5 Truths About Pain Everyone Should Know

5 Truths About Pain Everyone Should Know

Pain and injuries affect most of us at some point in our lives.

And as true as that statement is, pain is often very misunderstood in the medical community.

Below are 5 truths about pain that are backed by current research on the subject that may surprise you!

1. Pain does not mean there is actual damage of tissue - this is ESPECIALLY true the longer you have been in pain. 

A good example of this is when you stub your toe… when you stub your toe it is SOOOOOO painful! But the actual amount of damage to any tissue in your toe is minimal even though it feels like the worst pain ever for a few seconds. 

This is because pain is a signal from your brain, and once your brain recognizes that your toe is OK, the signal goes away and your toe feels mostly alright.

Pain after an injury is normal as your body protects the healing area. 

But sometimes your brain’s pain signal becomes hypersensitive after an injury and it can make it seem like there is still an issue with the tissue AFTER the healing has taken place. 

This usually happens because our body’s will compensate to work around the injured area while it heals, and even though the previously injured tissue is healed, our body adapts to these protective compensations.

This is why a total-body movement assessment like we use at AMP is so valuable, because it helps you identify why your body may still be protecting an area like your low back or shoulder even though the tissue has healed!

2. Complete rest is RARELY recommended even though most PTs typically start with this suggestion.

Complete rest makes sense in very rare circumstances when it comes to musculoskeletal pain… 

Most people benefit from progressing gradually back into their typical exercise and activity level IMMEDIATELY following onset of pain or injury under the guidance of a qualified physical therapist. 

And if you’ve worked with our doctors of physical therapy at AMP, then you know we take a very active approach to physical therapy!

The reason we do this is because specific, individualized exercises helps to reduce compensations in the body that often lead to lingering pain by restoring and strengthening your body’s motion!

Specific exercise also helps stimulate pain-relieving chemicals in your body while increasing pain tolerance and keeping your body strong and fit as your body heals.

These are all very very important things to help reduce the likelihood of any prolonged negative effects of pain, and make sure you bounce back stronger than before the injury!

3. You have the ability to influence a lot of factors that will positively influence pain like activity level, sleep, nutrition, and mindset!

There are a lot of factors that affect how we feel. 

And just like a couple bad nights of sleep might negatively impact our mood, lifestyle factors can also impact our sensitivity to pain.

A good example of this is traveling around the holidays. Using myself as an example - I was dealing with some low back pain that started around Christmas.

At face value, I can’t pinpoint any activity that could’ve aggravated my back.

But when I dove a little deeper, there was a lot of disruption to my typical routine 🙁

We spent a lot of time driving to visit family.

My activity level decreased.

We ate a lot of food and desserts we typically don’t eat.

I slept less due to travel and had been feeling tired for a few days following.

All worth it!

But my body’s “energy reserve”, if you will, was depleted. And within a few days of getting back into my typical routine with some guidance from my PT friends, my back felt better!

This is why the next point on the list is so important… because oftentimes we medical professionals like to look for some “mechanical” reason or some body part to blame for why you may experience pain when the reality is that many many factors may contribute.

4. While MRIs and imaging can be useful, medical research continues to show that a lot of changes found on MRI are part of our normal aging process that do NOT necessarily correlate to a painful experience.

That statement is a mouthful! 

Medical imaging is an amazing technology. It can help detect and diagnose potentially life-threatening processes like cancer early when they are most treatable.

I do not want to take away from this.

But when it comes to musculoskeletal pain, a lot of times things like MRI detect normal changes to our body that occur overtime as we age kind of like how we develop wrinkles on our skin :..(

For example - arthritis shows on imaging on most people when they’re in their 30’s. Same with disc bulges in our spine.

And while these findings may be relevant for some, oftentimes findings like these are incidental and then blamed for why pain is present.

And what research shows time and time again is that an MRI finding such as a disc bulge that is blamed for low back pain can actually make your pain feel WORSE because it affects how you think about pain.

Not everyone who has back pain has a disc bulge and not everyone who has a disc bulge has back pain… so MRIs give an incomplete picture.

This is because MRIs CANNOT tell us anything about pain or how you feel.

They are simply a snapshot of our internal anatomy.

This is why a total-body movement assessment by a qualified PT is so important because while we cannot change what an MRI says, we CAN identify factors that are contributing to pain and change those!

5. The words your medical professionals use to explain pain can make your pain better or worse, so it is important you work with ones who are up-to-date with this research and act accordingly :)

This is similar to how MRI or imaging results can negatively impact your experience with pain.

If you go to a PT who says running is bad for your knees or squatting is bad for your back,

Or that there is “degeneration in your spine”,

Or that lifting weights is dangerous…

You are being set up for failure because the underlying belief is very negative and not solution-oriented.

Does everyone who runs have knee pain?

Does everyone who squats have back pain?

Does everyone with “degeneration” (I’m really not a fan of this word to describe normal things in the body) have pain?

Of course not!

Words matter and the words we use have the ability to heal or harm.

And if the words used to describe your situation have scared you away from doing things you love, then it may be time to seek a second opinion.

Bonus: The experience of pain is unique to each person, so there are no generic treatments for something like low back pain or neck pain.

This is why exercises from Google or Youtube for pain don’t “work”... because they are generic and not specific to you and your unique situation.

Actually, a lot of our patients have gone to PT before coming to see us at AMP. And they almost didn’t come in to see us because they thought that they “failed PT”.

The reality is that in most cases PT failed them because an individualized approach was NOT taken.

Do any of the above-mentioned topics resonate with you?

If YES, then Click here to book a call to speak with our lead doctor of physical therapy, Dr. Monica Moore, because there is a great chance that we can help you… even if you’ve gone to PT in the past and did not find it useful!

Enjoy the rest of your day,

Shaun

—

Dr. Shaun Astorga, PT, DPT, OCS

Founder & Physical Therapist

AMP Performance Rehab

www.ampperformancerehab.com

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