There are nerve fibres in the tissues of your body that respond to all manner of stimuli. If those stimuli are sufficient to be dangerous and damaging to that tissue then special nerve fibres send prioritised alarm signals to your spinal cord. These alarm signals may then travel on up to your brain. Whether those signals get to your brain, and therefore your conscious awareness, depends on a number of factors.
This type of nerve activity is called “nociception” which literally means “danger reception”. We all have nociception happening all the time but only sometimes does it end in pain.
When you stub your toe or have a back ache it’s easy to believe that pain goes into your body and brain. Biologically, this is incorrect. Many, many factors will determine whether the nociception “danger” signals going to your brain at any moment will be perceived by you as a pain event. Most of the time these tissue danger signals will be dealt with subconsciously by your body’s innate healing capacity and as your body automatically heals and repairs that tissue the danger signals are turned down or simply stop.
However, when you are in a state of stress these danger signals will be louder and more persistent than they should be. That will result in you experiencing more pain than you should from even a seemingly trivial incident.
You have probably had the experience in your life when you were very engaged in an activity, like sport, where you copped a knock or sprain or even worse and didn’t feel a thing until you stopped. In other words your body tissues were damaged but the danger signals didn’t impinge on your awareness as pain until you stopped that activity. On the other hand you may well have had a very minor traumatic incident but because you were in a state of stress, you were tired or emotionally upset or unwell, when the pain you experienced was incredibly worse than the actual injury itself.
Common stressors that can make our brain susceptible to experiencing increased pain are-
- Emotional stressors – financial, relationship and work related are big ones.
- Chemical stressors- poor diet, smoking, increased sugar intake or too much processed food. Certain medication, drugs and alcohol.
- Physical stressors- poor posture, pre-existing injury or illness and spinal misalignment (subluxations)
Simple common sense ways to diminish your experience of pain and maximise your body’s innate ability to heal and repair itself are to-
- Clean up your diet, eat natural unprocessed foods as often as possible.
- Reduce or improve your stress resilience by meditating, exercising or finding time to do something you love.
- Make sure your body is mechanically sound by improving your posture and seeing your chiropractor to correct any structural imbalances.
So you see, pain isn’t in your body it’s, really, all in your head.
