Did you know that scientists have found the feeling of pain is something your brain decides you should experience if it believes there is a problem?
Video courtesy of Haavic Research and Dr. Heidi Haavki.
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Did you know that pain is created in your brain? Did you know that the scientists now know that the feeling of pain
is something your brain decides that you should experience if it believes that there is a problem?
Your brain can decide for you that you should feel pain even if it only thinks there is a potential threat of tissue damage.
This means that even if you have no actual tissue damage you can still experience pain.
We also know from scientific studies that even when there is true tissue damage, your brain may not create the feeling of pain for you!
This is called the paradox of pain.
It means that the pain you feel does not always reflect the severity or even the location of your problem, if there is a problem at all.
Science has shown beyond a doubt that pain is created in the brain.
Sometimes pain can be very helpful and informative.
Our brains create for us the experience of pain to let us know that something is not ok.
Maybe we are over exerting ourselves, or repetitively bending in awkward postures, causing harm to the body.
Maybe we have an injury that we may need to be careful with to allow the body to heal and to avoid further damage.
The pain can let us know what not to do while the body heals the problem.
This pain is helpful and informative.
If we listen to our bodies these pain experiences are a good thing.
But for some people pain can persist even after an initial injury has healed.
And for some people the pain can spread to other areas where there is no injury at all.
For these people the pain has become non-informative and non-helpful.
The pain itself has then become a problem.
The brain has learnt to be in pain.
The way the brain does this is very similar to the way the brain learns anything else.
It’s called neural plasticity or brain adaptations.
Did you know that what you focus on actually drives neural plasticity?
This is obviously a good thing if you are focusing on learning something because it will help you to learn it.
But if you are focusing on your pain this may actually make your pain worse, or persist and harder to get rid of.
It is therefore best to focus on the good things.
Focus on what is working well.
Focus on what makes you happy.
Focus on what you are grateful for.
This alone can help you heal.
Brain scientists who have studied the effects of chiropractic spinal adjustments have discovered that adjustments
also change brain function.
Chiropractic has a neuroplastic effect on the brain.
In particular adjustments change function in a part of the brain called the pre-frontal cortex.
The pre-frontal cortex is actually a part of your brain where that’s very involved in where pain becomes chronic.
This might be why early chiropractic care can have better long term outcomes.
It might be that chiropractic care can prevent pain from becoming chronic in the first place.
Neuroscientist believe that chiropractic care most likely helps reduce your feeling of pain by helping your brain ‘turn down’ or ‘switch off’ the perception of pain in the brain.
This means chiropractors may or may not adjust your spine exactly where you feel that it hurts.
They are looking for parts of your spine and body where there is a lack of proper movement and will adjust you there,
so don’t worry if it’s not exactly where you feel the pain is.
Remember that the feeling of pain that you experience is created by your brain and does not mean it’s exactly where the problem actually is.
Chiropractors are very good at finding the parts of your spine and body that need to be gently adjusted.
Research studies have shown that adjusting your spine helps your brain know more accurately what is going on in your body, so that it can more appropriately respond to what’s going on and control your body better.
It improves your brain-body communication.
Let me give you an example.
My friend Glenn had for many years suffered with knee pain.
He played a lot of Rugby when he was younger.
He had all kinds of medical treatments for his knee including arthroscopic surgery but nothing helped.
In the end he tried chiropractic only to help out his mate Chris who was training to become a chiropractor.
The chiropractic intern Chris did not even adjust his knees but instead focused on his pelvic
joints and his neck because that’s where he had poor spinal movement.
Glenn could not believe it because his knee pain went away almost immediately.
Glenn now gets adjusted regularly to make sure his brain-body communication
is as accurate as possible so he can feel great and function at his best potential.
For more information, go see your family chiropractor so you can sort the pain in your brain.
Video courtesy of Haavic Research and Dr. Heidi Haavki.
