Help me to understand my pain!

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Pain is a really complex process that is often not well understood. Here are some common questions surrounding pain asked by many of our patients to try and understand the concepts of pain!

Isn’t pain always a bad thing?

Not always! Pain is actually really important, as its lets our body know when we are in danger or when to avoid something that could be harmful. For example, if we were to touch something hot, our brain quickly processes this information and we quickly take our hand off the hot surface!

How does pain work in the body?

We often think of pain as something like damaging a part of the body- like spraining an ankle or a cut on a leg. This is often easy to understand as we can physically see this type of injury that someone may have and it’s easy to understand that they would be in pain. What’s often not as easy to understand are things like back or neck pain, which people can’t see and often don’t understand what the pain would be like or why you may be experiencing pain.

Why does pain manifest?

Pain is a really complex condition and understanding why it can become an ongoing condition for some people and not others can be confusing and frustrating!

  • Nerves become hypersensitive: Often when we are experiencing ongoing pain, the nerves in our body actually become too sensitive. This means that the threshold for when these ‘pain nerves’ fire is essentially lowered, meaning they turn on too easily and we experience pain more often. This causes an intense, ongoing pattern of chronic pain which is hard to break. The aim of Physiotherapy treatment for chronic pain is to break these patterns and essentially RETRAIN your brain to undergo tasks and movements to reduce the sensitivity of these nerves
  • Everyone’s experience of pain is different: The experience of pain really depends on our fears, beliefs and emotions and it has been shaped throughout our whole lives by things like touch, smell, sounds and sight. This can mean that as well as the biomechanical components of pain, there’s also a psychological component, which is often difficult to understand and make these connections until someone explains this to you! Given this, it’s really important to make sure you’re dealing with your pain under the care of experienced professionals including skilled Physiotherapists, as well as Psychologists and Occupational Therapists that may be able to complement your recovery.

These are some of the basic concepts of pain science, and there’s so much more to learn about how pain works and how Physiotherapy is crucial to the treatment of Chronic Pain! Come and see one of our experienced Physios today and read more about what we offer for Chronic Pain treatments at Platinum Physio here.

 

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