What does pain actually mean? The mystery of pain
“The medical system is woefully inadequate for dealing with back pain. Most patients rarely receive the most important part of the prescription to get rid of back pain from their doctor- the knowledge and understanding of their condition required to become their own best advocate.”
Pain is a messenger, a function to let you know that your body needs attention. It is your body’s way of saying that something is happening that should not be happening. It is a signal that the body is not balanced and that there is some abnormal stress on the bodies joints, ligaments and / or tendons due to the dysfunction and compensations of the muscles.
Even though it is painful and most people want to just find ways to get rid of it, pain is actually a very useful and accurate tool the body uses. It is its very own way of talking to you and it's important to listen to what it has to say.
The way the modern western medical system is designed is to find a way to solve pain, most likely with the use of drugs or surgeries. Oftentimes doctors don't have enough time to find the underlying cause of a patients' pain, or they do not have enough training to understand how everything is intricately related to everything else.
Instead, they spend a lot of time learning to tie what symptoms work with what drugs and their effects. They might refer you to a physical therapists after the drugs don't resolve the symptoms. The physical therapists might be able to help you depending on what your symptoms are because they are more trained in healing and restoring relief in local areas, especially if the symptoms are caused by trauma or injuries due to accidents.
However in most cases, chronic pain without traumas or injuries is hard to resolve through just physical therapy; it might appear to reduce or resolve the pain for a short amount of time, but it will show up in different parts of the body later on, indicating some underlying imbalance of the body that is actually causing the dysfunctions.
If you sustain an injury by playing sports or trauma on a particular part of the body, physical therapy can help to heal and restore the functions of that injured part. But what if you have pain without a sports injury or major trauma? What if you have pain just from simple movements or impacts? If this is the case, then it is likely from the imbalances of the body, and this is called chronic pain.
Old injuries that were not fully restored and strengthened can contribute to the dysfunction and compensations of the muscles, which tie into chronic pain as well. Maybe your pain goes away for a while but comes back again in different parts. You go back to your doctor and they might refer you to a surgeon to check you out and see if they can help to silence the pain permanently with a surgery. The pain may go away instantly after the surgery and they call it a success but research shows that more than 50% people reexperience the pain again within 5 years unless they change the way they use their body to create a better body alignment.
As your body changes, the pain might show up in different parts of the body. It might original start in your back but then migrate to your knees or ankles. Permanent changes like surgery can also damage nearby nerves which can be much harder to correct later. The more surgeries are done the more they scar tissues and more; it will take more time and energy to reverse these ill effects on the body. Surgery should always be a last resort. The body has an amazing ability to heal and restore itself and is actually always in the process of healing.
Inflammation is a sign that the body is working hard to restore itself. The more you become aware of what your body is trying to communicate to you through pain and listen to its message, the more you will be able to naturally heal and restore the balance of the body and have an optimal health.
While pain can be mysterious in nature, that does not mean it is unfixable! The beauty of posture alignment therapy is that it provides a more wholistic view to the body and helps align and bring restoration back. If you are struggling with chronic pain or with any sort of long term aches and injuries, the practice of posture alignment can restore the body back to its natural state.