Complexities Of Chronic Pain

Chronic pain is considered pain that lasts more than 3 months despite treatment. This condition plagues so many people across the world and many doctors don’t have a great answer for it. The difficulty of effectively addressing this issue speaks to the complexity of chronic pain. Even amidst our advanced medical technology, procedures, and powerful CBD creams, pain still persists. From the vast science behind pain, we know pain can be derived from 3 main sources: it can be purely chemical, purely physical, or purely mental / emotional.

In the acute phases of pain, the majority of the pain comes from one source. As pain persists overtime, however, it begins to expand into all categories (physical, internal, mental / emotional). The sources begin to negatively affect one another and before you know it, you’re in a never-ending cycle of pain–this is what makes chronic pain so complex.

An Example…

To give you an idea of what this looks like, think about a case of chronic pain that you or a loved one is currently experiencing. It likely started with one of the main sources; let’s say physical, for this example. You may have had an injury years ago lifting something, or maybe you were in a car accident. Let’s say you hurt your back. You tried resting it with no improvement. You tried stretching it – still no improvement. Maybe you tried icing it, NSAIDs, other pain-killer prescriptions, physical therapy, and maybe even a CBD cream — still no long-term improvement. Within 1-2 weeks, the internal inflammation process has grown and grown making things worse. On top of that, mentally and emotionally you’re exhausted, losing hope, and it seems that all you can think about is your pain.

Now, if you address the primary cause early, you will have a much easier time healing and recovering. As time goes on, however (as you can see in the previous example), you will need to address the mental/emotional side of things (attitude, mindset, hope), the internal side of things (inflammation, nutrient deficiencies, etc.), and the original injury itself (the physical component, the tissues, etc.), in order to truly get rid of chronic pain.

Physical Health

#1 Movement

When it comes to physical health, there are a couple key things to keep in mind. #1 – movement is crucial. You may have heard the phrase before “movement is medicine.” I would actually take that a step further and say that movement is health — it actually improves our health and allows our body to heal. Medicine never allows our body to heal but only manipulates things to address the symptoms. With movement, several amazing things happen. (1) Our blood and lymph circulates which moves oxygen, proteins, and other vital healing and anti-inflammatory components throughout our body. (2) Our body detoxes unwanted chemicals and toxins through our sweat. (3) Mechanoreceptors (receptors in every muscle and joint that sense movement) powerfully inhibits our pain receptors thus reducing pain.

#2 Fascial and Nervous System Health

#2 – our fascial health and nervous system health is vital. If you have injuries (old or new), those specific individual spots reduce our proprioception, increase stress hormones, and increase inflammation. It’s essential to balance the fascial system (and thus the nervous system) through manual therapies. Many people find that chiropractic adjustments can be very helpful with balancing the nervous system — I completely agree. However, some adjustments can be too much and actually increase the strain on the fascial system. If you’re getting chiropractic adjustments – great. Just make sure you’re also addressing the fascial system. In my office, we find that if you address the fascial system and internal health, the vertebra become released from all of the tension, they move better, and they go back into alignment.

A very simple approach to this that can make huge impacts, is to purchase and use a massage ball roller. They’re insanely inexpensive ($10?) and are way more effective than a massage gun, foam roller, and most other massage tools. Simply roll over your muscles and tissues with a medium pressure every day for at least ~5-10 minutes total. Try to start on your feet and work your way up to your neck going over every muscle and tissue at least 2-3 times. When you find a good sore spot, spend about 10-15 seconds going back and forth over it. Personally I’ll do this for ~5 minutes in the morning and ~5 minutes at night before bed. I’ll do it more often on days I am working out (before and after a workout as well).

Internal Health

Our internal health can also be a huge source contributing to the chronic pain. As most people feel weak when they get sick, for example, your internal health effects your external health and will either allow you to feel tired and weak or energetic and strong. In relation to chronic pain, our internal health can cause us to be more inflamed (increasing pain) or less inflamed. So, what are the main stressors to our internal health?

• Inflammation (fatty acid imbalances)
• Infections
• Nutrient deficiencies
• Toxicities / poor detoxification
• Increased stress hormones
• Lack of movement / proper blood flow

With each of these components, you have to address them naturally in order to truly allow the body to heal internally, and externally. If you have poor gut health, for example, you may need to balance some of the inflammation and kill the infections in order for your internal health to heal. If you have have toxicities building up (heavy metals, aldehydes, ammonia, etc.), you need a specific vitamin or mineral to detox them. With you have a highly stressed life, you likely need to support your body with adaptogenic nutrients (natural anti-stress nutrients) like Ashwaganda, Rhodiola, or Camu (a whole-form vitamin C), and improve diaphragmatic breathing. I address each of these things more specifically in other articles but I wanted to shed some light on these important components to our internal health, and ultimately how it can contribute to our chronic pain.

Mental/Emotional Health

The mental/emotional side of things can be the source of pain in the first place, but it’s usually more-so the component that keeps the never-ending cycle going. Let’s discuss both scenarios.

The source that began the pain: losing a loved one, relationship stress, work stress, or anxiety about your future (or a combination of them) can all greatly affect the body. In discussing autoimmune diseases, for example, we discussed how many times autoimmune conditions begin because of emotional stress such as a painful marriage or hurt from losing a loved one.

Mental/emotional health that keeps the never-ending cycle going: often times chronic pain begins from a physical injury or an internal health problem that contributes to external pain. After weeks and months of no improvement and treatments not helping, our hope can easily be diminished. We begin to forget what it ever felt like to NOT have this pain. Our mind can become trapped inside this experience because of how prominent and frustrating it is. This is the mental/emotional side of things that feeds the cycle and causes our internal health and physical health to continue to decline.

Our thoughts are powerful and can often cause our health to decline or improve. It’s essential that we use the power of our thoughts, emotions, and words to our advantage. We can do this by thinking encouraging thoughts, by speaking uplifting words to ourselves and to others, and by choosing to be happy and grateful. Do you ever notice those that are most encouraging and positive around you seem to be the healthiest and the happiest? Most people think those people are happy because they are healthy… it’s often more so the case that people are healthy because they are happy. Take control of your thoughts and your words and use it to your advantage.

Why Is Chronic Pain So Difficult To Get Rid Of?

Chronic pain is one of the most common health problems for 2 main reasons: (1) It is complex and multifactorial and (2) most solutions only address one of the factors–not all three. With this condition being multifactorial (partly physical, partly internal, partly mental/emotional), the solution needs to also be multi-factorial.

That means physical therapy, stretching, working out, or other forms of movement therapy may be beneficial, but it won’t get rid of all of the pain just by itself. Further, if you focus on the internal health component by eating healthy, avoiding inflammatory foods, and taking some anti-inflammatory nutrients and anti-oxidants, you will reduce the pain, but that in and of itself likely won’t be enough. The same analogy goes for our mental/emotional health — you can have an amazing attitude and mindset that you are healthy and healing, and while that is very powerful, you likely will also need to address internal issues and physical factors.

Our Approach (Very Effective)

Our approach to chronic pain is multi-factorial and that’s why it is so effective. We address the physical component through healthy movement habits, balancing the nervous system, and balancing fascial system. To address the internal health component, we address nutrient deficiencies, inflammation, stress hormones, infections, and so on. We address the mental/emotional component through meditation, the power of our words, and the power of our thoughts. We address all of these things in a personalized and effective way using an amazing technique called Systems Health Care. As 1 of ~22 doctors in the country that do this technique, it is really quite special. And frankly, the ability to tie the physical, internal, and mental/emotional components all together when addressing a health condition is unheard of, and that is why this multi-factorial approach is so powerful.

Suffering From Chronic Pain?

At Freedom Health and Wellness, we address all of these things and more through a personalized and functional approach. We help people with chronic diseases and illnesses regain their health by getting to the source of their health concerns.