Many of you know that I have chronic pain. This video is a short explanation of what is going on behind the scenes. Your body’s pain system is like an alarm system. If you get a nail in your foot, your nerves send a signal to your brain telling your brain you have a nail in your foot. Your brain then produces pain to warn you of the danger (the alarm goes off).

The problem is when your “alarm system” never calms down. The tissue heals, but the pain remains. The pain system has become ultra-sensitive and causes the brain to produce pain when faced with mild stimuli (or nothing at all). That doesn’t mean there isn’t anything wrong with my tissue necessarily, but my “alarm system” hasn’t calmed down so it’s very sensitive in areas.

Persistent Pain Explained in 3 Minutes: https://youtube.com/watch?v=jyHeAQbFs34

If you are a fellow sufferer who wants more info, let me know. Lorimer Moseley and Adriaan Louw have a lot of good resources. One of the things they mention is that research has found that learning about pain decreases pain. Key point: Motion is lotion. Once you have a good baseline of what you can do, you always want to be doing a little bit more than before without causing a bad flare-up. You will still want to be screened for underlying causes. Chronic pain is not necessarily only an alarm system malfunction, but this helps.

Why Things Hurt TED talk: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gwd-wLdIHjs
What you can do about pain: https://youtube.com/watch?v=0pxenGYuCgs
The Difference Between Injury and Pain: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Crjb07FguDI