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Pain is a funny thing. It’s not a hilarious thing – unless you have a really sick sense of humor. But it is funny in that pain is really a trick played on us by our mind to get us to do something. Let’s examine the anatomy of pain to see if we can learn to listen to its message.
Pain fibers
Nerves do many wonderful things, such as empowering our stomach to digest our food, empowering our heart to pump our blood and empowering our eyes to read this page. These are called efferent nerves. Efferent nerves carry signals from your brain to your body.
Nerves that carry signals from your body to your brain are called afferent nerves. Different receptors in afferent nerves help us distinguish hot and cold, a light touch from heavy pressure, and the many faces of pain signals: sharp, dull, throbbing, fixed, migrating, piercing, etc. Even numbness or pins-and-needles sensations are really pain sensations because of their afferent nerve signals.
Pain nerves are covered in a protective sheath called myelin. The myelin sheath may become damaged from injury, toxicity, and certain deficiencies such as Vitamin B-12 and folate. When this occurs, we will feel pain sensations when no injury really exists.
This is where the trickery begins.
Interpreting the signals
A pain signal is designed to get you to avoid serious injury. If you put your hand on a hot stove, pain signals get you to quickly remove or withdraw your hand before more serious injury occurs. The same with cold, sharp, dull, etc. Pain is very motivating!
Afferent nerves don’t really feel pain. You don’t really feel pain. Your nerves merely carry a signal from your body to your brain. Your brain, in turn, interprets this signal according to the type of nerve that conveys the message.
When you experience pain you are not really feeling pain; your brain is interpreting a signal as pain. That becomes very important as we discuss the remedies for chronic pain.
Remedies for pain
Pain is the way your body signals that there is something wrong requiring immediate attention – withdraw from the pain! Switches – like light switches that turn on a light – turn on the pain signal when danger exists and turn it off when danger has passed. So, the first remedy for chronic pain is to withdraw from whatever is causing the pain.
With chronic pain, sometimes the switch gets turned on and never gets turned off! These switches, often called pain gates, are ruled by nutrients such as Vitamin D. Also, in chronic nerve pain, a signal is sent from a damaged area or lesion in the myelin sheath. The myelin sheath is ruled by nutrients such as Vitamin B-12 and folate as well as essential fatty acids.
Chronic muscle pain occurs when muscles try to restore balance to an unbalanced muscle region. The imbalance may be caused by injury, stress, a sedentary lifestyle or poor posture (really, poor posture and sedentary living are types of muscle injury). Muscle balance is ruled by magnesium and, to a smaller extent, by potassium and calcium.
A word about inflammation
Just as chronic nerve pain can become caught in a loop or cycle, inflammation may become chronic even after the cause of the inflammation is removed. The chemicals of inflammation injure your afferent nerves and your brain interprets this injury as chronic pain. Pain and inflammation go hand in hand.
To break the cycle of chronic pain we must:
In this way we can learn to listen to the message of pain and achieve the balance of pain-free living!
Live Life #VoxxLife Strong
