There is “little direct evidence that most back pain stems from a discrete injury or repetitive trauma.”
-The Journal of the American Medical Association
I have been listening to a podcast recently by chronic pain researchers. They are working on trying to figure out what causes chronic pain. They have all sorts of theories that they are testing in a variety of ways.
The reason they are researching this is because pain is not as clear cut as people think it is. Often when pain continues after a month or two, patients ask me if they should get an MRI. We have been taught that pain is caused by physical problems, like a torn ligament or a herniated disc. However this simply is not true.
Research has been showing for over 20 years that there actually isn’t much correlation between injury and pain. You may have a herniated disc, or arthritis in your neck or a torn ligament in your knee. And you may have pain. But a large group of people have that same damage and have no pain. Additionally, a large group of people have pain and no imperfections that we can see on MRI, Xray or CT scan.
The research goes farther than that. It shows that falling, lifting heavy things, and poor ergonomics, isn’t correlated with chronic pain. In study after study, researchers are admitting that they can’t find a connection between who gets injured and who has pain. The injury model of pain is outdated. And thus, the researchers on the podcast, talking about their attempts to figure out what does cause pain. They have a lot of ideas. But I have not heard a single one suggest that if the injury or arthritis or other damage is bad enough, that will cause the pain.
What does this mean for you, a person who presumably is still reading this blog post because you have pain or know someone who does? It means that pain is multifactorial. It means that even if you can’t get your body to look different (can’t get that arthritis to go away or other damage to be undone) you can still get your body to feel differently. A big part of pain is the neurology of pain. That is where chiropractic comes in. Chiropractic is great at addressing the neurological aspects of pain. It also means another big part of pain is the biopsychosocial aspects of pain. Energy medicine is great at addressing those aspects. Taken together, Cora is a great place to address your pain.
