For most of us suffering from chronic pain conditions every day, pain becomes second nature. This might lead us to think we know everything about pain whereas the truth may be far from it.
Pain is not simply an unpleasant sensation that affects your mood and physical wellbeing. Everything in nature contributes towards the larger scheme of things where balance is essential for survival. Similarly, pain also balances something in our bodies that we might not know of.
Here are some secrets about pain unveiled.
Pain is a protective device
It sounds strange, doesn’t it? All the lives we try to protect our infants and ourselves from suffering pain and then this bit of information tells us otherwise. What this means is that pain is there for a reason. It’s a way for your body to communicate that there’s something concerning in your system, which needs your attention. It’s just like the red signal in your car when the fuel is running low.
Pain doesn’t describe the problem
The natural pain mechanism works on a symptomatic level, only to warn us that there’s something wrong. Sure, they alert us about the problem, but don’t describe the exact problem. This is important to know because often times we assume the intensity of the pain is suggesting the severity of the problem. While this may be true sometimes, it’s not an authentic measure of the problem. This is why a medical checkup is important.
Pain is complicated
The pain you’re feeling is not simply because of the injury that’s causing it. Your sensory information is contingent on a myriad factors including expectations, past experiences and pain threshold. We train our brains to identify and address danger according to what we deem worthy of our attention and what we don’t.
Pain is hard to locate
When you clutch your stomach in about of abdominal pain, that’s because your brain tells you where it’s hurting. However, this is not always an accurate signal towards the source of the problem. Sometimes, the brain may release confused signals about where the pain is. The biggest proof of this phenomenon is phantom pain when people with an amputated limb feel pain in a part of body that doesn’t exist.
It’s hard to retain all this information about pain but it’s easy to simply dial our number and visit our clinic.
We’re a physical therapy clinic in Bethesda and we offer pain-relieving treatments for chronic conditions.