Tension + time leads to disordered function and ultimately a change in structure. Place a muscle under tension and you will slowly deform muscular shape. Place a bone under tension and eventually there will be a growth. Spinal vertebrae are bones that provide a nutrient flow to spinal discs, through a bony mesh called an end plates. Increased tension can affect any bone or part of a bone. End plate changes on MRI are an early warning of disc disease.
Function Better, Feel Better.
Muscular ‘Training Effect’ is constant
Read more about positively employing the Training Effect here.
Chronic pain as an experience is layered when compared with acute pain. A chronic pain experience can outlast a disorder of structure or function and over time experiencing pain can become your experiential normal.
What is Pain..?
Pain, is defined as a sensory emotional experience (1). Pain comes from Latin and Greek meaning penalty and later from French to include suffering. Recently pain experiences have been explained in terms of psychological injury and moral injury in English Law.
A pain experience is an unresolved emotional state of being. Emotions are a complex of psychological states containing thoughts bound to bodily sensations. A pain experience does not definitively mean you have pathology or damage.
Pain could be caused by:
Difference – The signal returned is different to the signal expected within your central nervous system.
Dysfunction – Muscles and Joints are imbalanced
Damage – an injury has changed how your body can work
Danger – Increased Threat to Me increases pain experience
Trauma – e.g. Adverse Childhood Events, Adult Psychological Trauma
Continuing Pain
An experience of reoccurring or chronic persistent pain can be generated through circumstances, interactions, relationships, bereavement and injury. Psychological injury and Moral injury are registered in the same part of the brain as physical injury, called the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC). In addition from a simple perspective there is the habit of having pain. People can habituate through compensations, altered movement patterns and modified thoughts about the body.
Reference:
- International Association for the Study of Pain (2016); Terminology; Pain