***This content comes from the Joint Pain Programme Journal by Nuffield Health. As a Rehab Specialist running this program, I’m excited to share these helpful insights with you all.
The definition of pain: An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.
Pain is individual and specific to a person. No person's pain is identical to the next.
In the ‘what is pain?’ video below, we talked about pain being the experience of an unpleasant sensation, as perceived by your brain.
This requires a vast quantity of messages travelling through nerves to your brain before being experienced.
This message-passing can be influenced at many points along the way before being interpreted by your brain.
It is important to appreciate that what is experienced is not just the product of some tissue damage, but a lot of other factors.
Pain is unpleasant, and it is a complex biological mechanism influenced by many factors:
Previous experiences: Previous negative experiences of injury/pain can increase fear and reduce confidence in the injured/painful area, perhaps leading us to fear the worst with new sensations during activity.
Medical conditions: A number of chronic medical conditions can make you more sensitive to pain.
Genes: We know that some genetic factors play a part in someone’s vulnerability to pain, inherited from family members.
Medication: Certain medications can form part of the problem: prolonged codeine use can cause heightened sensitivity to pain. Paracetamol, if taken regularly over a period of time, can be responsible for chronic headaches.
Emotions: Emotional well-being is influenced by a number of factors such as social support systems, general health, and mood (e.g., depression). The relationship between this and pain is complicated, as the presence of longstanding pain will understandably affect your mood; this can form a vicious circle.
Sleep: Sleep quality is an often-overlooked aspect of pain tolerance. Many people with chronic pain also report that they are chronic poor sleepers, and most of us know that a bad night’s sleep can make us much less resilient in general.
These factors can lead to a situation where, at the site of a healed injury, pain is experienced continually.
Physical activity will bring a number of benefits to chronic pain and musculoskeletal problems; however, it is inevitable that it will bring a few new aches and pains.
One example would be the muscular aches people experience in the hours to days after a new activity.
This is known as DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness). Many people who are regular exercisers consider it a sign of a good workout.
Over a few sessions, and with the help and support of your Rehabilitation Specialist and classmates, you will get to experience, explore, and better interpret your body’s messaging system, and learn which “pain” really needs your attention versus pains that represent your body adapting to new activities.
While the focus of this program is your musculoskeletal problems, which may be localized to one part of your body, we ultimately want you to be healthier overall—meaning an improvement in your physical and mental well-being, as that will help to reduce your pain.
That being said, none of these risk factors guarantee that you will experience chronic pain.
They do not write your destiny or remove your control of your situation.
An important aspect of your pain management is realizing how much choice and control you still have, even if there are obstacles to overcome.
Feeling a lack of control of your situation is itself a risk factor for experiencing greater pain!
Your Space to Reflect
📍 Starting Point
- How would you describe your unique experience with pain?
- What factors do you notice most affecting your pain levels?
🤔 Looking Deeper
- When do you notice emotional wellbeing influencing your pain?
- How has your understanding of pain changed since starting this journey?
💡 Exploring Possibilities
- Which pain management strategies work best for you?
- What positive changes have you noticed in how you handle pain?
🔄 New Perspectives
- How might understanding pain as more than just physical change your approach?
- What would viewing pain as a message rather than an enemy look like?
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