Pain Neuroscience Education
Pain is complex. Chronic pain is even more complex. But the more you know about why you hurt, the less you will hurt.
This is called Pain Neuroscience Education. This type of treatment teaches those in pain about the nerve pathways that occur in our body when we feel pain. The goal is to re-conceptualize pain. This treatment also identifies the many other factors beyond biological that can contribute to pain such as contextual factors, social factors, and psychological factors.
When used in combination with other physical therapy treatments such as exercise or manual therapy, Pain Neuroscience Education has been shown to reduce pain, improve function, and decrease fear.
Analogies
- Alarm
Pain is an alarm. If we accidentally put our hand on a hot stove, we need pain as an alarm to protect our hand from injury. This is a good thing. However, like how most car alarms go off when no one is breaking into the car, there can be times when our body experiences pain without threat or injury. This is not a good thing. Through our treatments, an Elevate physical therapist can help you to retrain your alarm system so you feel less pain.
- Gray Hair and Wrinkles on the Inside
The majority of us accept that we will get gray hair as we get older. The majority of us accept that we will get wrinkles as we get older. Some people have these changes earlier in life and others have these changes later in life. It doesn’t mean that anything is wrong with us or broken, it is just part of being part of the human species.
Similar to gray hair and wrinkles seen on the outside, our bodies also demonstrate age-related changes on the inside. These normal changes are widespread throughout the body and can be anything from disc degeneration to rotator cuff tears to knee osteoarthritis to joint space narrowing.
As we mentioned in our myths debunked page, these types of changes have been shown to increase with each decade of life, even in those people without pain. Unfortunately, when normal age-related changes are made to be abnormal or faulty, this can cause people to feel fragile or broken. When in reality, our bodies are extremely resilient and adaptable.
- Motion is Lotion
Our bodies are designed to move. And when we are in pain, movement can actually help us to feel better. This is because motion is lotion for our muscles, tendons, and joints. Like how we put lotion on our skin to moisturize it and make it feel better, we can use movement and exercise to help our bodies move better.
- Low Back Pain: The Common Cold of the Musculoskeletal System
Each of us will get the common cold again at some point in our life. In fact, we are all probably going to have it again on a few occasions. But, it gets better with time. We can’t prevent it from happening completely, but we can do some things to reduce its likelihood. And low back pain is the same way. Everybody gets it. It gets better. And there are some things you can do to reduce your chances, but nothing can completely prevent it.
To be clear, this analogy is in regards to low back pain in the absence of any neurological symptoms or any other location of symptoms. But luckily, your Elevate physical therapist is trained to help you determine if your low back pain is just that or if it is something more.
