No pain, No gain… Really?
No pain, no gain is a well-worn phrase familiar to most anyone who has ventured down the path to improved strength and physical conditioning. Aches and pains are an expected part of the process. But for the person with a history of musculoskeletal pain, is this sound advice?
The answer can be both yes and no, of course. While all pain is annoying, some types are more worthy of attention than others. Deciding how much to push through can be a frustrating task. The acute pain of a fresh injury should never be ignored. But what about chronic pain? To understand it, let’s take a moment to look at the larger picture of how the brain and body work together in this pain puzzle.
When there is stress or injury to a tissue, the special pain nerve endings in your body send a warning signal to the brain and nervous system. The system will then respond to protect the injury by telling you there is pain. It may prevent you from walking on that ankle you have just sprained, or from bending forward with an injured low back. You will adjust your behavior because of the pain. When this ankle heals up, those nerve endings should quiet down and the pain should go away. Sounds straight forward, doesn’t it?
If it were only that simple!
Pain is all that, plus a little more. The amazing brain deals with information about all the other things going on in your body and outside of it, including pain. We can call these stressors. The brain also holds memories, it processes emotions and feelings about your pain, the situation and life in general. It senses fatigue and illness. From all these stressors at that moment, it creates a perception of pain.
This doesn’t mean the pain is in your head. It means that the level of pain is the result of many things linking together in your brain. It is unique to you. This is one reason why pain responses can be different for two people with the same type of injury. Through complex connections in the nervous system, the pain becomes linked with the stressors and pain is more easily felt. The nervous system becomes overly sensitive with a lowered threshold for pain, even though the tissues are healed.
So chronic pain is more about sensitivity and less about damage. It is about pain that persists beyond its usefulness. It’s about pain that can be ever changing, without reason, and all over the place at times. That’s a challenge, to say the least.
With all this in mind, let’s go back to the original question “should I push through the pain?” The answer is a qualified “yes”. It may require you to step back and look at the bigger picture though. Take heart, just as many factors influence pain, there are as many fronts on which you can work with your pain to make it better. Exercise is just one of those fronts.
You may benefit from working with a physical therapist for specific exercises to uncouple pain from movements. Qualified trainers can be very helpful also. Exercise can do wonders to reduce the sensitivity of your nervous system turns down the pain alarm. There may be a little hurt, but if you start “low and slow” and be persistent, there should be no harm. When you set some goals for activity and stay the course, you will find new ability and rewards as you push through the pain.