Week 8 Manual Therapies
- How has chronic pain affected you or someone you know?
I’ve had recurring aches and pains, which are non specific, and can be due to multifactorial inputs. The spine and surrounding muscles can be fatigued, causing backache and incorrect posture and referred pain. Other factors are internal (from organs), and may be more chronic in nature due to viruses, excess or deficient functioning, inflammation, damp, heat, hormonal imbalance and other reasons.
The brain as the central processing unit, is constantly sending, and receiving information. Messages are relayed around the body constantly. Chronic fatigue may be a symptom of stuck energies creating dull aching pains and other niggling issues. Along with fatigue, accompanying rheumatic pains may be sharp and heavy, relaying specific sights of inflammation and damage.
A few different terms from this week to review are: trigeminalreticulo limbic pathway, (slow pain transmitted along the parietal cortex for awareness of localised pain), key areas here are the thalamus and basal ganglia. Referred Pain Endeavour : ‘coming from a site distinct from the actual site of origin – nerve (radicular pain), somatic referral (from joints and muscles) or visceral referred pain (from organs)’. Pain Matrix, brain structures: ‘capable of creating pain perception in the absence of nociceptive input, Includes the brainstem, amygdala, hypothalamus, thalamus, and areas of the cerebral cortex’. Emotional, Behavioural and cognitive phenomena.
- If so, what treatments have helped? Are these orthodox medicine or complementary medicine?
Nutrition focusing on stabalising energy levels, and gut health, along with self care, rest when needed and not pushing the body to far. Gentle exercise, a variety of daily activities, time spent both indoors and outdoors, and a plan for following routines, and achieving daily and long term goals, along with not hiding away due to fatigue, are all an important part of successful management.