Getting to the Bottom of Pain
We’ve all experienced pain in one way shape or form at some point in our life. Sometimes there’s an easy explanation - the corner of the table and your toe decided to have a quick meeting, using your butt to get down the stairs instead of your legs, eating that pizza roll as soon as it comes out of the oven.
What about those times when there seems to be no exact reason why? Waking up in the morning with a stiff neck, tight hips while you walk, nagging low back pain when you go to stand up after sitting? Did you somehow damage or tear a muscle doing normal, regular exercise? Probably not. So why are you experiencing pain? Let’s start with what pain really is.
Simply put - pain is a sensation. It is an interpretation by our brain of a stimulus placed on a tissue in the body. That stimulus sends a signal up to the brain, where it is either determined to not be a threat, or the brain decides something needs to be done about that stimulus. In cases of the latter, we get the sensation of pain. This can occur in cases where there is no true damage, and our brain just wants us to pay attention to what is going on in our external and internal environments.
Pain is our brain’s way of saying, “hey, pay attention to this.”
It’s important to remember that things like sleep quality, hormone balance, inflammation, past experiences, and overall stress can affect our ability to manage and interpret pain. Poor sleep, low testosterone, chronic inflammation, and high levels of stress reduce our pain threshold, and normally non-painful activities can become painful.
The next step - what do we do about pain?
Get an assessment done. Whether this is through a blood test, gut evaluation, movement screen, or a combination of all three. Taking a larger look at the whole body can help figure out where the cause of the pain is at. The site of pain is not always the source of pain.
Continue to exercise and move. RICE is shown to be outdated, and ineffective. Non-painful movement encourages blood flow, and promotes healing. Icing and staying inactive slows the body’s ability to heal. Things like ibuprofen and ice just mask the symptom without treating the true cause.
To summarize, pain is not always bad. It just a sensation that tell us something isn’t quite right and our body wants something to change. When in doubt, get assessed and get a game plan to help manage it effectively!