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What is pain and how do you get rid of it?

Posted by Dr. Tim Roberts, 13 Nov 2020

Blog

Pain is an unpleasant, subjective experience that is associated with actual or potential tissue damage. Physiologically, pain is critical for survival. However, when pain starts to affect our quality of life, we naturally ask, “How do I get rid of this feeling?”

Before we dive in, it’s important to note that pain is a very complex experience. In this blog, we are mainly talking about acute and chronic musculoskeletal pain.

Why do we feel pain?

To understand how to beat pain, we first need to understand how it works.

Imagine you twist and roll your ankle. Within a second you feel sharp pain and might find yourself on the floor. Within minutes, your ankle is sore and swollen, and you are frustrated because you now have a “busted” ankle.

So, what happens physiologically in this short period of time?

When you roll your ankle, inflammatory chemicals are released into the area. These chemicals stimulate nerve endings called nociceptors.

Nociceptors are present in most of our body’s tissues (muscles, ligaments, organs, etc.) and are activated by damaging or potentially harmful stimuli. When nociceptors are stimulated, they send a pain signal from the injured tissue to the spinal cord.

Once the pain signal reaches the spinal cord, it is transmitted up to the brainstem and thalamus. These areas act like sorting centres for your brain. The signal is then directed to several regions of the brain that process pain. When these areas are activated, your brain creates the perception of pain.

If a body part is in pain, your brain believes that area is in danger. To reduce pain, we need to reduce aggravation, “reassure” the brain, and increase its confidence in your body’s tissues.

How osteopathy can help

Manual therapies, such as osteopathy, have been shown to be helpful in managing pain.

Osteopaths can diagnose your injury and identify the causes and aggravating factors behind your pain. This step is essential for recovery. Once we know what is aggravating your pain, we may temporarily avoid that activity to allow the area to heal. This reduces the pain signals sent to your brain and starts to restore your brain’s confidence in the tissues.

For example, if your rolled ankle hurts when walking upstairs, we may suggest avoiding stairs for a short period while the ankle recovers.

As your pain settles, we introduce rehabilitation exercises to improve strength and biomechanics.

The role of rehabilitation exercises

Rehabilitation exercises are vital because they help “switch on” muscles and improve how your joints and tissues function. Exercises might be as simple as a hamstring stretch or as challenging as a single?leg squat.

Stretching aims to improve the range of motion of muscles and joints.
Resistance training helps improve movement patterns, strength and confidence in your muscles and joints.

Using a combination of stretching and strengthening will improve your biomechanics overall, which usually leads to less pain.

Our goal with treatment and rehab is to make sure that activities that once caused pain no longer do. By improving how your body moves as a whole, we reduce the chance that joints or muscles become overloaded, dysfunctional and painful.

Pain is a complex experience influenced by many factors. What we have outlined here is a simple, practical way to approach common musculoskeletal injuries.

If you would like more information or feel pain is affecting your daily life, get in touch with us so we can assess your situation and guide you through the best next steps. You can book you next appointment HERE.

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