Pain!

Why did you come to see us? Usually the answer is pain! It could be lower back pain, headache, neck pain, sciatica, or spinal degeneration, to name a few conditions we frequently see with excellent success rates.

Pain is a sensation, starting where it hurts, sending a message up to your spinal cord, in another nerve the sensation ascends the spinal cord, going to the brain where you perceive that it hurts. Most pain relief is aimed at blocking the messages from being transmitted from one place to another.

The messages can be blocked in the spine quite easily. What do you do after you stub your toe? After hopping around and swearing you rub it and flex it back and forth. This good stimulation inhibits the sending of pain messages to the brain, decreasing the feeling of pain! Neat!

Now ask yourself: “How can I use this so I am in less pain?” Easy answer; any stimulation other than pain or high heat will inhibit pain. This includes spinal adjustments, acupuncture, massage, exercise and movement, hot or cold packs, vibration, TENS units, heating or cooling topical creams, ultrasound, and kinesiotaping. Each of these therapies has other benefits and risks. Talk to us about which options are right for you.

Do you know what your nervous system does well? It learns. That’s great for complex activities like walking and eating, but isn’t great for pain. Yes, you read that correctly, you can learn to be in more pain. Long standing pain consistently stimulates the same nerve fibres over and over again. What happens to muscles you use all the time? They get stronger. The same happens to pain carrying nerves, they become more proficient at sending pain messages to the brain.

Once your nervous system learns pain, treatment is still effective, but takes longer to see lasting results. This is because we have to fix the original problem, then deal with the nerves which have learned to be super pain carriers. How do we do this, exactly the same as with acute problems, (spinal adjustments, acupuncture, massage, exercise and movement, hot or cold packs, vibration, TENS units, heating or cooling topical creams, ultrasound, and kinesiotaping) but for a longer period of time. It is hard to weaken the pain nerves once they have gotten stronger, but with the team approach to your care we can help even the most chronic conditions.