Did you know?!
Pain is complex. Pain is an experience we sometimes go through, and it is typically a response of our body to let us know there may be something wrong. It is the equivalent of our body’s fire alarm. The human body is a complex machine, and in many machines, there is an electrical circuit constantly zapping information to and from our brain. This is exactly how pain operates, using all the nerves in our body messages are sent to our brain and then the brain sends back a message to release a combination of nerve impulses and chemicals. With this return message from the brain, pain is created. This system is incredible but it is not perfect. While it protects us from burning our hand or running through an injury sometimes the brain misinterprets normal messages and accidentally sends back the electrical and hormonal impulses which makes us feel pain. When suffering with a long term problem this can be the case.Going back to the fire alarm analogy, whilst fire alarms are brilliant and save lives nobody wants a fire alarm which goes off every single time you cook! Similarly nobody wants their back or neck to hurt every single time they do something! This is where physiotherapy and self-education comes in, as mentioned before our bodies are electrical circuits, this means we can rewire them. This is often done through ensuring we keep moving and pushing our boundaries no matter how incremental it feels.
Here is a link of Lorimer Moseley, an Australian neuroscientist, speaking at a TED Talk conference in Adelaide and he speaks of the phenomenon of pain and how many factors influence it!
His website can be found here: https://www.tamethebeast.org.
Remember, while it may feel otherwise, there is always light at the end of the tunnel!
