Pain: an Overview
As chiropractic and physiotherapy experts the one thing we can tell you of which we are confident is that experts have very little understanding of how pain actually works in the human body. Studies are ongoing to try to understand this horrific and debilitating sensation which may or may not be associated with injury. The best we can do for now is to take the knowledge that we already have about pain and apply it to the care of our patients.
Today we’re going to talk about the mechanisms and mysteries of pain, and how it can affect--or not affect--how a person feels.
Pain originates in the brain
A simplified version is that if your brain creates pain. In various studies, if a person can be convinced that someone is doing damage to their body, they will feel the pain, even when they are unharmed. It's called neural perception, and no one knows why it activates in some situations and not others.
As an example, many adults over the age of sixty have damage to their back. However, only a portion of the population feels pain as a result. Other people can have pain, even though there is no discernible cause. Neither of these groups is faking.
Pain is real, and serious consequences can result if the pain is ignored or not appropriately treated.
Pain threshold
We know that certain things will raise or lower a person’s pain threshold. Stress, for example, will reduce a person’s ability to deal with pain, as will depression. Women have a lower pain threshold than men. Other factors include age, ethnicity, and conditioning.
Endorphins have a tremendous impact on pain, as shown by this statement taken from a woman who was at the show of a world-class singing star*:
“My feet hurt so badly,” described the concert-goer. “We stood for five hours before the show. Then the lights flashed, the singer appeared, and I didn’t feel my feet for the next two hours. As soon as the music ended, I thought I would collapse.”
What we do know about treatment
Early onset of treatment is one of the best ways to be proactive in pain management. For this reason, we ‘treat patients not pocketbooks.’ This policy also has the added benefit of allowing a patient to seek treatment without the added stress of wondering how to pay for it.
Relaxation, such as that obtained from a massage, is of great benefit to those experiencing pain. Relaxation can open the door to cognitive therapy for patients who have pain but also have the desire to avoid chemical or pharmaceutical treatments. Massage therapy is an incredibly useful tool in the treatment of many different types of pain.
For a patient living with pain on a day to day basis, pain becomes a habit, like a neurological ‘stiffness,’ which is hard to break out of unless it’s treated early. That’s why patients who get treatment early get better--and stay better--faster than those who delay treatment.
