I have already talked about pain numerous times, in fact three times (pain part 1,2,3), but this is a subject that people have a hard time understanding. So, I will do one more post to try to clarify things. The most important thing about pain that people should know is that pain is an output of the brain and that pain does NOT EQUAL TISSUE DAMAGE (1-5). It sounds almost crazy and scary but it is true. That is why sometimes you see people with lots of arthritis that have no pain and other people who have very little arthritis and have lots of pain. Pain depends on the situation, I will give an example: Imagine a soldier at war and a professional soccer player at a match, and they both experience the same devastating knee injury. For those two people the significance of their injury is going to mean two completely things. For the soldier it means he can get the hell out of there and go home, for the soccer player it means good-bye to his professional career and maybe even income. Take a wild guess and think who is going to experience more pain??
But anyway, let us get back to the topic at hand and try to clarify why pain moves. Pain is basically controlled by the nervous system, so imagine something happens to your back, ¨nociceptors¨will send this information to your spine and from there to the brain. Now, let us suppose this ¨injury¨ keeps bothering you for a while, and these ¨nociceptors¨ will be firing away 24/7 during this whole time. At the end, the pain becomes centralized. Now, this is where it gets interesting. Your spine is also receiving at the same time information from all the different parts of the body. Once the original pain has become ¨centralized¨, the spine can sometimes make an error and get confused with all the different types of information that it is receiving from its nerves (6). This confusion can lead to the pain moving from one place to another. Now, when this happens it doesn´t mean that you have injured yourself in a new area, it just means that your central nervous system has made an error in its processing of the information.
But anyway, let us get back to the topic at hand and try to clarify why pain moves. Pain is basically controlled by the nervous system, so imagine something happens to your back, ¨nociceptors¨will send this information to your spine and from there to the brain. Now, let us suppose this ¨injury¨ keeps bothering you for a while, and these ¨nociceptors¨ will be firing away 24/7 during this whole time. At the end, the pain becomes centralized. Now, this is where it gets interesting. Your spine is also receiving at the same time information from all the different parts of the body. Once the original pain has become ¨centralized¨, the spine can sometimes make an error and get confused with all the different types of information that it is receiving from its nerves (6). This confusion can lead to the pain moving from one place to another. Now, when this happens it doesn´t mean that you have injured yourself in a new area, it just means that your central nervous system has made an error in its processing of the information.
Hope you liked it.
- Flor H, Nikolajse Li, Stachelin Jensen T. Phantom limb pain: a case of maladaptive CNS plasticity.Nat Rev Neuroscience 2006 Nov;7(11):873-81.
- Flor H, Braum C, Elber T, BIlbaumer N. Extensive reorganization of primary somatosensory cortex in chronic back pain patients. Neuroscience 1997: March 7.224(1)5-8.
- Ren K, Dubner R. Central nervous system plasticity and persistent pain. J Orofac. Pain.1999.Summer.13(3):155-63.
- Kim S, Lee Hoo T, Lim Mee S. Prevalence of Disc Degeneration in Asymptomatic Korean Subjects. Part 1: Lumbar Spine. Journal of Korean Neutrosurgical Society 2013 January;53(1): 31-8.
- Kendrick D, Fielding K, Bentler E, Kerslake R, Miller P, Pringle M. Radiography of the lumbar spine in primary care patients with low back pain: Randomized controlled trial. BMJ 2001;322:400-05.
- Hargrove T. A guide to better movement. Better movement 2014. pg 101-4.
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