An important revelation about pain! (Copy)
One of the most important revelations for me in the past year of my pain management studies is that “tissue damage and pain are not the same”!
If we were to injure ourselves, such as spraining our ankle, an alarm signal travels through the nervous system to the brain, warning of the threat, and the brain will produce a pain experience at the ankle, so that you don’t continue to walk on it and it can heal.
(Read more about about the body’s alarm system here.)
However if the sprained ankle were to occur whilst you were crossing a busy road - you might not experience pain right away - the brain is going to weigh up the most important thing to keep you alive and hold off on the pain signals to the ankle until you are safely across the road! Or if the sprained ankle occurs during a important sports fixture, you might not feel it until after the game is over.
Can you think of an example of when this has happened to you - where there is tissue damage but no pain? Have you ever found a bruise but have no idea where it has come from? I certainly have! You can see the inflammation, the first stages of healing - but there has been no pain, perhaps until you notice it or touch it. Let me know in the comments!
Taking the opposite example, can you think of a time you experienced pain but no tissue damage? Have you ever eaten an ice-cream too quickly and got "brain freeze"? Is it painful? Yes. How long does it last? Usually just a few seconds, and there is no tissue damage.
How about if you were to slowly bend your finger back. You should start to experience some pain as the alarm system kicks in and the brain sends a pain signal as a warning - but again there is no tissue damage. If you have been experiencing pain for a long time, it is most likely that the tissues are healed, if you even had an injury in the first place.
So in actual fact it’s a pain problem rather than a tissue damage problem!
If you are frustrated by aches and pains and desperate to go beyond the fear of moving and back to enjoying life vivaciously, drop me a line here - I’ll be taking on new clients for my Motion Beyond Pain 12 week programme from September.
If you are a movement professional and want to learn more about this life-changing knowledge, I highly recommend the Back To Roots Internship - their next session is also starting in September. Click this link for more info or let me know if you’d like to chat to me about the course from a student perspective.
