By: Joshua Gibbons, DPT
“Why do I hurt?” This is a question that we have all asked ourselves at one point or another. I have asked myself this question at least once or twice this year already. If you were to ask a few different healthcare providers this question, you would likely hear a slightly different response from each one of them. The reason for this is due to the fact that pain is multi-factorial.
Many things can influence how we perceive pain: stress levels, mood, age, gender, past pain experiences, etc. Pain is a normal sensation that is part of the human experience. Pain is our body’s way of trying to protect itself from perceived harm or injury. A sprained ankle is a good example of this that I feel a lot of us can probably relate to. If you have ever sprained or rolled your ankle, you probably remember sudden pain onset followed by increased tenderness that may be accompanied by swelling in the area. The pain is likely due to an acute injury of something in the ankle region, whether it be a muscle or ligament. In this case, we experience pain because we have sustained an injury, and the pain is there to try preventing us from making the injury worse.
Typically, as an injury has time to heal, pain also improves with it. However, there are also times where the injury has had ample time to heal, but the pain never seems to go away completely. There are a couple of reasons that this could be. I would argue the most common reason is due to nerve hypersensitivity. Nerves transmit signals throughout our body, including pain signals. Nerves will often become hypersensitive following an injury since our body is trying to protect us from further injury. Ideally, they calm down when we have fully healed, but this isn’t always the case. When we are dealing with hypersensitivity in an area, the key to alleviating this is graded exposure and desensitizing the surrounding tissues.
On the other side of the spectrum, sometimes we experience pain without a known mechanism of injury. Oftentimes when people come into the clinic, they state their pain started a while ago and has gradually worsened over time. They may wait several weeks or months to see if it gets better with time, and if it doesn’t, they decide it is time to try physical therapy. I always tell people that they should come in to physical therapy within a couple of weeks of when their pain starts if it is not getting better. The longer you wait to seek treatment, typically the longer it takes to get better.
Physical therapists are experts at examining and treating the musculoskeletal system. By listening to your history and performing a thorough examination, we are able to figure out what the likely cause of your pain is and can determine a plan to work towards getting you pain-free. If you are experiencing pain that is affecting your quality of life or day-to-day activities, give us a call, and we will work towards getting you back to where you want to be!
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