Why Does it Hurt? Understanding Pain

May 15

Have you ever experienced a tension headache after a stressful day, or noticed that you are achy and sore after a bad night of sleep? Pain is not as straightforward as: you cut your knee, then you heal from that cut, and then the pain goes away. Sometimes the pain can come and go. Sometimes the pain can return even though you are still healing as you should.

In this video Dr. Robin discusses the science of pain.

How the nervous system communicates pain signals and how our brain interprets them
How individual experiences of pain are different based on the number of adverse life experiences we have had
How the level of control we feel we have over our pain determines our levels of pain
The impact of stress on our pain
The impact of depression, anxiety and negative emotions on our pain
The importance of returning to movement

There are ways we can change our pain that start with our understanding of the pain system itself.

If you have any questions about this video or need some help feeling better, feel free to reach out to us, Dr. Robin Armstrong or Dr. Jody Freedman. We’re always happy to help. You can book with us online or give us a call.

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Full Blog/Transcript:

This process is all a part of the science of pain. Pain is processed by our nervous system, divided into our central nervous system: the brain, and the spinal cord. And our peripheral nervous system: the nerves that go out to our arms and legs, to our skin, and to our organs.

Messages are sent back and forth between the two systems via neurons, or nerve cells. And that's where it starts to get complicated. When you get a message from your peripheral nervous system back up to your central nervous system, (i.e. your brain) your brain can interpret that sensation in several ways. For example, imagine it is the first time that you have worked out and you are performing bicep curls. You might feel feelings like a burning sensation, maybe even a tearing, or a really strong increase in tension or pressure. Your brain has to decide,”Is this an emergency? Are those danger signals? Should we stop?” If you have never felt those things before, then you might stop. Whereas someone who has exercised before interprets that as “I'm getting stronger. This is how I know it's working. This is a positive thing.” And that person may continue and not have any feeling of pain per se. They interpret that in a very different way.

We know that individual experiences of pain are very different, and part of that is based on adverse life experiences. We know that the number of negative life experiences you've had in your life is going to increase your pain. These are things like divorce in the home, being a survivor of abuse or violence, and having a family member or yourself suffering from addiction. These life experiences are going to impact your experience of pain and make pain greater.

Our brain processes pain in the same areas that it processes thoughts, emotions, and experiences. So your experience is going to be very different from mine because we have different things going on in our brain and we've had different life experiences.

We also know that how much you feel you can control your pain tells us what your experience of pain is going to be. So the more in control you feel of your pain, then the less painful it is.

If you can figure out ways to control certain aspects of your pain, that might decrease your pain overall. For instance, if you know that you can sit for about 30 minutes, but then your back starts to get achy and sore, and then by the time you get to 60 minutes, it is extremely sore, and that might last for a few hours. What if you were to say, “Okay, I'm not going to fight this? I know I can sit for 30 minutes and then I'm going to get up and move around and I'm going to reset.” You don't give your body that opportunity to get into the really painful stage.A much as you'd like to be able to sit for 60 minutes, you now have taken control back, and stopped the pain cycle from beginning.

We also know that stress can have a really strong impact on our experience of pain. The higher our stress, the more our pain is going to be. This is partly related to our so-called fight or flight response. When there is a stressful experience, the fight or flight part of our nervous system turns on and releases a few hormones. At first it releases adrenaline, for that first sudden increase in stress. Then there is a second round of hormones called cortisol, and that is a helpful hormone if you still need to keep going in that stressful situation. Unfortunately a lot of times what happens is that cortisol stays around for days or weeks, and it starts to cause problems. It can increase the inflammation in your body and decrease the tissue healing. It also impacts things like your blood pressure, your ability to process sugar from food, and it disrupts your sleep-wake cycle. Additionally, we know that if you have poor sleep, then your experience of pain increases as well.

We also want to make sure that you are managing things like anxiety or depression, because people with anxiety or depression have a greater experience of pain. Similarly,people who experience more negative emotions have an increased experience of pain. Of course, it is valid to feel angry, or frustrated or upset with ongoing pain, but it is also helpful to acknowledge that the more upset, angry or frustrated you get, the more pain you may feel. So having a way to manage those feelings is important as well.

Pain is a very complex experience. So what are some of the takeaways? What can we do?

Think about reframing painful sensations just like you would in the gym. That burning sensation or painful sensation, is that making your injury worse or is it something that you can tolerate? Try to reframe that feeling.

What can you control about your painful situation? Are there certain ways that you can behave that bring control and that you know that you can keep that pain under control? It's not something that you're afraid of and hoping it's not going to come on today. You know, there's a plan in place that pain is under control.

Get your injury treated and assessed by us and we can discuss pain management strategies

Return to exercise gradually. We don't want to be afraid of movements that caused pain in the past because now that you're healing, those movements aren't so scary anymore. They may not be a dangerous movement, even though when you were in a really painful place, they caused pain. It is important to reintroduce activity and exercise gradually so that you don't develop a fear of certain movements.

If you have any questions about the science of pain, please feel free to ask your Langley Chiropractors at Willowbrook Chiropractic, we are always happy to help.