Complex & Persistent Pain
In this 7 part pain series Craig Harrison talks about persistent and complex pain. In part 1 he explores what it means when we talk about the word 'pain'. Specifically, how certain situations and experiences can influence our reaction towards stimuli, that may or may not elicit a painful response.
Following up from part one of our seven part series on persistent pain, today's blog is about how scans and images don't always explain why we might be experiencing pain, and how we can start to paint a picture around where to start when we commence an exercise routine to assist.
Whenever you hear clinicians talking about back pain, the first thing that we hear is that we need to ‘strengthen our core’, ‘you need to do core exercises’, or, ‘your core is weak’. Even the term ‘core’ is a confusing topic that we hope to sort through in today’s piece. In most cases, we don’t need to ‘strengthen’, but just try to move a little more, a little more often!
We are an adaptable species. We have become the most dominant species on this planet because of our adaptability. However what we are exposed to, we adapt to. This is the principle of ‘Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand’. This is the topic for today’s blog post. What we impose on the body, our body has to adapt to. Whether it be negative or positive, the body will adjust to the stimuli that it is presented with.
When completing tasks, there are easier and harder ways to perform them. We also need to learn how to perform these movements, and then practice these movements to become better at them. From here we can increase the complexity of the task in different ways. This is the principle of Progressive Overload. Tying this in with our ability to adapt, we can accomplish amazing things!
Posture. Is there a posture that is the best for us? Is there one that is the worst for us? It depends! Too much of a good thing can still be too much!
Over the past six blogs, we’ve explored a number of different topics in the area of persistent pain. As you can tell, it is a very complex area of discussion and there is far more on this than we’ve spoken about these past few weeks. Today we are tying it together. What now? What kind of exercise should we engage in? Where should we start? Let’s have a looksee.