Pain Explained

We all feel physical pain at one time or another. But how much do you really know about it?

Pain is incredibly complex, individualised and subjective. What causes pain in one person mightn’t cause it in another. People have different sensitivities to pain and the quality of pain (sharp, aching, shooting, stabbing, dull, tight etc) varies depending on the stimuli and the tissues involved. Most people know this by the phrase “pain tolerance”

What you might not know, is that ALL pain is created in the brain. A stimulus enters the body through the peripheral nervous system (your sensory nerves) and that signal travels to the brain where it is interpreted and the decision is made as to whether it is worth the brain telling you about it. If the stimulus is potentially dangerous to you, the body will decide that action must be taken to address it and it tell you in the form of pain.

I think it’s easiest, and most accurate to think of pain as a warning system. A protective mechanism. It is your body’s attempt at telling you that something is wrong and you should change it. For example, if you touch something very hot, it could potentially damage your skin, therefore your brain responds by causing pain and you quickly remove yourself from the hot object.

The same goes for an ankle sprain. You roll your ankle in a game of sport and now it hurts. This is a sign from your body that you should probably stop playing. Depending on the severity, you might even need a break from walking/running on it to give the tissues a chance to heal. It is also a sign that you should do what you can to avoid doing that again in future as it’s damaging to your body (See your Osteopath, have it treated and get a rehab plan written up…AND DO YOUR EXERCISES!)

Pain that you have had for only a short period of time (minutes to a few weeks) is termed “acute pain”. This is the body’s initial response to a potentially dangerous stimulus. It is usually accompanied by inflammation, muscle spasming, or tightness, a restriction in your range of motion and pain (sometimes dull and achey, sometimes sharp or shooting).

So far, this is a pretty straight forward story. But of course the body is complex and nothing is as straight forward as we might hope. Sometimes, especially in the case of low back or neck pain, it can be quite difficult to localise the exact tissue causing your pain. It could be coming from your discs, joints, muscles, ligaments etc.

To further complicate the matter, your nervous system is plastic, that is, it is malleable and can change in response to ongoing stimuli. Therefore sustained pain over a long period of time (months to years) can lead to the nervous system rewiring in a way that causes you pain even after the stimulus for the original pain in gone (the initial injury has healed for example).

This is what we refer to as “chronic pain”. This type of pain can be incredibly frustrating for people as it is persistent, often quite limiting and hard to get rid of. Not only this, the aggravating factors tend to become less clear and you can become prone to “flare ups” for very innocuous reasons or no apparent reason at all.

As an Osteopath, it is my job to attempt to identify which tissue (muscle, ligament, joint, bone, cartilage etc) is causing your pain and if it’s not apparent from the mechanism of injury, to figure out why the pain has begun. Your body is very adaptive and will compensate for issues of weakness, tightness and asymmetry almost seamlessly…until it can’t compensate any further and then you will start hurting in either the weakest point in that compensatory chain or the point undergoing the most physical stress.

Osteopath’s can treat your body with manual therapy that includes soft tissue massage, stretching, joint mobilisation and joint manipulation. This can help ease muscle tension, realign any joints that mightn’t be sitting quite right and increase range of motion in joints that might be restricted. But that’s not all Osteopath’s do. We try and figure out what lead to the manifestation of pain. This might be your general posture, desk posture, the way you move, your stress levels, your lifting technique, how you sleep and literally everything else you do in your life.

We can then give you advice regarding posture, movement mechanics, stress and sleeping techniques, along with any stretches or strengthening exercises that may help correct your anatomical imbalances.

If you’re feeling pain. Any pain. Do yourself a favour and make an appointment with your Osteopath. Figure out where it’s coming from and what you can do about it. You’ll be happier, healthier and able to do more of what you want, when you want to.