Why Do I Have Pain

Pain is an uncomfortable sensory experience that the brain produces when it feels the body is threatened. It is like the car alarm system in our body, letting us know if something is about to happen and continuing to alert us after an event. Pain is a proces

s of the brain, not the muscle/bone/tendon/ligament tissue where we feel it. The distal tissues provide information to the brain about what is happening, but it is always the brain that decides if pain is the best response to have. This is why sometimes we don’t feel pain straight away. For example when you are playing football or enjoying yourself in the surf.

False Alarms happen quite frequently.

Not every pain we get means we have injured ourselves. In fact, the whole pain system is designed to kick in before we hurt ourselves. This isn’t always the case but most of the time our brain is working well and preventing us from serious harm. This is why we often feel the odd little jolt of pain or why a lot of “injuries” seem to heal very quickly.

Acute Pain is pain that only lasts a short time. Usually the most time you will have acute pain for is 6 weeks. That is because most acute pain is not associated with an actual injury, and when it is, most tissues heal within 6 weeks. In cases of acute pain, exercise is encouraged to help restore normal function to the tissues. You may not be able to do everything you normally do, but there is always something you can do and ways to change your normal routine to make it comfortable. People who rest completely are much more likely to develop…

Chronic Pain is much more complicated than acute pain and often has very little to do with tissue damage. As we have pain our nervous system becomes more sensitive. This is normal and helps us to not make an existing injury worse. However, sometimes that sensitivity doesn’t go away as our tissues heal. When this happens we have an alarm system that goes off all the time and for no reason. Think of the annoying neighbours car whose alarm goes off when nothing is happening. That is chronic pain. Chronic pain is usually accompanied by other changes like weakness, deconditioning and fear. Activity is also encouraged for chronic pain but it usually has to be much more gradual. This is so we can recondition your alarm system to work appropriately and alert you to actual threats to your body.