Chronic Pain Solutions 3: Regaining Control.
How to regain control of your body’s ability to heal chronic pain. Take a guess. What organ controls healing in your body? We discussed this in the last blog. What organ would be responsible for coordinating and activating the healing of your chronic pain? The answer is the brain. The brain sends messages through the nerves to heal injuries and illnesses, everything from broken bones to the flu. It’s not the cast or the theraflu that heals, it’s your body under the direction of the brain. There is a “life force” that living beings have that is required to heal. After all, dead people with cuts and broken bones won’t heal no matter how much medicine you pump into them. While this seems obvious, it’s often forgotten when it comes to dealing with chronic pain. Our body is meant to be healthy, it was designed to heal itself, the process though, needs to be unobstructed, without interference. When the brain’s control over healing is at it’s best, you have the best chance of overcoming chronic pain. The fact is, nerves and brain communication that is interfered with, is one contributor to chronic pain not healing. It’s often the missing...
read moreChronic Pain 2: Why doesn’t my pain go away when other problems have?
Why is healing and regulation of chronic pain in your body failing? What is causing the failure to heal chronic pain in your body? Since your chronic pain started, you’ve likely cut yourself, been sick or otherwise injured yourself in another way, in another location. It healed. Your body healed itself. Your body is designed to heal itself. Have you asked yourself why that problem (cut finger) healed but your chronic pain has not? The answer is may be that there is an obstruction, an interference that is preventing perfect healing from taking place. If a doctor finds that interference or obstruction, and corrects it, you should be able to heal. In order to understand obstruction and interference, you have to be aware of what is in control of healing the body. Your brain is the master controller of the body that organizes and implements the healing process throughout your body. In fact it’s in control of everything that happens in your body. Interference in brain control over the healing process often occurs with nerve irritation at the level of the spinal joints. This irritation decreases the brain’s capacity to heal. You experience this as chronic pain that never goes away, even...
read moreChronic Pain Shrinks Your Brain. (this is bad)
Chronic pain always has a cause. Your inability to heal, may be “Interference.” Research has shown that we lose 1.3 cubic cm of gray matter for every year of chronic pain suffering! If you suffer from chronic pain, you’ve likely already seen every provider you thought could help you. They told you they could help you and they tried their hardest to help you feel no pain. The problem is, you are reading this, which probably means they failed. A problem can’t be fixed unless you find the cause or the impediment to healing. If the focus of “treatment” is the pain, that’s the equivalent of putting a sticker over the oil light in your car, and expecting the engine to fill itself with oil. The light (pain) is not the problem, it’s the helper, it’s the warning sign of a deeper problem. It’s your body’s way of alerting you to take proper action. Most pain medications reduce pain and/or inflammation. Failing to address the cause of the inflammation though, leaves the cause of the problem unsolved, and your pain returns. Chronic pain has been shown to take not only chemical tolls on the brain, but physical. Several studies have...
read moreCan a chiropractor help a herniated disc?
A disc herniation does not always require surgery. Yes, there is a specific chiropractic technique called COX Flexion Distraction technique. This technique may help you avoid surgery. It is a nerve decompression technique that when utilized with consistency by the patient, helps to reduce the severity of a herniated disc or bulge, leading to less pressure on the nerves of the low back, which leads to fewer symptoms like pain, weakness, and numbness. If you have sciatica coming from pinched nerves in the low back, caused by a herniated disc, this technique is non-invasive, requires no medication and is very effective. Herniated discs and nerve compression, nerve symptoms are the chiropractors domain. By addressing the underlying causes, symptoms and function improve and you get back to your life and the things you love. Your body has the capacity to heal itself, but it requires no interference in the healing system of brain and nerves. Cox Flexion Distraction technique removes pressure on nerves, improving healing capacity, by addressing the underlying issue, in this case a herniated disc. If you are looking for a potential solution that is different than conventional therapies that you’ve likely tried and have not worked (you...
read moreWhich Should I Do First, Chiropractic or Massage Therapy?
Which should come first? Both chiropractic and massage therapy are great and extremely helpful, but they are very different. The focus of therapeutic massage is the function of muscles and fascia, their function, and their relationship with the rest of the body. Massage therapists use techniques to work the muscles to a state of better function The focus of chiropractic is correcting nerve interference due to spinal stress on the nerves, that allows for better brain-body, body-brain communication, resulting in better healing, better adaptation, and better health.\ As a general rule, chiropractors have more objective testing for the nervous system and neuro-muscular system. Massage therapists who are not also chiropractors, generally have far less training than a doctor of chiropractic. But that’s ok, they are very well trained to do their job as a massage therapist. That being said, A lot of information from a chiropractic examination will translate into valuable information for the massage therapist. A test commonly used in chiropractic offices is called a Surface EMG. It measures neuromuscular activity and electrical activity in the muscles of the back, much like an EKG does with the heart. This test and many others are valuable to both...
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