Pain Management:
Common Pain Syndromes
Acute and chronic pain effects over 100 million people in the United States each year.
While pain is best known and characterized as
subjective, meaning only the person who is experiencing it can explain what it feels like, pain is often called the Universal
equalizer.
Pain affects people differently. What may be perceived as only a minor nuisance to one person, may be completely debilitating to someone else. Pain is a warning that something isn't quite right.
Pain is not a disease in itself but the result of an underlying condition or due to injury. Pain is not just a physical sensation or psychological event, but a combination of these and other components.
Pain can be caused by a variety of situations such as accidents, musculoskeletal disorders, improper lifting, bending, sports activities, misalignment of the vertebrae of the spine and disease.
It can also appear out of nowhere with no obvious cause.
A viral illness may possibly be a cause, or emotional trauma, such as fear or resentment. In the vast majority of cases, pain is caused by stasis of blood and or our body's energy resulting in muscle spasm, trauma and
immobility.
Pain is a vicious cycle: spasm and inflammation lead to more spasm and inflammation. Although the cycle can develop due to injury, the
ultimate cause is often in the brain, which can interfere with muscle physiology through the spinal cord. Chronic (long term) and acute
back (and neck) pain are common expressions of stress and emotional stress.
This demonstrates the true complexity of the mind/body interaction. Many times it is the brain's distortion of muscle function that sets us up for pain by preventing muscles from responding freely to physical stresses.
Acute pain can result from disease, inflammation, or injury to tissues. This type of pain generally comes on suddenly, for example,
after trauma or surgery, and may be accompanied by anxiety or emotional distress. The cause of acute pain can usually be diagnosed
and treated, and the pain is self-limiting, that is, it is confined to a given period of time and severity. In some rare instances, it
can become chronic.
Chronic pain is widely believed to represent disease itself. It can be made much worse by environmental and psychological factors.
Chronic pain persists over a longer period of time than acute pain and is resistant to most medical treatments. It can often cause severe problems for patients.
In assessing pain, a useful approach is to assess pain intensity (sensory), pain relief (cognitive), pain location, pain distress (affective), behavioral patterns or other similar sensory aspects of pain.
Without a doubt, added stress and strains can take its toll on your spinal and nervous system. Maintaining a physically fit body, awareness of body positions, a clean and detoxified internal system, keeping fears, stress and insecurities in check and careful execution physically, through each day are all great ways to avoid daily aches
and pains.
Common Pain Syndromes
1. Inflammation can be caused by injury, joint diseases, tumors, infection, abscesses, misalignment. The cause is usually clearly
defined and is medically classified as Calor, dolor, rubor, and tumor:
Heat, pain, redness, and swelling. The four classical signs of inflammation.
2. Physical Injury are defined as cuts, broken bones, sprains and strains and can manifest as intense burning pain or deep aching pain.
3. Widened Inflamed Blood Vessels considered migraines, headaches or temporal arteritis. This is defined as pulsing, throbbing intense
pain and localized to the area of inflamed blood vessels.
4. Insufficient Blood Flow considered angina, leg pain, pain from exercise or in some cultures the definition of pain itself; blood
stagnation.
5. Nerve Pain expressed as shingles, diabetic neuropathy and sciatica. This sensation is that of tingling or burning pain and may
radiate along nerve pathways.
6. Toxemia, which is caused by the ingestion and accumulation of substances which are foreign to the body and toxic in nature, such as
chemicals, drugs, etc. These produce irritation, inflammation and pathology in bodily organs and systems.
Toxemia, which is also due to
the accumulation of toxic wastes resulting from the food and beverages we eat and drink; unnatural food or natural food in excess beyond what the body can use at the moment.
7. Deficiencies: The insufficiency of necessary food substances, such as carbohydrates, proteins, fats, minerals, vitamins, enzymes etc.,
lead to breakdown of cells, tissues and organs which is given names of diseases, according to its location.
8. Enervation is the reduction or loss of energy due to the lack of rest or sleep, or the excessive use of emotion, negative thoughts, worry, stress, or the overdoing of physical actions, overeating etc.
Enervation leads to a reduction of the body's ability to digest, absorb, assimilate and excrete body wastes - thus leading to a retention of wastes in the cells and tissues and thereby causing
disease.
Andrew Pacholyk, MS, L.Ac.
Peacefulmind.com
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