Chronic pain is that nagging long term pain that doesn’t go away – even after the damaged tissues should have long since healed.
This form of pain is characterized by its long term effect on the body, lasting at least three months. Pain, and in particular chronic pain, can be a very subjective sensation.
Understanding this can be half the battle for its reduction. The reason for the subjectivity lies in the fact that pain is not simply a sensation, but the interpretation of this sensation. Nerves may detect the pain, but it is the brain which interprets it.
Chronic pain has a very different physiological mechanism than the pain you might experience by hitting your thumb with a hammer. When your body continually detects the same pain, it gets more efficient at detecting this pain. Imagine a trail of ants taking a certain route to a food source, and returning the food to the nest. Over time this route becomes more developed. Even when the food source is no longer present, the ants will continue to use the path they have created. Chronic pain works by the same mechanism.
Chronic pain is the food source, the nerve signals from this pain are the ants, and the brain is the nest where the pain impulse is sent. The more the nerves detect the pain, the better they get. While the initial pain may have been only moderate, the continued sensation of pain will increase as the nerves get ‘better’ at detecting it. You end up with a situation where your nerves ‘remember’ the pain, and you experience considerable pain from a very small dysfunction. The majority of tissues in the body are able to repair themselves within six weeks, and yet chronic pain continues long beyond this. Over time, we can even continue to experience pain when there is no longer a physical problem. The problems with this are obvious. Not only are we fighting the physical cause of lower back pain, but we are trying to treat something which no longer exists.
Exercise has been identified as a major initiative in overcoming chronic pain where the causative factors are no longer present. It has the ability to ‘reset’ the pain receptors.
Listen to your body – but bear in mind that what it’s telling you isn’t always the truth.
