Physical pain is an incredibly important function of the nervous system which allows us to live past our thirties. There are many characters of musculoskeletal/physical pain which include itch, tickle, ache, sharpe, stabbing and burning. It was once thought that each pain meant something specific within our body telling us what was happening e.g. burning pain could be extruded disc material. The nature of pain is that it is not anatomically specific e.g. how do people with phantom limb pain have pain in a limb that isn’t there?! Pain will move around, change character, intesity and even frequency of occurences leading to much confusion about ‘doing something’ incorrectly.

Pain will often occur in conjunction with inflammation and yes the classic Lewis triple response will demonstrate how pain and inflammation can occur at the same time and place but because pain is present does not mean inflammation automatically follows. For example inflammation in the brain does not cause us pain in the brain. The cycle of inflammation is also known as the healing cycle and we need inflammation to heal. Medications such as cox 2 inhibitors need to be taken sparingly and if possible not at all with regard to musculoskeletal pain, especially back pain. Medication that has been found to be helpful in decreasing musculoskeletal pain is paracetamol with a weak opiate in combination with eachother. But do not think that pain killers is a long term strategy because pharmaceuticals can cause the problems they are given to help. The number of people with long term conditions with chronic physical pain are on the rise in the UK.

In our opinion some instances of pain can be a notice to let us know an area of our body has been injured in other cases it might be a compensation in how we use our body, in other cases it may be from emotional disturbance or be of cognitive provenance and other times it may be from an interaction with others or ourselves. Most of the time there are layers of all the different types listed here that accumulate over time. Due to the accumulation of pain type (nocioception) nervous system signals it is plain to see why common medical opinion at present is that pain is somehow linked to age. At Life Right we quite simply do not believe that pain is an inevitable part of aging.