What is Pain? Why am I in Pain? Advice from The Spine Clinic

Tags – What is Pain – Why am I in Pain

All pain is produced by the brain. 

It does not matter how long you have had this pain – 1 minute, 10 days or 10 years. It also does not matter how it feels – whether it feels sharp or dull, strong or mild. All pain is produced by the brain. 

Let’s look into some specific cases.

Acute Pain

This type of pain is typically as a result from a recent cause or incident causing some local tissue damage. For example, you may have had back pain for a few weeks or months following a recent sporting activity. This is referred to as acute pain.

In such cases, typically you’ll be encouraged to stay active and gradually get back to doing all your normal day to day things!

Chronic Pain

If you have been experiencing pain for three months or more,  this type of pain is generally called persistent or chronic. This is because,  in this type of pain tissue damage is no longer the main issue.

Persistent pain is very common and affects over 14 million people in the UK alone.

Although persistent or chronic pain is very common, knowing what to do can be quite confusing.

What Can be Done?

After local tissue damage has healed, our brains can keep on producing pain even after the body’s tissues are restored and out of danger. 

Most Health professional will explain that most things in the body, such as muscles, ligaments and discs, are healed within three to six months. 

So, beyond this, ongoing pain being produced by the brain is less about structural changes in the body and more about the sensitivity of the nervous system to a variety of factors.

In other words, it’s a little more complex.

So, to try and figure out what’s going on, we need to retrain the brain and the nervous system.

To do this, it’s helpful to look at all the things that affect the nervous system and those that may be

contributing to your individual pain experience.

What can help further is to look at persistent pain from a holistic perspective and reinforce this with a structured approach to help you progress. By doing so, it’s less likely that anything important will be missed.

Let’s start with the medical side.

Medication & Surgery

Taking medication can certainly help, but only to a limited extent. 

It is the more active approaches that are necessary to retrain the brain. So using medications to get going is okay, and then mostly they can be tapered and ceased.

Some people often think surgery might be the answer, but when it comes to a complex

problem like chronic pain, surgery may not be helpful.

Thoughts & Emotions

Next, it can be beneficial to consider how your thoughts, feelings and emotions are affecting your nervous system. 

Pain can impact a persons life in a multitude of ways, which in turn can have a big effect on your mood and stress levels. 

However, you can learn ways to reduce stress and wind down the nervous system.  This will then help with your overall emotional well-being, which can result in a reduction of  pain experienced.

Diet & Lifestyle

The third area to consider is the role of diet and lifestyle. This is because our modern lifestyles tend to not be so good for us.

In fact what we eat and how we live may really be contributing to a sensitised nervous system.

Looking at all the things like smoking, nutrition, alcohol, sleep, exercise and activity levels and seeing if there are any issues is a good beginning.

Physical Activity & Function

Lastly, we need to look at our daily physical activity levels.

Think about what movements you are doing, or not doing on a day to day basis? 

From the brain’s perspective, getting moving at comfortable levels without fear, and where the brain does not protect by pain, is essential for helping you to get pain free again.

So to conclude, pain does come from the brain, however it can be retrained with an active approach which considers the whole person and their lifestyles.

Our Services

As highly trained healthcare practitioners, osteopaths are able to assess and examine you to establish the potential causes of pain. 

Also, they can refer you to a GP or other healthcare practitioner, if your pain requires further investigation. 

So, if you are experiencing persistent pain, osteopaths can work with you to identify the root cause, help you improve your movement, function and activity by taking a whole person approach alongside a structured treatment plan, to ensure the nervous system is no longer sensitised and functions optimally.

To learn more, or to book an appointment, get in touch with us today.