What Is Pain?

Pain is the body's protective alarm system. It's an unpleasant signal generated by the nervous system to tell your brain that your body might be in danger or needs attention, regardless of a physical threat actually being present or absent. 

As woth all alarm systems, pain can be extra sensitive, annoying, and/or frustrating to shut off, even if a perceived threat is no  longer there.

How Pain Works: 

1. Sensors in the body detect something potentially harmful (pressure, heat, chemical changes, injury, touch)
2. These senrors send signals through nerves to the spinal cord and brain. 
3. The brain interprets the signals based on context, past experiences, stress, fear, mood, and exprectations. 
4. If the brain decides you need protection from the signal, you feel the pain. 

Acute vs. Chronic Pain

Acute

• Short-term.
• Typically linked to injury, inflammation, or illness 
• Purpose: to protect you while you are healing. 

Chronic 

• Lasts longer than the body’s normal healing time.
• The nervous system becomes more sensitive, especially when lived experiences involve heightened emotions such as stress or fear. 
• Pain becomes less about damage and more about overprotection 

How Can Physiotherapy Help You Manage Pain? 

• Pain Education: Learn how movement can be safe in your specific context, overcome protective tension that worsens pain, reduce fear, and reduce pain levels
• Activity Modification: Discover how you can continue or return to your activities while managin pain and continue participating in life to maintain your overall well-being. 
• Posture and Movement Retraining: Optimize your movement patterns to reduce ongoing stress and discomfort (e.g., improving posture for neck and shoulder pain)
• Therapeutic Exercises: Keep your joints and muscles moving to prevent stiffness and avoid pain from immobility. Your physiotherapist will choose gentle and graded exercises that are appropriate for your stage of healing and evidence-informed. A therapeutic exercise program is a great way to reduce sensitivity and improve activity tolerance. 
• Joint Mobilization: Moves stiff joints gently to reduce sensitivity and restore mobility. 
• Soft-Tissue Work: Reduce muscle tightness and improve blood floow to reduce perceived pain signals.
• Modalities (Ice, heat, TENS, Ultrasound Therapy): Various modalities used in physiotherapy clinics are comlimentary to a strong treatmen plan involving education, therapeutic exercises, lifestyle modifications, and hands-on techniques. Some modalities can alter pain signals for faster relief or promote blood flow to the area that is healing, which can provide faster relief.  

Physiotherapy targets both the tissues and the nervous system, helping your body move safely, overcome pain signals, and improve function. Book an appointment with a physiotherapy at Premier Physiotherapy Clinic in Ottawa today so we can figure out how to navigate your body's alarm system sooner then later.