Chronic Pain and Exercise
Did you know that pain in is the brain?
And NO that doesn’t mean that your pain is not real. Of course, its real, but maybe we can look at pain in a different way...read on!
Do you or someone you know suffer with chronic pain?
Does this stop you/them from exercising?
It’s not surprising that anyone with chronic pain is fearful of movement. From back pain to arthritis, from pinched nerves to frozen shoulders. There’s many ways to hurt and it’s hard to know what is good to do and what could potentially make it worse.
But I’d like to prompt your thoughts and beliefs on this subject. We don’t need to love pain but, is it possible to adopt a more positive outlook on chronic pain?
Chronic pain is pain that persists for more than 12 weeks, most people who fall into the chronic pain camp know this. It can cause depression, economic disadvantage both personally and to the country as a whole. Chronic pain costs the NHS quite a lot of money, it can costs our jobs and even our relationships. It’s also very complicated because how you feel pain is entirely different to how another person feels pain.
The primary purpose of pain is to alert the brain to illness or injury so you can take protective action. In the initial, Acute Phase, we must protect the pain site and allow time to heal. So…
The brain starts a cascade of inflammatory responses, swelling, redness. These cause soreness but it’s a necessary part of the healing process.
As the swelling and redness subside, repair and remodelling of the tissue continues... So all normal so far.
But there’s more to do than just healing damaged tissue. The mind needs to process the injury. We will learn from the event, learn how to avoid it happening again. How do we, as an individual deal with what is happening to our body? Our brain is in charge of this and there are many options on how it will react, you may not even know these processes are happening
The experience could go straight to the past-memory centre of the brain – Here your reactions can be influenced by how you know your parents, siblings, best friends and partners usually react to pain. Like many other areas of life our past experiences have a direct impact both (negative and positive) on how we deal with things.
The experience could go to the emotional centre of the brain - Again feeding into past experiences creating fear and anxiety and cause stress or fight or flight response.
There is the retention centre of the brain - Here we could end up focussed completely on the sources of pain and can’t get past them.
Or to the action centre - This can make us limp, stop weight bearing or doing all sorts of things to try and avoid causing more pain or worsening the pain we have already.
So many things can influence how we feel about pain - it’s not just about the actual reason for it in the first place.
A good fitness teacher can help you deal with any of these reactions and get you moving with confidence again.
Take back pain..95% of low back pain is soft tissue damage and sorts itself out in a few weeks with good pain management.
Only 5% of low back pain may need more serious treatment. Only 1% of that 5% need more urgent care and there is much that can be done without recourse to surgery!
So 95% of back pain sufferers should be able to get moving again soon, start living life and make lifestyle changes that can prevent further bouts of pain.
Do you think you have got past your acute phase of healing? If you want to take steps to get back to normal and feel secure in your body again then contact us here.
Still not convinced? Read on!
So what’s happening to the people who struggle to get up and get going again?
As already mentioned, our pain signals can be amplified and extended by lots of things – what happened that caused the chronic issue, was it traumatic? Was the person in a bad place when it began, stressed, deprived of sleep, jobs or relationships lost… this was just the straw that broke the back? Or could the issue have been affected by the treatment from therapists/medical professionals looking after us. Did we sit through a consultation that used words we didn’t understand or were downright scary?
There are other things at play here, very real things, that are separate from physical tissue damage that stop people from resolving their issues.
How many people do you know who are still fixated on their diagnosis from years ago? Is it still affecting how they live?
Learn how to squat well - you do it every day already!
How can you start to tackle this problem? Flippin Pain is a fantastic new site set up to help people with chronic pain get a better understanding of the nuts and bolts of it. They are giving you the chance to understand the science and current thinking about pain with real experiences from people suffering with chronic issues.
Sometimes the feeling of pain or worry about pain contributes to real physical deterioration of tissues and then more pain.
For some people with chronic issues, they feel pain all the time, often actively avoid doing anything that might aggravate things, to the point they avoid activities of normal daily living.
For them, the anxiety that they might do something to bring back the pain they felt, or increase their current pain causes tension in their muscles… that tension causes stiffness and stiffness causes more pain. So here a lot of the pain might be due to your LACK of movement and nothing at all to do with the original problem.
A lack of fitness or deconditioning can also be a source of pain.
Now there’s a thought! It’s common to avoid movement or anything physically challenging when we have pain. But, if that goes on for months or years, then just starting to do the most basic exercises again is going to be a bit painful. If you’ve avoided bending, twisting, lifting - all the stuff our bodies need to do to fill up a washing machine, find food on the top or bottom shelf at the supermarket, pushed a vacuum cleaner - your body will start to feel it once you get moving again. But move you must, however the payoff will be fantastic if you stick with it. Just find yourself a really good movement teacher to help you start small and build up.
can exercise help someone with chronic pain?
Exercise is vital for most of us at some point to be able to get back to full health, can we get past some blocks in the road for this to happen?
Often people are attracted to Pilates as they see it as gentle exercise, that can get them on their feet. Great, any movement is good isn’t it?
If you are deconditioned to exercise now, because of your pain behaviour then you might be wary of getting out and move or pushing through. You might think that exercise could make it even worse.
So let’s talk about the difference between HURT and WORK!
For someone who’s always exercised we understand that a bit of muscle soreness or DOMS is a normal result of challenging our bodies in an exercise class. But for someone who is fearful of movement that sends them out the door of the exercise studio or gym, never to come back again.
Yes you might be sore for a couple of days, but if you are, don’t worry, you will get stronger.
Does your teacher say if it hurts stop? Or rest when you need to, or work within your comfort zone?
OK..now you need to challenge yourself to look at the ‘hurt’ Is it just muscles working in ways they haven’t been asked to for a while because you have been afraid to try? If so, keep moving. Do one more repetition of the movement, then another, because often what can be a bit stiff and painful when you start, can soon diminish by rep 10 or 15.
I’d also flirt with the idea finding a new teacher that gives you positive reasons to keep moving!
Consider this…… PAIN DOES NOT EQUAL DAMAGE!
Is pain the first and last thing you think about? What can you do to get past that? Pain is in the brain as already mentioned and like lots of things how we react to it will determine our outcome. Were you made to go to school unless your leg was falling off? Or were you fussed over? Did you have a parent who was a martyr to their pain? All these experiences can affect how we deal with our own pain.
Get out there and get going! Life is for living not living with pain.
Your mind is the strongest muscle you have and sometimes it needs a bit of help to change some habits for something more positive. CBT can be hugely effective in this - train your brain to reduce back pain! There’s a great idea and so can movement.
Over the nearly 25 years of teaching Pilates and seeing many people with back pain, it’s interesting to note that many of the people in are classes have been with us for years. Yes, they came in the beginning with back problems, but they stuck with us because it works, and they have long resolved any issues they first came with, or they stay because it keeps them moving well. Either way we know Pilates based exercise works well for joints, spines, and minds.
So get moving, try and find a really good teachers who understand pain and will still keep you moving and improving. Don’t reach for a sit down or a lie down if you have pain, grab a paracetamol and go for a walk instead. When you are up and about with other things to take your mind off your body, you will find that your outlook begins to change too, and you are less concerned about pain and more interested in what is around you.
Get stronger by moving longer and try and dampen down the pain signals and swap them for movement, fresh air, and nature. It will do you so much more than sitting ever will. Grab life by the wotsits and enjoy it again.