OUR
PAIN ACCESS
Pain is not always straightforward!
Our understanding of what pain is has evolved a lot in recent years and is still evolving.
The latest research suggests that we need to change our understanding framework around pain and move away from old explanatory models based on anatomical and biomechanical causal relationships.
Science has rejected previous assumptions that pain stems from activation of so-called pain nerve cells. Today, we know that pain is made up of several contributors.
One of the most recognized definitions of pain comes from IASP (The International Association for the Study of Pain) which describes pain as an "unpleasant sensory and emotional experience, which is associated with current or possible injury, or which is described in terms similar to an experience. ".
Pain is therefore one experience which is formed in our brains on the basis of the information that the brain receives from the environment and which is held up against our previous experiences, thoughts and feelings.
Your pains are real and the intensity you feel them is completely valid.
The pain just does not sit in the body, but is shaped up in the brain.
Example:
If you fall on the run and hit the knee, you experience a pain associated with the blow and you therefore have PAIN + INJURY. This is appropriate as the pain makes you not feel like straining but protecting and relieving the area.
Are we changing the context, and are you now in Africa on the run from a lion and hitting your knee. What do you think is most important for your survival - to protect and relieve the knee or get as far away from the lion as possible? In this case, you will probably have NO PAIN + INJURY.
PAIN + INJURY
NO PAIN + INJURY
PAIN WITHOUT DAMAGE
NO PAIN NO INJURY
If we drink an ice-cold soda on a summer day, very quickly - we most often experience a "brain freeze" or "ice headache". We experience severe PAIN WITHOUT INJURY.
Phantom pain is also a good example that there are no injuries, but the individuals who have had an arm amputated continue to feel pain as if they still had the arm.
Based on these examples, we can quickly disprove the old explanatory models where pain is the result of a tissue injury.
Our experience of pain is controlled by the nervous system and involves both physical and emotional components.
The physical influences can be all kinds of sensory influences that our nervous system picks up through "sensory cells" in whole body and leads further up for processing in the brain. Examples of these influences can be:
The blow of a fall
The hand touching a hot hob
The foot stepping on a drawing pin on the floor
The brain receives this information and then creates a response, without your awareness - so one is triggered reflex . Depending on the type of physical impact and past experiences related to the same impact, this causes a reaction whose purpose is to ensure our survival. For example:
The brain creates the experience of pain after the fall, which causes us to protect the damaging area
The brain activates the muscles that can quickly pull the hand away from the hob
The brain activates the muscles that can quickly lift the foot off the floor
In chronic pain, the nervous system and the sensory cells that absorb the physical influences are hypersensitive. This means that it takes much less to trigger the survival reflexes and thereby the experience of pain.
With P-DTR, we can normalize these reflexes and remove the hypersensitivity of the nervous system.
The emotional influences may be our past experiences, thoughts, concerns related to the pain and the context in which the pain occurs. Therefore, the term "fear-avoidance" is often used in modern pain science, where fear of a movement can lead to an avoidance of the movement and thus create a negative spiral for physical development.
It is therefore essential to become pain-free that you understand what pain is and how we humans affect the experience of pain.
The chronic pain that you experience is real in all its magnitude and intensity, but is a result of one hypersensitive nervous system and a brain that is constantly on alert.
OPTIMUS - Physiotherapy & Pain Clinic treats both acute and prolonged (chronic) pain with good results because we:
Based on your history and not the conclusions of your previous therapists, doctors or other professionals
Works from a form of treatment based on a scientific foundation of modern pain science, neurology, anatomy and biomechanics
Has specialized in a completely new form of treatment: P-DTR, which treats and "restarts" the nervous system
Teach our clients modern pain science so you can understand the complexity of pain - and what you can do to get better