Pain Management!

Once again I’m awake when I should be sleeping all thanks to my back spasms, so here I am reaching for medication again followed by a chaser, namely a glass of milk. Well I am trying to ensure my stomach lining isn’t too messed up by the cocktail of pills! I just can’t seem to get comfortable today and no matter how much I try to shut the pain gate it keeps on opening! I would try to explain the whole pain gate theory but I’m not sure I could right now. Please note is a theory and its not one I’m totally at ease with as it seems flawed in some way. Here’s a link which you may find useful, it offers an explanation of sorts. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/pain/PN00017

However as I’ve already mentioned I’m not too connected with the theory and funnily enough neither was my last physiotherapist (she’ll probably be my future physiotherapist but I had to take a break due to financial constraints). Its ethos is that your pain receptors never switch off and thus give you false readings, so although you feel pain your body isn’t suffering damage, as such all you need to do is ignore the pain and disassociate yourself. Yeah as if that’s easy when it feels like 1000 spikes stabbing in your back followed swiftly by a horse kicking it. Oh and did I mention the cramp? The dissociation is known as ‘shutting the pain gate’.

A lot of it is supposedly to do with your state of mind and whether you have the mental tenacity to climb over the pain and carry on. An analogy of an athlete running a marathon that hits the ‘wall’ and yet carries on. So thus your pain is purely a ‘wall’ and is not really damaging or affecting you.

So why do I think it’s a flawed theory? Well in my instance if my situation was due to misinformed pain receptors, why are my muscles constantly in spasm? Why do other pain receptors work fine and dandy, like when you stub your toe, god does that hurt and of course that pain subsides whilst my back pain remains? Why does the pain get progressively worse as the day goes on or if I do too much? And surely as you’d have to agree I wouldn’t give up my comfy mumfy bed for no particular reason now would I?