as far as feels comfortable, and then a little bit further.
Doing an activity you enjoy is even better than settling for churning out a list of exercises every day, or for a week, or until you get bored and stop. Do something you like, walk briskly, vary your pace, stride out some steps to challenge your muscle’s movements, which will expand your brain map.
Ride a bike; swim, try a new gym class. The result is a brain map that is challenged, sharpened to understand your body’s capability better a healthy brain out of ‘protection mode’ and into a ‘living freely mode.’ Getting caught up in one thing or worse, getting bored of one thing, and stopping will not help you.
A lack of variability is a lack of health.
If you’re not varying your position, you’re not sharing the load across your body, and different areas get dialed down. Down to ‘protection mode’ that is painful and stiff, Leading to microtrauma and more stiffness, then eventually a critical incident with actual tissue damage.
Healthcare’s role
Healthcare should be about meaning, the story you have built to understand your pain. Your brain takes cues from your body and combines those cues with every other piece of information it can gather.
Previous experiences that you or friends can recall help form pieces of your overall experience, such as the level of trust in a practitioner or belief of a positive outcome. If, for example, a doctor recommended to you by a trusted friend diagnoses the reason for your back pain to be something you can see on imaging, it may cement a new belief pattern for you.
A specific muscle strain from lifting something heavy for the first time in 5 years now has a new narrative that “I have a sore back because I have a disc bulge that will always be there.” Even after the disc has stabilized, the pain learned by your brain can persist long after the injured tissue has healed.
Vice-versa a great experience in the healthcare system. You can gain a solid understanding of your injury, what pain is, effective treatment, and a rehabilitation plan to enhance your recovery, which should get you out of ‘protection mode’ pain quickly.
Pain is fundamentally about the story you have conceived to make it make sense.
Understanding why long-term pain happens is critical in preventing or stopping it, and movement, without a doubt, helps. Being proactive by having an active lifestyle keeps your brain’s map expanded and out of a protective stiff and painful mode.
Next time you’re feeling uncomfortable, get up and go for a walk, stop your brain’s map from shrinking and if you’re feeling adventurous, try something new.
