Why Do I Still Hurt?

So, what keeps you from moving and enjoying life's activities? Chances are if you are visiting this site it is chronic pain. This could be recurring pain you experience in your back, your neck, your knees, your hips or any other joint in your body. For a number of you the pain you experience is probably located in a multiple areas. You've probably tried a host of different approaches to relieving or eliminating this pain because its been with you for a while now. You may have taken over the counter pain medication, been prescribed pain or anti-inflammatory medication or even steroids. Perhaps you've had physical therapy, chiropractic therapy or maybe even surgery. If you're still here then whatever you have tried hasn't produced the results that you wanted. I'm glad you're here because I would like to help.

There is nothing wrong with any of these approaches. They each have their place in the overall picture. More of what I would like to do today is provide a little more insight into why you may be in chronic pain and how your body responds to it. Knowing that maybe we can come up with a strategy to change the response and reduce the pain. Does that sound like a plan? Let's hope this plan comes together because as Hannibal from The A Team always used to say, "I love it when a plan comes together.".

So when your body is hurt, either by an immediate injury, or by a chronic condition like doing the same thing over and over again or some sort of disease process like arthritis, it responds in a particular way to limit how much damage happens. To make things simple we'll discuss what happens when you have an immediate injury such as spraining your ankle. We'll talk about more chronic conditions later as the same processes happen in a slightly different way. Your body is geared toward survival and the less damage that is done the better your chance for survival. There are several things that happen when your body is hurt in any of these ways. I'm going to focus on just one of them. When there is pain in a joint whether it is in your back, your hip or your foot the first thing your body does is limit the motion in that joint. It stops it from moving so no more damage is done. The first thing that happens is some muscles tighten up and stiffen while others are actually not allowed to contract to prevent any movement from happening. Swelling and the development of scar tissue over time may also decrease the amount of movement in the area. Treatments for injuries may include other methods such as splinting and casting to help limit the movement as well. This is all very necessary to not only limit the damage but also help speed the healing.

Your body knows to do these things because the nerves in the area tell the brain something has been hurt and we need to stop it from hurting more. So, it stops or limits the amount of motion in the joint as much as possible. Over time and with proper care and treatment the initial injury heals. Even if the treatment and care isn't ideal the injury heals because it needs to to insure survival. These nerves are activated by pain, so when there is no pain they aren't broadcasting their alert so to speak. Strangely enough if you don't start moving the joint or joints soon after the injury occurs then your brain starts to miss the updates on the condition of the joint. The same nerves that sent out the warning don't have to because there is no new threat.

There are other nerves that provide regular information on what's happening in the joints during regular movement without any injury. They haven't been working much during the time the joint hasn't been moving and if movement is still limited they may not be active still. When we go back to being more active they may still be rusty and not sending as much information to the brain as they used to. So even though there is no more pain there may not be as much movement and thus less information about what is going on in the joint get sent to the brain. Literally, your brain is disconnected from some of the information about what is going on in the joint. It's like there is something blocking or limiting the signal that is getting through. Kind of like when your cell phone service starts slowing down data speeds after you reach a certain limit. Without the brain knowing what's going on in the joint it doesn't know how it is working and compensates using other information and usually changing how your body moves. It is still geared toward survival. This can cause a host of other adaptations that affect how your body moves and eventually creates pain in other areas.

So the take away for today is that when your body doesn't move because of injury or any other reason your brain doesn't have all the information it needs to keep it moving in a healthy way. We'll talk more about that affects chronic pain next time. Let me know if you have any questions or comments down below. I look forward to hearing from you.