Do you realise that your joint pain could actually be a sore head?
The importance of taking care of our mental health is increasingly talked about these days although still, not enough of us make this a priority. Every day at The Foot and Leg Clinic we see the effect not taking care of our mental heath has on the body. So often the pain a patient feels in their knee, foot, back etc is largely associated to them being a little low in mood, stressed, anxious, busy… Interestingly we also see patients that suffer the same joint pain throughout the same month year on year. Likely relating to a painful memory.
‘they can’t find anything wrong but I’m in so much pain”
The patient may be suffering chronic pain of the knee, foot, leg, hip, back or even headaches however thorough biomechanical and physiotherapy assessment have found nothing wrong and shockwave, ultrasound, strengthening and many other treatment modalities have had no impact on the patients pain. Imaging such as x-ray, MRI and ultrasound also find nothing remarkable. So, what could be causing the patients pain? And what is pain?
What is pain?
Pain is difficult to quantify because our emotions play a significant role in pain. When we are exposed to a painful stimulus the body creates an inflammatory response releasing chemicals and sending information via the spinal cord to the thalamus in the brain. The information stored in the thalamus in response to the painful stimulus is then communicated to different areas of the brain.
Studies are still being carried out but so far we have found that our “negative” feelings can enhance pain. Anxiety, depression, sense of doom, low mood can actually work to prevent endorphines being released. And these endorphins are needed because they have been found to stop the transmission of pain signals from reaching our brain.
So, how we feel can result in prolonged pain, more intense feeling of pain or for a person to feel pain in response to a trigger which not usually cause any painful feelings.
How to manage pain
To manage pain we must manage our beliefs and emotions and reduce our association of fear with pain. Pain management programmes are there to help us manage this and to understand the link between pain and our memories. At The Foot and Leg Clinic our aim is to reduce the patients discomfort and we understand that unnecessary repeat manual therapy appointments for patients suffering from chronic emotional pain could be very harmful to their recovery. Instead, we recognise when to discuss emotions with the patient and encourage pain management. The results can be remarkable!
