Another great article from bettermovement
“Exercised induced analgesia is not just about getting some temporary feel-good chemicals from a jog or weightlifting session. It is about tuning up a system (Descending Inhibitory System) whose proper function is necessary to keep you feeling good all the time.”
Todd Hargrove continues to be one of the most credible writers on musculoskeletal pain science in the world. Check out his new article – here
Out of the 7 strategies mentioned, which are the top two? 1. Rest 2. Strengthening.
It’s hard to believe that musculoskeletal pain science can be reduced into such simple terms, because of all the noise out there.
“Here’s the bottom line: for many kinds of common pains, you will not find a treatment that works better on average than simply strengthening the muscles around the painful area, in a way that doesn’t aggravate the pain.”
A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing…
“All I do know is pain is a confusing complex and worrying condition and poorly associated with structure.”
Todd Hargrove on the important topic of the inefficacy of orthopedic surgery –
https://www.bettermovement.org/blog/2017/many-orthopedic-surgeries-dont-work
FROM THE IASP (Internation Association for the Study of Pain)
Pain
An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.
Note: The inability to communicate verbally does not negate the possibility that an individual is experiencing pain and is in need of appropriate pain-relieving treatment. Pain is always subjective. Each individual learns the application of the word through experiences related to injury in early life. Biologists recognize that those stimuli which cause pain are liable to damage tissue. Accordingly, pain is that experience we associate with actual or potential tissue damage. It is unquestionably a sensation in a part or parts of the body, but it is also always unpleasant and therefore also an emotional experience. Experiences which resemble pain but are not unpleasant, e.g., pricking, should not be called pain. Unpleasant abnormal experiences (dysesthesias) may also be pain but are not necessarily so because, subjectively, they may not have the usual sensory qualities of pain. Many people report pain in the absence of tissue damage or any likely pathophysiological cause; usually this happens for psychological reasons. There is usually no way to distinguish their experience from that due to tissue damage if we take the subjective report. If they regard their experience as pain, and if they report it in the same ways as pain caused by tissue damage, it should be accepted as pain. This definition avoids tying pain to the stimulus. Activity induced in the nociceptor and nociceptive pathways by a noxious stimulus is not pain, which is always a psychological state, even though we may well appreciate that pain most often has a proximate physical cause.
Another great blog by Todd Hargrove. The main point of this blog boils down to a careful suggestion, which is that MOVEMENT-based therapy is superior to education-based therapy, for chronic pain.
“But pain is unfortunately sometimes more like the checkerboard illusion – immune to logic. People often have pain in areas where there is no damage, and sometimes in areas where there aren’t even body parts! Having conscious knowledge about these facts sometimes cannot affect perception. In terms of modules, we could say that the pain module is just not very interested in hearing corrective information from the cognitive modules. It was designed to be strategically ignorant about their conclusions. This is frustrating, but I think an interesting theoretical way to look at the problem of pain having “a mind of its own.” If the pain module won’t “listen” to the more cognitive modules, which modules might be better at speaking its “language?” The movement modules would be first on my list.”
https://www.painscience.com/articles/fibromyalgia.php#cfs-me
“Or it’s possible that exercise just really does aggravate some cases of fibromyalgia.
And yet fibromyalgia is among the most likely of chronic pain conditions to benefit from exercise if you do it right. But what’s right? No one knows for sure, of course, but here are some evidence-inspired tips:
“Fitness: Undoubtedly critical! Regular moderate exercise really is the closest thing we have to a miracle drug or a fountain of youth. The older you get, the more you should avoid the extremes: too much and too little are likely both a problem.
Do you even lift? You should! Weight lifting specifically is linked to a lower risk of metabolic syndrome.24 It’s a more well-rounded and efficient workout than most people realize.25
Anti-inflammatory nutrition: It’s also possible to some extent to eat an “anti-inflammatory” diet — which isn’t as impressive as it sounds. It basically just means a healthy diet, particularly one that doesn’t give our system major blood sugar regulation challenges.”
Todd Hargrove is able to describe in simple enough terms, how movement can decrease pain through adaptations in your brain and nerves:
We experience pain in relation to movement when the nervous system perceives that the movement is threatening to the body. Like other perceptions, the perception of threat is an interpretation that is subject to change based on a wide variety of information. A program for graded exposure can offer the nervous system new information about a movement that might cause a change in perception. If you can find a way to perform a currently painful movement at a low enough intensity that it does not hurt, you are sending the nervous system feedback that the movement is safe. If you do this repeatedly, perhaps the nervous system will start to disassociate the movement from the pain. This is the same rationale underlying many treatments for anxiety and phobias.
