My knee hurts. Therefore the pain is in my knee and it has causes; possibly I fell on it or I have done too much running.
If I go to a physiotherapist, the chances are very high that a weak gluteus medius and inner knee muscle will be diagnosed. Strengthen those up, and 10 marathons a year, here we come. Oh, I may have to get a pair of orthotics to stop everything from wobbling about and causing more pain. ((I have a fractured neck and broken jaw from a bicycle accident some 35 years ago. My only pain from this was a sore right knee, so I went to a physio and was told I had a weak gluteus medius and inner knee muscle. I was also prescribed orthotics. Yes, I ran the London Marathon. But in recent years, my pain levels have slowly escalated. I have felt like a cartoon character sliding down a wall, frantically hanging on with her finger nails. But that is finally reversing, and boy, has it taken some work. Incidentally, my guts were in poor form and my sleep terrible. Those are improving dramatically too. There has to be something in all this sort out the eyes and inner ears stuff since it does seem to work and I’m well on my way to becoming a ninja.))
My back hurts therefore the pain is in my back and if I strengthen my core, the pain will go away.
In fact, pain is an action signal from the brain. The brain says, ‘Oh, this is getting ridiculous. I am going to make you hurt now so you will pay attention and stop carrying regardless.’
So yes, if we fall over and banjax our ankle, we have to stop most activity whilst we hobble about.
A moment’s reflection may make us realise that hobbling about, although necessary at the time, will banjax the other leg and the other joints in the wounded leg. And the back. And the neck. Potential pain is piling up.
So we go skiing and fall over onto a shoulder. It hurts and we take care of it. After a while, it stops hurting as much and its life as normal. But it never quite stops hurting and as time goes by, pain goes up again and we slowly develop a frozen shoulder. There are the usual actions on developing a frozen shoulder: do nothing and hope it goes away; go for physiotherapy; have surgery or have a steroid injection.
Dr Eric Cobb, Mr Z Health, has worked with pain and dysfunction for some 25 years and says in all that time he has only come across two true frozen shoulders and both of these started with a virus. All the others are neurogenic – brain born.
So what’s going on?
Pain is a signal to take action and do something to stop it. Usually the things we do are directed at the site of pain. More intelligent therapists may start looking at the spine or elsewhere in the body and most therapists will suggest adopting a healthier working position, for example.
Last week’s blog, ‘How to sort yourself out’ went into the three inputs into the brain, from the body, the eyes and the ears – sound and balance. Unless these three inputs are sending harmonised signals into the brain, we are all heading for injury and chronic pain of some sort.
In the blog I gave a simple test for the eyes and the inner ears. Here’s an even quicker one. Fix a spot some distance ahead of you, and whilst staring at that spot, rapidly turn your head from side to side, being reasonably vigorous about it. Now walk – or run – towards that spot. If you are a ninja that was easy. For most of us, the walk became a hilariously wobbly stagger. A run was dangerous. Oh, and before you start, check in a mirror that as you turn your head rapidly, your chin stays parallel to the floor.
So really mending a frozen shoulder/carpal tunnel syndrome/runners knee/back ache/scoliosis and so on requires more than just looking at the pain in the body. Otherwise either that pain will come back or another one will develop.
But alas, there is more. Stress. Yes, that old chestnut. I have written before about the stress bucket; as well as the three major information inputs into the brain, the brain also registers the level of stress from daily living: not enough sleep; not enough water drunk; eating crap food; eating irregularly plus the more obvious – getting stuck in traffic, meeting endless deadlines, nuisance calls, not enough money, divorce, death and dereliction. The Long List.
Adding to stress is the huge load on the body from poor posture, poor breathing and old injuries. Physical damage loads the stress levels by causing poor sleep and gut problems plus pain.
And all this builds up and up until the stress bucket is full to overflowing and the brain, fed up with being ignored, sends its most powerful signal to make us pay attention: pain.
Pain signals us to wake up and Do Something About It. And to be truly successful, that Something is more than going for a massage. Or taking to our bed for a few days until we feel better enough to do it all again.
Ignoring pain completely is a surefire way of developing something so nasty, life has to stop.
Pain comes from the brain. It may live in the body, but addressing it only there will either not make it go away or the pain will emerge elsewhere. Living a long, extremely healthy, life is highly desirable. But we do have to pay good attention to get it.
