The Science of Pain (How It Works and Factors that Contribute to Your Pain Experience)
Understanding how pain works and where it comes from is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle when it comes to solving your own pain issues. Pain can be very frightening for people because they generally associate pain with damage, but this is not necessarily true. Today, my goal is to introduce you to pain science to help you learn about what pain is, where it comes from, and why it exists in the first place.
We cover these 4 main concepts:
- Pain lives in the brain
- Pain does not equal injury and injury does not equal pain
- The severity of your pain does not dictate the severity of your problem
- Just because you have pain does not mean you have a mechanical problem
Pain is a signal. It is a protective output. The goal of the pain is to get you to change your behavior in some way. So you have to ask yourself, 'what is the protective reason for my pain?'
I discuss a variety of factors that may contribute to your pain experience, a study on low back imaging of people with bulging discs or disc degeneration yet they had no pain, a story of a young gymnast with chronic back pain years after her original injury, and a review of The Threat Bucket as an educational tool to help you identify areas of your life that may be contributing to your pain experience.
Whenever you're ready here's how we can help you:
- Follow structured programs to keep your joints healthy and your muscles strong even as you age by joining the Strength & Mobility Dojo
- Restore your brain-body connection by deliberately training your unique nervous system using the neurologic blueprint we provide in our specialty course, the Neuro Dojo
