Chronic Pain
Chronic pain is diagnosed as pain that has lasted for more than 6 months and affects around one third of all adults in the UK.
We know that nearly all injuries should heal fully within 3-6 months. If you have pain that has gone on for more than 6 months and you have not been able to find an accurate diagnosis for the cause of your pain, you are among the majority. But not without hope.
In almost all cases, chronic pain is not hardware driven (damage or injury to bones, joints, tendons, ligaments), it is more that your nervous system (brain) is attempting to protect you from something
that it perceives to be dangerous; This is why most chronic pain conditions go undiagnosed or untreated.
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This is known as Neuropathic Pain. It is where the brain becomes hyper-sensitive and hyper-reactive to what should be normal sensations or activities.
Put simply, your brain is processing certain information from your body as dangerous and responds by making you feel pain.
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You may have:
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Areas of injury (if there was an injury) that are physically healed
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Scans come back as clear or uncertain as to what is causing your pain
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The pain may come and go, or change ever so slightly over time which does not fit the pattern of an injury
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These are all signs that your chronic pain symptoms are not brought about by a physical injury. They are more likely to be in response to physical, environmental, emotional, hormonal, nutritional or chemical stimuli.
Our Four Step-Treatment Process has been designed to find and address the root causes for the "why" behind your chronic pain. In almost all cases it is a wide range of factors that are contributing to chronic pain. Being aware of all the potential reasons for it and having a broad spectrum of tools to treat these, gives us a good chance of eradicating what can be, a debilitating part of your life.
We also have blogs on Sciatica and the Hardware/Software reasons behind pain that go into great detail. The sciatica blog in particular explains many of the underlying causes for it and also gives more insight into how we effectively treat it in clinic.
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Using an in-depth assessment and following our Four-Step Treatment Process, we plan to help diagnose and treat the contributing factors to your pain, helping you get back to normal and beyond, as quickly as possible.
Back Pain FAQs
Will I need a scan if I have back pain?
There may be a chance that a scan is required (if you haven’t already had one) but we will only advise this after a full assessment. If you have already had a scan, we would welcome seeing any imaging reports as these can aid with our treatment diagnosis.
Do I have back pain because my core is weak?
There are many things that can prevent back pain and having a strong, functional set of core muscles (the muscles of the lower back and abdomen) can help. However, a lot of very strong people also have back pain; It is too simple to just assume you have a weak core.
So many different variables will dictate whether you have back pain or not; Having a strong, set of core muscles is only one of them.
As part of our full assessment, the functional strength of your core muscles is one of the factors we take into account when diagnosing your unique symptoms.
Is my posture causing my pain?
Your posture may be contributing to your pain on a day to day basis. But the more important question is what is causing your posture to be as it is?
Working positions whether they include being seated all day at a desk based role, or bent over all day as a farrier may do, can contribute to one degree or another. The inability to maintain a balanced, even posture can be brought about by many things which could in turn affect your pain.
Subconscious posture, be it seated, standing or during movement are all part of the assessment here and are key indicators for progress during the treatment process.