Why Is My Back Pain Not Getting Better With Treatment?

Why is my back pain not going away with treatment?

This is a question often asked.

Maybe you are thinking “You seemed so positive when I came to see you. You thought you could help me in about four treatments. I don’t feel much better. I’ve spent a lot of money. What can I do about it?”

We don’t blame you. It is frustrating for us as practitioners and you as patients. There are many reasons why patients sometimes do not respond how we hope they will. The longer you have had pain for, the less easy it becomes to predict how well you will do with treatment. Here I will set out some research based potential reasons for you not getting better.

Central Sensitisation

This can occur when the celIs exhibit sensitization at the level of your spinal cord. It means that they have become overloaded!

When you have a painful disc or painful hip joint or any joint problem, impulses come into the spinal cord  at a particular level on their way up to your brain and also signals come down to that level from your brain. If you have repeated pain then the signals hit the same level every time. It’s that drive into that segment that researchers believe creates sensitization,  almost like an electrical charge within that segment.

Too much input means that the messages that are sent to your brain from that segment become less precise and your brain starts to interpret the signals in a different way. For example a slight knock or twist can be interpreted by your brain as a threatening painful episode.

Reflexes coming back out from your brain as a result of a painful signal coming in, synapse or link up with what is called ventral horn neurons in your spinal cord. These neurones are essentially the nerves that govern how you move or the ‘motion nerves’, and they can then initiate motor responses. Thus they affect how you move and thus when you are in pain, you don’t move correctly.

That means you can get postural changes as a result of pain and quite confusing pain patterns may develop. People may start to do what is called ‘catastrophising’. This means that when you tweak something, you feel it as pain that is going to become much worse and anxiety results so that you actually feel more pain that the knock or tweak actually required. You can then start exhibiting ‘fear avoidance behaviour’ which is when you avoid moving in a particular way because you are anxious that it will result in a much worse pain.

When the information coming into your spine and on to your brain from your body, it has been found that in the early stages of central sensitization the descending influences that I mentioned before from your brain come  in particular from the limbic emotional center that governs how you feel about pain; how you cope and how anxious or depressed you tend to be. Therefore you can see how anxiety in particular can increase sensitization in the spinal cord, as can depression if the nerves feeding down to the spine are capable of this action.

Anoth effect that this has is these reflex signals coming from the brain’s limbic system seem to create inhibition of the inhibitory neurochemicals that would normally dampen down a pain response. Hence you feel more normal movements or small ”tweaks’ as pain rather than a minor irritation.

Typically when you injure yourself, then youDO want to perceive pain. It is a normal function and protective function to perceive pain when there’s an injury there because of course you want to stop using that part of your body and take avoiding action rather than keep on doing something that is causing a problem for your body! Then in the normal process of healing, what would happen is the brain would start to inhibit pain sensation, so it would send messages, descending messages down to that segment of the spinal cord to inhibit the pain messages at the cord level so you gradually move more and rehabilitation occurs.

Coming in for a course of chiropractic treatment can help with the healing process and a professional encouraging you to gain confidence in what you CAN do; showing you how to avoid recurrences; giving you rehabilitation exercises; discussing any fears and anxieties you may have; helping to show you how to strengthen your body so that doing that activity – particularly if it is work or sport replated – can be carried out without the pain coming back have all been found to be helpful in speeding your recovery and giving you confidence back in how you move your body.

What they’ve found with central sensitivity or central sensitization is that that gradual reduction in pain and recovery so that you can move again correctly and confidently and forget the problem, doesn’t happen or it doesn’t happen nearly as effectively. So what you end up with is someone who’s got anxiety that is actually perpetuating their back pain even though the original disc damage is gone.

Researchers into pain behaviour and pain avoidance and catastrophizing, which as I said,  is how a lot of people deal with chronic pain, have used various neurophysiological techniques such as electromygraphical techniques to screen what is happening in your nervous system. Research has shown that they can start to identify that actually if they pressed over another part of the patient’s body –  away from the wound, they also reported feeling increase in pain. That was a sign that the pain locus is spreading, and it’s an indication that there’s sensitization of the spinal cord.

Researchers have found that insensitivities to temperature change are also a factor that they look out for in central sensitivity. If you have central sensitization it seems you’ll be much less tolerant of changes in temperature than if you don’t have the sensitization.

What they’re seeing now too is that you don’t actually need a painful event to cause that central sensitization to occur. It it thought more that you may well have  a combination of things. For example you could have a slightly irritable hip and if you also have irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease, or fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue, or you a food intolerance that’s inflaming the gut wall or bladder problems or also  experience depression or  anxiety on occasions – lots of issues of this nature that really don’t have definite causative factors, and the combination of those four, five, six things, that are all relatively subclinical can, together create central sensitisation. So in this case, your irritable hip may not respond quickly to treatment because you have some of these other things going on. This is why you need a thorough case history so we can see what else is going on in your body or your life that may adversely affect your recovery.

The brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely and also the pain can become more long lasting (chronic).

So essentially it’s a summation effect, which means that although brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord,  actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feel that pain more acutely and persistently as the signals just build up to such a degree on the same nerves that those nerves become hypersensitive.

The problem for you as a patient is that the pain therefore just goes on and on as the nerves in the spinal cord remain hypersensitised, which is what we call chronic pain.

This is why sometimes patients get upset when practitioners say that their pain is ‘all in the mind’. It does not mean that you are imagining it, it simply means that your brain is feeding the same cells as the painful area and those cells become overloaded with information and don’t recover and as a result you feel long term pain.

Next week I will discuss how best you and we can help to deal with chronic pain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is my back pain not going away with treatment?

 

This is a question often asked.

 

Maybe you are thinking “You seemed so positive when I came to see you. You thought you could help me in about four treatments. I don’t feel much better. I’ve spent a lot of money. What can I do about it?”

 

We don’t blame you. It is frustrating for us as practitioners and you as patients. Here I will set out research based potential reasons for you not getting better.

 

Central Sensitisation

 

This occurs when the celIs sensitization at the level of your spinal cord.

 

When you have a painful disc or painful hip joint or whatever, impulses come into the spinal cord on their way up to you r brain and also signals come down to that level from your brain. If you have repeated pain then the signals hit the same level every time. And it’s that drive into that segment that creates sensitization, like a kind of, almost like an electrical charge within that segment.

 

Too much input means that the messages that are sent to your brain from that segment become less precise and your brain starts to interpret the signals in a different way.

 

Then what happens is that reflexes coming back out synapse or link up with what is called ventral horn neurons in your spinal cord. These neurones are essentially the nerves that govern how you move or the ‘motion nerves’, and they can then initiate motor responses.

 

That means you can get postural changes as a result of pain and quite confusing pain patterns may develop.

 

Simple psychological stress can sensitize the central nervous system too.

 

This means that as well as the information coming into your spine and on to your brain from your body, in the early stages of central sensitization there are also descending influences, from the brain and in particular the limbic emotional center down to your spine, so you can see how anxiety in particular can increase sensitization in the spinal cord, as can depression.

 

The effect that this has is they seem to create inhibition of the inhibitory neurochemicals that would normally dampen down a pain response.

 

Typically if you were to injure yourself, then you actually want to perceive pain. It is a normal function to perceive pain when there’s an injury there because of course you want to stop using that part of your body! Then in the normal process of healing, what would happen is the brain would start to inhibit pain sensation, so it would send messages, descending messages down to that segment of the spinal cord to inhibit the pain messages at the cord level.

 

What they’ve found with central sensitivity or central sensitization is that that process doesn’t happen or it doesn’t happen nearly as effectively. So what you end up with is someone who’s got anxiety that is actually perpetuating their back pain even though the original disc damage is gone.

 

Researchers into pain behaviour and pain avoidance and catastrophizing, which is how a lot of people deal with chronic pain, have used various neurophysiological techniques such as electromygraphical techniques to screen what is happening in your nervous system. Research has shown that they can start to identify that actually if they pressed over the patient’s elbow i.e. away from the wound, they also felt pain, and that was a sign that the pain locus is spreading, and it’s an indication that there’s sensitization of the spinal cord.

Sensitisation has also been linked to other health issues, one of them being irritable bowel syndrome. Researchers have found that insensitivities to temperature change are also a factor that they look out for in central sensitivity. If you have central sensitization it seems you’ll be much less tolerant of changes in temperature than if you don’t have the sensitization. What they’re seeing now too is that you don’t actually need pain at all. You don’t need any painful event. It could be that you’ve got a combination of things, so you could have a slightly irritable hip, you could have irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease, or you could have a food intolerance that’s inflaming the gut wall. You could have uterine problems or bladder problems, and some depression or some anxiety, and the combination of those four, five, six things, that are all relatively subclinical can, together create central sensitisation.

 

The brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely or chronically. So essentially it’s a summation effect, which means that the brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely and persistently

The problem for you as a patient is that the pain therefore just goes on and on as the nerves in the spinal cord remain hypersensitised, which is what we call chronic pain.

 

This is why we sometimes say to patients who have chronic (long term) pain that it is in their heads. It does not mean that you are imagining it, it simply means that your brain is feeding the same cells as the painful area and those cells are giving you incorrect information that something is painful, as a result.

 

Next week I will discuss how best you and we can help to deal with chronic pain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is my back pain not going away with treatment?

 

This is a question often asked.

 

Maybe you are thinking “You seemed so positive when I came to see you. You thought you could help me in about four treatments. I don’t feel much better. I’ve spent a lot of money. What can I do about it?”

 

We don’t blame you. It is frustrating for us as practitioners and you as patients. Here I will set out research based potential reasons for you not getting better.

 

Central Sensitisation

 

This occurs when the celIs sensitization at the level of your spinal cord.

 

When you have a painful disc or painful hip joint or whatever, impulses come into the spinal cord on their way up to you r brain and also signals come down to that level from your brain. If you have repeated pain then the signals hit the same level every time. And it’s that drive into that segment that creates sensitization, like a kind of, almost like an electrical charge within that segment.

 

Too much input means that the messages that are sent to your brain from that segment become less precise and your brain starts to interpret the signals in a different way.

 

Then what happens is that reflexes coming back out synapse or link up with what is called ventral horn neurons in your spinal cord. These neurones are essentially the nerves that govern how you move or the ‘motion nerves’, and they can then initiate motor responses.

 

That means you can get postural changes as a result of pain and quite confusing pain patterns may develop.

 

Simple psychological stress can sensitize the central nervous system too.

 

This means that as well as the information coming into your spine and on to your brain from your body, in the early stages of central sensitization there are also descending influences, from the brain and in particular the limbic emotional center down to your spine, so you can see how anxiety in particular can increase sensitization in the spinal cord, as can depression.

 

The effect that this has is they seem to create inhibition of the inhibitory neurochemicals that would normally dampen down a pain response.

 

Typically if you were to injure yourself, then you actually want to perceive pain. It is a normal function to perceive pain when there’s an injury there because of course you want to stop using that part of your body! Then in the normal process of healing, what would happen is the brain would start to inhibit pain sensation, so it would send messages, descending messages down to that segment of the spinal cord to inhibit the pain messages at the cord level.

 

What they’ve found with central sensitivity or central sensitization is that that process doesn’t happen or it doesn’t happen nearly as effectively. So what you end up with is someone who’s got anxiety that is actually perpetuating their back pain even though the original disc damage is gone.

 

Researchers into pain behaviour and pain avoidance and catastrophizing, which is how a lot of people deal with chronic pain, have used various neurophysiological techniques such as electromygraphical techniques to screen what is happening in your nervous system. Research has shown that they can start to identify that actually if they pressed over the patient’s elbow i.e. away from the wound, they also felt pain, and that was a sign that the pain locus is spreading, and it’s an indication that there’s sensitization of the spinal cord.

Sensitisation has also been linked to other health issues, one of them being irritable bowel syndrome. Researchers have found that insensitivities to temperature change are also a factor that they look out for in central sensitivity. If you have central sensitization it seems you’ll be much less tolerant of changes in temperature than if you don’t have the sensitization. What they’re seeing now too is that you don’t actually need pain at all. You don’t need any painful event. It could be that you’ve got a combination of things, so you could have a slightly irritable hip, you could have irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease, or you could have a food intolerance that’s inflaming the gut wall. You could have uterine problems or bladder problems, and some depression or some anxiety, and the combination of those four, five, six things, that are all relatively subclinical can, together create central sensitisation.

 

The brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely or chronically. So essentially it’s a summation effect, which means that the brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely and persistently

The problem for you as a patient is that the pain therefore just goes on and on as the nerves in the spinal cord remain hypersensitised, which is what we call chronic pain.

 

This is why we sometimes say to patients who have chronic (long term) pain that it is in their heads. It does not mean that you are imagining it, it simply means that your brain is feeding the same cells as the painful area and those cells are giving you incorrect information that something is painful, as a result.

 

Next week I will discuss how best you and we can help to deal with chronic pain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is my back pain not going away with treatment?

 

This is a question often asked.

 

Maybe you are thinking “You seemed so positive when I came to see you. You thought you could help me in about four treatments. I don’t feel much better. I’ve spent a lot of money. What can I do about it?”

 

We don’t blame you. It is frustrating for us as practitioners and you as patients. Here I will set out research based potential reasons for you not getting better.

 

Central Sensitisation

 

This occurs when the celIs sensitization at the level of your spinal cord.

 

When you have a painful disc or painful hip joint or whatever, impulses come into the spinal cord on their way up to you r brain and also signals come down to that level from your brain. If you have repeated pain then the signals hit the same level every time. And it’s that drive into that segment that creates sensitization, like a kind of, almost like an electrical charge within that segment.

 

Too much input means that the messages that are sent to your brain from that segment become less precise and your brain starts to interpret the signals in a different way.

 

Then what happens is that reflexes coming back out synapse or link up with what is called ventral horn neurons in your spinal cord. These neurones are essentially the nerves that govern how you move or the ‘motion nerves’, and they can then initiate motor responses.

 

That means you can get postural changes as a result of pain and quite confusing pain patterns may develop.

 

Simple psychological stress can sensitize the central nervous system too.

 

This means that as well as the information coming into your spine and on to your brain from your body, in the early stages of central sensitization there are also descending influences, from the brain and in particular the limbic emotional center down to your spine, so you can see how anxiety in particular can increase sensitization in the spinal cord, as can depression.

 

The effect that this has is they seem to create inhibition of the inhibitory neurochemicals that would normally dampen down a pain response.

 

Typically if you were to injure yourself, then you actually want to perceive pain. It is a normal function to perceive pain when there’s an injury there because of course you want to stop using that part of your body! Then in the normal process of healing, what would happen is the brain would start to inhibit pain sensation, so it would send messages, descending messages down to that segment of the spinal cord to inhibit the pain messages at the cord level.

 

What they’ve found with central sensitivity or central sensitization is that that process doesn’t happen or it doesn’t happen nearly as effectively. So what you end up with is someone who’s got anxiety that is actually perpetuating their back pain even though the original disc damage is gone.

 

Researchers into pain behaviour and pain avoidance and catastrophizing, which is how a lot of people deal with chronic pain, have used various neurophysiological techniques such as electromygraphical techniques to screen what is happening in your nervous system. Research has shown that they can start to identify that actually if they pressed over the patient’s elbow i.e. away from the wound, they also felt pain, and that was a sign that the pain locus is spreading, and it’s an indication that there’s sensitization of the spinal cord.

Sensitisation has also been linked to other health issues, one of them being irritable bowel syndrome. Researchers have found that insensitivities to temperature change are also a factor that they look out for in central sensitivity. If you have central sensitization it seems you’ll be much less tolerant of changes in temperature than if you don’t have the sensitization. What they’re seeing now too is that you don’t actually need pain at all. You don’t need any painful event. It could be that you’ve got a combination of things, so you could have a slightly irritable hip, you could have irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease, or you could have a food intolerance that’s inflaming the gut wall. You could have uterine problems or bladder problems, and some depression or some anxiety, and the combination of those four, five, six things, that are all relatively subclinical can, together create central sensitisation.

 

The brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely or chronically. So essentially it’s a summation effect, which means that the brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely and persistently

The problem for you as a patient is that the pain therefore just goes on and on as the nerves in the spinal cord remain hypersensitised, which is what we call chronic pain.

 

This is why we sometimes say to patients who have chronic (long term) pain that it is in their heads. It does not mean that you are imagining it, it simply means that your brain is feeding the same cells as the painful area and those cells are giving you incorrect information that something is painful, as a result.

 

Next week I will discuss how best you and we can help to deal with chronic pain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is my back pain not going away with treatment?

 

This is a question often asked.

 

Maybe you are thinking “You seemed so positive when I came to see you. You thought you could help me in about four treatments. I don’t feel much better. I’ve spent a lot of money. What can I do about it?”

 

We don’t blame you. It is frustrating for us as practitioners and you as patients. Here I will set out research based potential reasons for you not getting better.

 

Central Sensitisation

 

This occurs when the celIs sensitization at the level of your spinal cord.

 

When you have a painful disc or painful hip joint or whatever, impulses come into the spinal cord on their way up to you r brain and also signals come down to that level from your brain. If you have repeated pain then the signals hit the same level every time. And it’s that drive into that segment that creates sensitization, like a kind of, almost like an electrical charge within that segment.

 

Too much input means that the messages that are sent to your brain from that segment become less precise and your brain starts to interpret the signals in a different way.

 

Then what happens is that reflexes coming back out synapse or link up with what is called ventral horn neurons in your spinal cord. These neurones are essentially the nerves that govern how you move or the ‘motion nerves’, and they can then initiate motor responses.

 

That means you can get postural changes as a result of pain and quite confusing pain patterns may develop.

 

Simple psychological stress can sensitize the central nervous system too.

 

This means that as well as the information coming into your spine and on to your brain from your body, in the early stages of central sensitization there are also descending influences, from the brain and in particular the limbic emotional center down to your spine, so you can see how anxiety in particular can increase sensitization in the spinal cord, as can depression.

 

The effect that this has is they seem to create inhibition of the inhibitory neurochemicals that would normally dampen down a pain response.

 

Typically if you were to injure yourself, then you actually want to perceive pain. It is a normal function to perceive pain when there’s an injury there because of course you want to stop using that part of your body! Then in the normal process of healing, what would happen is the brain would start to inhibit pain sensation, so it would send messages, descending messages down to that segment of the spinal cord to inhibit the pain messages at the cord level.

 

What they’ve found with central sensitivity or central sensitization is that that process doesn’t happen or it doesn’t happen nearly as effectively. So what you end up with is someone who’s got anxiety that is actually perpetuating their back pain even though the original disc damage is gone.

 

Researchers into pain behaviour and pain avoidance and catastrophizing, which is how a lot of people deal with chronic pain, have used various neurophysiological techniques such as electromygraphical techniques to screen what is happening in your nervous system. Research has shown that they can start to identify that actually if they pressed over the patient’s elbow i.e. away from the wound, they also felt pain, and that was a sign that the pain locus is spreading, and it’s an indication that there’s sensitization of the spinal cord.

Sensitisation has also been linked to other health issues, one of them being irritable bowel syndrome. Researchers have found that insensitivities to temperature change are also a factor that they look out for in central sensitivity. If you have central sensitization it seems you’ll be much less tolerant of changes in temperature than if you don’t have the sensitization. What they’re seeing now too is that you don’t actually need pain at all. You don’t need any painful event. It could be that you’ve got a combination of things, so you could have a slightly irritable hip, you could have irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease, or you could have a food intolerance that’s inflaming the gut wall. You could have uterine problems or bladder problems, and some depression or some anxiety, and the combination of those four, five, six things, that are all relatively subclinical can, together create central sensitisation.

 

The brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely or chronically. So essentially it’s a summation effect, which means that the brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely and persistently

The problem for you as a patient is that the pain therefore just goes on and on as the nerves in the spinal cord remain hypersensitised, which is what we call chronic pain.

 

This is why we sometimes say to patients who have chronic (long term) pain that it is in their heads. It does not mean that you are imagining it, it simply means that your brain is feeding the same cells as the painful area and those cells are giving you incorrect information that something is painful, as a result.

 

Next week I will discuss how best you and we can help to deal with chronic pain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is my back pain not going away with treatment?

 

This is a question often asked.

 

Maybe you are thinking “You seemed so positive when I came to see you. You thought you could help me in about four treatments. I don’t feel much better. I’ve spent a lot of money. What can I do about it?”

 

We don’t blame you. It is frustrating for us as practitioners and you as patients. Here I will set out research based potential reasons for you not getting better.

 

Central Sensitisation

 

This occurs when the celIs sensitization at the level of your spinal cord.

 

When you have a painful disc or painful hip joint or whatever, impulses come into the spinal cord on their way up to you r brain and also signals come down to that level from your brain. If you have repeated pain then the signals hit the same level every time. And it’s that drive into that segment that creates sensitization, like a kind of, almost like an electrical charge within that segment.

 

Too much input means that the messages that are sent to your brain from that segment become less precise and your brain starts to interpret the signals in a different way.

 

Then what happens is that reflexes coming back out synapse or link up with what is called ventral horn neurons in your spinal cord. These neurones are essentially the nerves that govern how you move or the ‘motion nerves’, and they can then initiate motor responses.

 

That means you can get postural changes as a result of pain and quite confusing pain patterns may develop.

 

Simple psychological stress can sensitize the central nervous system too.

 

This means that as well as the information coming into your spine and on to your brain from your body, in the early stages of central sensitization there are also descending influences, from the brain and in particular the limbic emotional center down to your spine, so you can see how anxiety in particular can increase sensitization in the spinal cord, as can depression.

 

The effect that this has is they seem to create inhibition of the inhibitory neurochemicals that would normally dampen down a pain response.

 

Typically if you were to injure yourself, then you actually want to perceive pain. It is a normal function to perceive pain when there’s an injury there because of course you want to stop using that part of your body! Then in the normal process of healing, what would happen is the brain would start to inhibit pain sensation, so it would send messages, descending messages down to that segment of the spinal cord to inhibit the pain messages at the cord level.

 

What they’ve found with central sensitivity or central sensitization is that that process doesn’t happen or it doesn’t happen nearly as effectively. So what you end up with is someone who’s got anxiety that is actually perpetuating their back pain even though the original disc damage is gone.

 

Researchers into pain behaviour and pain avoidance and catastrophizing, which is how a lot of people deal with chronic pain, have used various neurophysiological techniques such as electromygraphical techniques to screen what is happening in your nervous system. Research has shown that they can start to identify that actually if they pressed over the patient’s elbow i.e. away from the wound, they also felt pain, and that was a sign that the pain locus is spreading, and it’s an indication that there’s sensitization of the spinal cord.

Sensitisation has also been linked to other health issues, one of them being irritable bowel syndrome. Researchers have found that insensitivities to temperature change are also a factor that they look out for in central sensitivity. If you have central sensitization it seems you’ll be much less tolerant of changes in temperature than if you don’t have the sensitization. What they’re seeing now too is that you don’t actually need pain at all. You don’t need any painful event. It could be that you’ve got a combination of things, so you could have a slightly irritable hip, you could have irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease, or you could have a food intolerance that’s inflaming the gut wall. You could have uterine problems or bladder problems, and some depression or some anxiety, and the combination of those four, five, six things, that are all relatively subclinical can, together create central sensitisation.

 

The brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely or chronically. So essentially it’s a summation effect, which means that the brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely and persistently

The problem for you as a patient is that the pain therefore just goes on and on as the nerves in the spinal cord remain hypersensitised, which is what we call chronic pain.

 

This is why we sometimes say to patients who have chronic (long term) pain that it is in their heads. It does not mean that you are imagining it, it simply means that your brain is feeding the same cells as the painful area and those cells are giving you incorrect information that something is painful, as a result.

 

Next week I will discuss how best you and we can help to deal with chronic pain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is my back pain not going away with treatment?

 

This is a question often asked.

 

Maybe you are thinking “You seemed so positive when I came to see you. You thought you could help me in about four treatments. I don’t feel much better. I’ve spent a lot of money. What can I do about it?”

 

We don’t blame you. It is frustrating for us as practitioners and you as patients. Here I will set out research based potential reasons for you not getting better.

 

Central Sensitisation

 

This occurs when the celIs sensitization at the level of your spinal cord.

 

When you have a painful disc or painful hip joint or whatever, impulses come into the spinal cord on their way up to you r brain and also signals come down to that level from your brain. If you have repeated pain then the signals hit the same level every time. And it’s that drive into that segment that creates sensitization, like a kind of, almost like an electrical charge within that segment.

 

Too much input means that the messages that are sent to your brain from that segment become less precise and your brain starts to interpret the signals in a different way.

 

Then what happens is that reflexes coming back out synapse or link up with what is called ventral horn neurons in your spinal cord. These neurones are essentially the nerves that govern how you move or the ‘motion nerves’, and they can then initiate motor responses.

 

That means you can get postural changes as a result of pain and quite confusing pain patterns may develop.

 

Simple psychological stress can sensitize the central nervous system too.

 

This means that as well as the information coming into your spine and on to your brain from your body, in the early stages of central sensitization there are also descending influences, from the brain and in particular the limbic emotional center down to your spine, so you can see how anxiety in particular can increase sensitization in the spinal cord, as can depression.

 

The effect that this has is they seem to create inhibition of the inhibitory neurochemicals that would normally dampen down a pain response.

 

Typically if you were to injure yourself, then you actually want to perceive pain. It is a normal function to perceive pain when there’s an injury there because of course you want to stop using that part of your body! Then in the normal process of healing, what would happen is the brain would start to inhibit pain sensation, so it would send messages, descending messages down to that segment of the spinal cord to inhibit the pain messages at the cord level.

 

What they’ve found with central sensitivity or central sensitization is that that process doesn’t happen or it doesn’t happen nearly as effectively. So what you end up with is someone who’s got anxiety that is actually perpetuating their back pain even though the original disc damage is gone.

 

Researchers into pain behaviour and pain avoidance and catastrophizing, which is how a lot of people deal with chronic pain, have used various neurophysiological techniques such as electromygraphical techniques to screen what is happening in your nervous system. Research has shown that they can start to identify that actually if they pressed over the patient’s elbow i.e. away from the wound, they also felt pain, and that was a sign that the pain locus is spreading, and it’s an indication that there’s sensitization of the spinal cord.

Sensitisation has also been linked to other health issues, one of them being irritable bowel syndrome. Researchers have found that insensitivities to temperature change are also a factor that they look out for in central sensitivity. If you have central sensitization it seems you’ll be much less tolerant of changes in temperature than if you don’t have the sensitization. What they’re seeing now too is that you don’t actually need pain at all. You don’t need any painful event. It could be that you’ve got a combination of things, so you could have a slightly irritable hip, you could have irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease, or you could have a food intolerance that’s inflaming the gut wall. You could have uterine problems or bladder problems, and some depression or some anxiety, and the combination of those four, five, six things, that are all relatively subclinical can, together create central sensitisation.

 

The brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely or chronically. So essentially it’s a summation effect, which means that the brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely and persistently

The problem for you as a patient is that the pain therefore just goes on and on as the nerves in the spinal cord remain hypersensitised, which is what we call chronic pain.

 

This is why we sometimes say to patients who have chronic (long term) pain that it is in their heads. It does not mean that you are imagining it, it simply means that your brain is feeding the same cells as the painful area and those cells are giving you incorrect information that something is painful, as a result.

 

Next week I will discuss how best you and we can help to deal with chronic pain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is my back pain not going away with treatment?

 

This is a question often asked.

 

Maybe you are thinking “You seemed so positive when I came to see you. You thought you could help me in about four treatments. I don’t feel much better. I’ve spent a lot of money. What can I do about it?”

 

We don’t blame you. It is frustrating for us as practitioners and you as patients. Here I will set out research based potential reasons for you not getting better.

 

Central Sensitisation

 

This occurs when the celIs sensitization at the level of your spinal cord.

 

When you have a painful disc or painful hip joint or whatever, impulses come into the spinal cord on their way up to you r brain and also signals come down to that level from your brain. If you have repeated pain then the signals hit the same level every time. And it’s that drive into that segment that creates sensitization, like a kind of, almost like an electrical charge within that segment.

 

Too much input means that the messages that are sent to your brain from that segment become less precise and your brain starts to interpret the signals in a different way.

 

Then what happens is that reflexes coming back out synapse or link up with what is called ventral horn neurons in your spinal cord. These neurones are essentially the nerves that govern how you move or the ‘motion nerves’, and they can then initiate motor responses.

 

That means you can get postural changes as a result of pain and quite confusing pain patterns may develop.

 

Simple psychological stress can sensitize the central nervous system too.

 

This means that as well as the information coming into your spine and on to your brain from your body, in the early stages of central sensitization there are also descending influences, from the brain and in particular the limbic emotional center down to your spine, so you can see how anxiety in particular can increase sensitization in the spinal cord, as can depression.

 

The effect that this has is they seem to create inhibition of the inhibitory neurochemicals that would normally dampen down a pain response.

 

Typically if you were to injure yourself, then you actually want to perceive pain. It is a normal function to perceive pain when there’s an injury there because of course you want to stop using that part of your body! Then in the normal process of healing, what would happen is the brain would start to inhibit pain sensation, so it would send messages, descending messages down to that segment of the spinal cord to inhibit the pain messages at the cord level.

 

What they’ve found with central sensitivity or central sensitization is that that process doesn’t happen or it doesn’t happen nearly as effectively. So what you end up with is someone who’s got anxiety that is actually perpetuating their back pain even though the original disc damage is gone.

 

Researchers into pain behaviour and pain avoidance and catastrophizing, which is how a lot of people deal with chronic pain, have used various neurophysiological techniques such as electromygraphical techniques to screen what is happening in your nervous system. Research has shown that they can start to identify that actually if they pressed over the patient’s elbow i.e. away from the wound, they also felt pain, and that was a sign that the pain locus is spreading, and it’s an indication that there’s sensitization of the spinal cord.

Sensitisation has also been linked to other health issues, one of them being irritable bowel syndrome. Researchers have found that insensitivities to temperature change are also a factor that they look out for in central sensitivity. If you have central sensitization it seems you’ll be much less tolerant of changes in temperature than if you don’t have the sensitization. What they’re seeing now too is that you don’t actually need pain at all. You don’t need any painful event. It could be that you’ve got a combination of things, so you could have a slightly irritable hip, you could have irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease, or you could have a food intolerance that’s inflaming the gut wall. You could have uterine problems or bladder problems, and some depression or some anxiety, and the combination of those four, five, six things, that are all relatively subclinical can, together create central sensitisation.

 

The brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely or chronically. So essentially it’s a summation effect, which means that the brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely and persistently

The problem for you as a patient is that the pain therefore just goes on and on as the nerves in the spinal cord remain hypersensitised, which is what we call chronic pain.

 

This is why we sometimes say to patients who have chronic (long term) pain that it is in their heads. It does not mean that you are imagining it, it simply means that your brain is feeding the same cells as the painful area and those cells are giving you incorrect information that something is painful, as a result.

 

Next week I will discuss how best you and we can help to deal with chronic pain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is my back pain not going away with treatment?

 

This is a question often asked.

 

Maybe you are thinking “You seemed so positive when I came to see you. You thought you could help me in about four treatments. I don’t feel much better. I’ve spent a lot of money. What can I do about it?”

 

We don’t blame you. It is frustrating for us as practitioners and you as patients. Here I will set out research based potential reasons for you not getting better.

 

Central Sensitisation

 

This occurs when the celIs sensitization at the level of your spinal cord.

 

When you have a painful disc or painful hip joint or whatever, impulses come into the spinal cord on their way up to you r brain and also signals come down to that level from your brain. If you have repeated pain then the signals hit the same level every time. And it’s that drive into that segment that creates sensitization, like a kind of, almost like an electrical charge within that segment.

 

Too much input means that the messages that are sent to your brain from that segment become less precise and your brain starts to interpret the signals in a different way.

 

Then what happens is that reflexes coming back out synapse or link up with what is called ventral horn neurons in your spinal cord. These neurones are essentially the nerves that govern how you move or the ‘motion nerves’, and they can then initiate motor responses.

 

That means you can get postural changes as a result of pain and quite confusing pain patterns may develop.

 

Simple psychological stress can sensitize the central nervous system too.

 

This means that as well as the information coming into your spine and on to your brain from your body, in the early stages of central sensitization there are also descending influences, from the brain and in particular the limbic emotional center down to your spine, so you can see how anxiety in particular can increase sensitization in the spinal cord, as can depression.

 

The effect that this has is they seem to create inhibition of the inhibitory neurochemicals that would normally dampen down a pain response.

 

Typically if you were to injure yourself, then you actually want to perceive pain. It is a normal function to perceive pain when there’s an injury there because of course you want to stop using that part of your body! Then in the normal process of healing, what would happen is the brain would start to inhibit pain sensation, so it would send messages, descending messages down to that segment of the spinal cord to inhibit the pain messages at the cord level.

 

What they’ve found with central sensitivity or central sensitization is that that process doesn’t happen or it doesn’t happen nearly as effectively. So what you end up with is someone who’s got anxiety that is actually perpetuating their back pain even though the original disc damage is gone.

 

Researchers into pain behaviour and pain avoidance and catastrophizing, which is how a lot of people deal with chronic pain, have used various neurophysiological techniques such as electromygraphical techniques to screen what is happening in your nervous system. Research has shown that they can start to identify that actually if they pressed over the patient’s elbow i.e. away from the wound, they also felt pain, and that was a sign that the pain locus is spreading, and it’s an indication that there’s sensitization of the spinal cord.

Sensitisation has also been linked to other health issues, one of them being irritable bowel syndrome. Researchers have found that insensitivities to temperature change are also a factor that they look out for in central sensitivity. If you have central sensitization it seems you’ll be much less tolerant of changes in temperature than if you don’t have the sensitization. What they’re seeing now too is that you don’t actually need pain at all. You don’t need any painful event. It could be that you’ve got a combination of things, so you could have a slightly irritable hip, you could have irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease, or you could have a food intolerance that’s inflaming the gut wall. You could have uterine problems or bladder problems, and some depression or some anxiety, and the combination of those four, five, six things, that are all relatively subclinical can, together create central sensitisation.

 

The brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely or chronically. So essentially it’s a summation effect, which means that the brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely and persistently

The problem for you as a patient is that the pain therefore just goes on and on as the nerves in the spinal cord remain hypersensitised, which is what we call chronic pain.

 

This is why we sometimes say to patients who have chronic (long term) pain that it is in their heads. It does not mean that you are imagining it, it simply means that your brain is feeding the same cells as the painful area and those cells are giving you incorrect information that something is painful, as a result.

 

Next week I will discuss how best you and we can help to deal with chronic pain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is my back pain not going away with treatment?

 

This is a question often asked.

 

Maybe you are thinking “You seemed so positive when I came to see you. You thought you could help me in about four treatments. I don’t feel much better. I’ve spent a lot of money. What can I do about it?”

 

We don’t blame you. It is frustrating for us as practitioners and you as patients. Here I will set out research based potential reasons for you not getting better.

 

Central Sensitisation

 

This occurs when the celIs sensitization at the level of your spinal cord.

 

When you have a painful disc or painful hip joint or whatever, impulses come into the spinal cord on their way up to you r brain and also signals come down to that level from your brain. If you have repeated pain then the signals hit the same level every time. And it’s that drive into that segment that creates sensitization, like a kind of, almost like an electrical charge within that segment.

 

Too much input means that the messages that are sent to your brain from that segment become less precise and your brain starts to interpret the signals in a different way.

 

Then what happens is that reflexes coming back out synapse or link up with what is called ventral horn neurons in your spinal cord. These neurones are essentially the nerves that govern how you move or the ‘motion nerves’, and they can then initiate motor responses.

 

That means you can get postural changes as a result of pain and quite confusing pain patterns may develop.

 

Simple psychological stress can sensitize the central nervous system too.

 

This means that as well as the information coming into your spine and on to your brain from your body, in the early stages of central sensitization there are also descending influences, from the brain and in particular the limbic emotional center down to your spine, so you can see how anxiety in particular can increase sensitization in the spinal cord, as can depression.

 

The effect that this has is they seem to create inhibition of the inhibitory neurochemicals that would normally dampen down a pain response.

 

Typically if you were to injure yourself, then you actually want to perceive pain. It is a normal function to perceive pain when there’s an injury there because of course you want to stop using that part of your body! Then in the normal process of healing, what would happen is the brain would start to inhibit pain sensation, so it would send messages, descending messages down to that segment of the spinal cord to inhibit the pain messages at the cord level.

 

What they’ve found with central sensitivity or central sensitization is that that process doesn’t happen or it doesn’t happen nearly as effectively. So what you end up with is someone who’s got anxiety that is actually perpetuating their back pain even though the original disc damage is gone.

 

Researchers into pain behaviour and pain avoidance and catastrophizing, which is how a lot of people deal with chronic pain, have used various neurophysiological techniques such as electromygraphical techniques to screen what is happening in your nervous system. Research has shown that they can start to identify that actually if they pressed over the patient’s elbow i.e. away from the wound, they also felt pain, and that was a sign that the pain locus is spreading, and it’s an indication that there’s sensitization of the spinal cord.

Sensitisation has also been linked to other health issues, one of them being irritable bowel syndrome. Researchers have found that insensitivities to temperature change are also a factor that they look out for in central sensitivity. If you have central sensitization it seems you’ll be much less tolerant of changes in temperature than if you don’t have the sensitization. What they’re seeing now too is that you don’t actually need pain at all. You don’t need any painful event. It could be that you’ve got a combination of things, so you could have a slightly irritable hip, you could have irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease, or you could have a food intolerance that’s inflaming the gut wall. You could have uterine problems or bladder problems, and some depression or some anxiety, and the combination of those four, five, six things, that are all relatively subclinical can, together create central sensitisation.

 

The brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely or chronically. So essentially it’s a summation effect, which means that the brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely and persistently

The problem for you as a patient is that the pain therefore just goes on and on as the nerves in the spinal cord remain hypersensitised, which is what we call chronic pain.

 

This is why we sometimes say to patients who have chronic (long term) pain that it is in their heads. It does not mean that you are imagining it, it simply means that your brain is feeding the same cells as the painful area and those cells are giving you incorrect information that something is painful, as a result.

 

Next week I will discuss how best you and we can help to deal with chronic pain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is my back pain not going away with treatment?

 

This is a question often asked.

 

Maybe you are thinking “You seemed so positive when I came to see you. You thought you could help me in about four treatments. I don’t feel much better. I’ve spent a lot of money. What can I do about it?”

 

We don’t blame you. It is frustrating for us as practitioners and you as patients. Here I will set out research based potential reasons for you not getting better.

 

Central Sensitisation

 

This occurs when the celIs sensitization at the level of your spinal cord.

 

When you have a painful disc or painful hip joint or whatever, impulses come into the spinal cord on their way up to you r brain and also signals come down to that level from your brain. If you have repeated pain then the signals hit the same level every time. And it’s that drive into that segment that creates sensitization, like a kind of, almost like an electrical charge within that segment.

 

Too much input means that the messages that are sent to your brain from that segment become less precise and your brain starts to interpret the signals in a different way.

 

Then what happens is that reflexes coming back out synapse or link up with what is called ventral horn neurons in your spinal cord. These neurones are essentially the nerves that govern how you move or the ‘motion nerves’, and they can then initiate motor responses.

 

That means you can get postural changes as a result of pain and quite confusing pain patterns may develop.

 

Simple psychological stress can sensitize the central nervous system too.

 

This means that as well as the information coming into your spine and on to your brain from your body, in the early stages of central sensitization there are also descending influences, from the brain and in particular the limbic emotional center down to your spine, so you can see how anxiety in particular can increase sensitization in the spinal cord, as can depression.

 

The effect that this has is they seem to create inhibition of the inhibitory neurochemicals that would normally dampen down a pain response.

 

Typically if you were to injure yourself, then you actually want to perceive pain. It is a normal function to perceive pain when there’s an injury there because of course you want to stop using that part of your body! Then in the normal process of healing, what would happen is the brain would start to inhibit pain sensation, so it would send messages, descending messages down to that segment of the spinal cord to inhibit the pain messages at the cord level.

 

What they’ve found with central sensitivity or central sensitization is that that process doesn’t happen or it doesn’t happen nearly as effectively. So what you end up with is someone who’s got anxiety that is actually perpetuating their back pain even though the original disc damage is gone.

 

Researchers into pain behaviour and pain avoidance and catastrophizing, which is how a lot of people deal with chronic pain, have used various neurophysiological techniques such as electromygraphical techniques to screen what is happening in your nervous system. Research has shown that they can start to identify that actually if they pressed over the patient’s elbow i.e. away from the wound, they also felt pain, and that was a sign that the pain locus is spreading, and it’s an indication that there’s sensitization of the spinal cord.

Sensitisation has also been linked to other health issues, one of them being irritable bowel syndrome. Researchers have found that insensitivities to temperature change are also a factor that they look out for in central sensitivity. If you have central sensitization it seems you’ll be much less tolerant of changes in temperature than if you don’t have the sensitization. What they’re seeing now too is that you don’t actually need pain at all. You don’t need any painful event. It could be that you’ve got a combination of things, so you could have a slightly irritable hip, you could have irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease, or you could have a food intolerance that’s inflaming the gut wall. You could have uterine problems or bladder problems, and some depression or some anxiety, and the combination of those four, five, six things, that are all relatively subclinical can, together create central sensitisation.

 

The brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely or chronically. So essentially it’s a summation effect, which means that the brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely and persistently

The problem for you as a patient is that the pain therefore just goes on and on as the nerves in the spinal cord remain hypersensitised, which is what we call chronic pain.

 

This is why we sometimes say to patients who have chronic (long term) pain that it is in their heads. It does not mean that you are imagining it, it simply means that your brain is feeding the same cells as the painful area and those cells are giving you incorrect information that something is painful, as a result.

 

Next week I will discuss how best you and we can help to deal with chronic pain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is my back pain not going away with treatment?

 

This is a question often asked.

 

Maybe you are thinking “You seemed so positive when I came to see you. You thought you could help me in about four treatments. I don’t feel much better. I’ve spent a lot of money. What can I do about it?”

 

We don’t blame you. It is frustrating for us as practitioners and you as patients. Here I will set out research based potential reasons for you not getting better.

 

Central Sensitisation

 

This occurs when the celIs sensitization at the level of your spinal cord.

 

When you have a painful disc or painful hip joint or whatever, impulses come into the spinal cord on their way up to you r brain and also signals come down to that level from your brain. If you have repeated pain then the signals hit the same level every time. And it’s that drive into that segment that creates sensitization, like a kind of, almost like an electrical charge within that segment.

 

Too much input means that the messages that are sent to your brain from that segment become less precise and your brain starts to interpret the signals in a different way.

 

Then what happens is that reflexes coming back out synapse or link up with what is called ventral horn neurons in your spinal cord. These neurones are essentially the nerves that govern how you move or the ‘motion nerves’, and they can then initiate motor responses.

 

That means you can get postural changes as a result of pain and quite confusing pain patterns may develop.

 

Simple psychological stress can sensitize the central nervous system too.

 

This means that as well as the information coming into your spine and on to your brain from your body, in the early stages of central sensitization there are also descending influences, from the brain and in particular the limbic emotional center down to your spine, so you can see how anxiety in particular can increase sensitization in the spinal cord, as can depression.

 

The effect that this has is they seem to create inhibition of the inhibitory neurochemicals that would normally dampen down a pain response.

 

Typically if you were to injure yourself, then you actually want to perceive pain. It is a normal function to perceive pain when there’s an injury there because of course you want to stop using that part of your body! Then in the normal process of healing, what would happen is the brain would start to inhibit pain sensation, so it would send messages, descending messages down to that segment of the spinal cord to inhibit the pain messages at the cord level.

 

What they’ve found with central sensitivity or central sensitization is that that process doesn’t happen or it doesn’t happen nearly as effectively. So what you end up with is someone who’s got anxiety that is actually perpetuating their back pain even though the original disc damage is gone.

 

Researchers into pain behaviour and pain avoidance and catastrophizing, which is how a lot of people deal with chronic pain, have used various neurophysiological techniques such as electromygraphical techniques to screen what is happening in your nervous system. Research has shown that they can start to identify that actually if they pressed over the patient’s elbow i.e. away from the wound, they also felt pain, and that was a sign that the pain locus is spreading, and it’s an indication that there’s sensitization of the spinal cord.

Sensitisation has also been linked to other health issues, one of them being irritable bowel syndrome. Researchers have found that insensitivities to temperature change are also a factor that they look out for in central sensitivity. If you have central sensitization it seems you’ll be much less tolerant of changes in temperature than if you don’t have the sensitization. What they’re seeing now too is that you don’t actually need pain at all. You don’t need any painful event. It could be that you’ve got a combination of things, so you could have a slightly irritable hip, you could have irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease, or you could have a food intolerance that’s inflaming the gut wall. You could have uterine problems or bladder problems, and some depression or some anxiety, and the combination of those four, five, six things, that are all relatively subclinical can, together create central sensitisation.

 

The brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely or chronically. So essentially it’s a summation effect, which means that the brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely and persistently

The problem for you as a patient is that the pain therefore just goes on and on as the nerves in the spinal cord remain hypersensitised, which is what we call chronic pain.

 

This is why we sometimes say to patients who have chronic (long term) pain that it is in their heads. It does not mean that you are imagining it, it simply means that your brain is feeding the same cells as the painful area and those cells are giving you incorrect information that something is painful, as a result.

 

Next week I will discuss how best you and we can help to deal with chronic pain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is my back pain not going away with treatment?

 

This is a question often asked.

 

Maybe you are thinking “You seemed so positive when I came to see you. You thought you could help me in about four treatments. I don’t feel much better. I’ve spent a lot of money. What can I do about it?”

 

We don’t blame you. It is frustrating for us as practitioners and you as patients. Here I will set out research based potential reasons for you not getting better.

 

Central Sensitisation

 

This occurs when the celIs sensitization at the level of your spinal cord.

 

When you have a painful disc or painful hip joint or whatever, impulses come into the spinal cord on their way up to your brain and also signals come down to that level from your brain. If you have repeated pain then the signals hit the same level every time. And it’s that drive into that segment that creates sensitization, like a kind of, almost like an electrical charge within that segment.

 

Too much input means that the messages that are sent to your brain from that segment become less precise and your brain starts to interpret the signals in a different way.

 

Then what happens is that reflexes coming back out synapse or link up with what is called ventral horn neurons in your spinal cord. These neurones are essentially the nerves that govern how you move or the ‘motion nerves’, and they can then initiate motor responses.

 

That means you can get postural changes as a result of pain and quite confusing pain patterns may develop.

 

Simple psychological stress can sensitize the central nervous system too.

 

This means that as well as the information coming into your spine and on to your brain from your body, in the early stages of central sensitization there are also descending influences, from the brain and in particular the limbic emotional centre down to your spine, so you can see how anxiety in particular can increase sensitization in the spinal cord, as can depression.

 

The effect that this has is they seem to create inhibition of the inhibitory neurochemicals that would normally dampen down a pain response.

 

Typically if you were to injure yourself, then you actually want to perceive pain. It is a normal function to perceive pain when there’s an injury there because of course you want to stop using that part of your body! Then in the normal process of healing, what would happen is the brain would start to inhibit pain sensation, so it would send messages, descending messages down to that segment of the spinal cord to inhibit the pain messages at the cord level.

 

What they’ve found with central sensitivity or central sensitization is that that process doesn’t happen or it doesn’t happen nearly as effectively. So what you end up with is someone who’s got anxiety that is actually perpetuating their back pain even though the original disc damage is gone.

 

Researchers into pain behaviour and pain avoidance and catastrophizing, which is how a lot of people deal with chronic pain, have used various neurophysiological techniques such as electromygraphical techniques to screen what is happening in your nervous system. Research has shown that they can start to identify that actually if they pressed over the patient’s elbow i.e. away from the wound, they also felt pain, and that was a sign that the pain locus is spreading, and it’s an indication that there’s sensitization of the spinal cord.

Sensitisation has also been linked to other health issues, one of them being irritable bowel syndrome. Researchers have found that insensitivities to temperature change are also a factor that they look out for in central sensitivity. If you have central sensitization it seems you’ll be much less tolerant of changes in temperature than if you don’t have the sensitization. What they’re seeing now too is that you don’t actually need pain at all. You don’t need any painful event. It could be that you’ve got a combination of things, so you could have a slightly irritable hip, you could have irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease, or you could have a food intolerance that’s inflaming the gut wall. You could have uterine problems or bladder problems, and some depression or some anxiety, and the combination of those four, five, six things that are all relatively subclinical can, together create central sensitisation.

 

The brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely or chronically. So essentially it’s a summation effect, which means that the brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely and persistently

The problem for you as a patient is that the pain therefore just goes on and on as the nerves in the spinal cord remain hypersensitised, which is what we call chronic pain.

 

This is why we sometimes say to patients who have chronic (long term) pain that it is in their heads. It does not mean that you are imagining it, it simply means that your brain is feeding the same cells as the painful area and those cells are giving you incorrect information that something is painful, as a result.

 

Next week I will discuss how best you and we can help to deal with chronic pain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is my back pain not going away with treatment?

 

This is a question often asked.

 

Maybe you are thinking “You seemed so positive when I came to see you. You thought you could help me in about four treatments. I don’t feel much better. I’ve spent a lot of money. What can I do about it?”

 

We don’t blame you. It is frustrating for us as practitioners and you as patients. Here I will set out research based potential reasons for you not getting better.

 

Central Sensitisation

 

This occurs when the celIs sensitization at the level of your spinal cord.

 

When you have a painful disc or painful hip joint or whatever, impulses come into the spinal cord on their way up to your brain and also signals come down to that level from your brain. If you have repeated pain then the signals hit the same level every time. And it’s that drive into that segment that creates sensitization, like a kind of, almost like an electrical charge within that segment.

 

Too much input means that the messages that are sent to your brain from that segment become less precise and your brain starts to interpret the signals in a different way.

 

Then what happens is that reflexes coming back out synapse or link up with what is called ventral horn neurons in your spinal cord. These neurones are essentially the nerves that govern how you move or the ‘motion nerves’, and they can then initiate motor responses.

 

That means you can get postural changes as a result of pain and quite confusing pain patterns may develop.

 

Simple psychological stress can sensitize the central nervous system too.

 

This means that as well as the information coming into your spine and on to your brain from your body, in the early stages of central sensitization there are also descending influences, from the brain and in particular the limbic emotional centre down to your spine, so you can see how anxiety in particular can increase sensitization in the spinal cord, as can depression.

 

The effect that this has is they seem to create inhibition of the inhibitory neurochemicals that would normally dampen down a pain response.

 

Typically if you were to injure yourself, then you actually want to perceive pain. It is a normal function to perceive pain when there’s an injury there because of course you want to stop using that part of your body! Then in the normal process of healing, what would happen is the brain would start to inhibit pain sensation, so it would send messages, descending messages down to that segment of the spinal cord to inhibit the pain messages at the cord level.

 

What they’ve found with central sensitivity or central sensitization is that that process doesn’t happen or it doesn’t happen nearly as effectively. So what you end up with is someone who’s got anxiety that is actually perpetuating their back pain even though the original disc damage is gone.

 

Researchers into pain behaviour and pain avoidance and catastrophizing, which is how a lot of people deal with chronic pain, have used various neurophysiological techniques such as electromygraphical techniques to screen what is happening in your nervous system. Research has shown that they can start to identify that actually if they pressed over the patient’s elbow i.e. away from the wound, they also felt pain, and that was a sign that the pain locus is spreading, and it’s an indication that there’s sensitization of the spinal cord.

Sensitisation has also been linked to other health issues, one of them being irritable bowel syndrome. Researchers have found that insensitivities to temperature change are also a factor that they look out for in central sensitivity. If you have central sensitization it seems you’ll be much less tolerant of changes in temperature than if you don’t have the sensitization. What they’re seeing now too is that you don’t actually need pain at all. You don’t need any painful event. It could be that you’ve got a combination of things, so you could have a slightly irritable hip, you could have irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease, or you could have a food intolerance that’s inflaming the gut wall. You could have uterine problems or bladder problems, and some depression or some anxiety, and the combination of those four, five, six things that are all relatively subclinical can, together create central sensitisation.

 

The brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely or chronically. So essentially it’s a summation effect, which means that the brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely and persistently

The problem for you as a patient is that the pain therefore just goes on and on as the nerves in the spinal cord remain hypersensitised, which is what we call chronic pain.

 

This is why we sometimes say to patients who have chronic (long term) pain that it is in their heads. It does not mean that you are imagining it, it simply means that your brain is feeding the same cells as the painful area and those cells are giving you incorrect information that something is painful, as a result.

 

Next week I will discuss how best you and we can help to deal with chronic pain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is my back pain not going away with treatment?

 

This is a question often asked.

 

Maybe you are thinking “You seemed so positive when I came to see you. You thought you could help me in about four treatments. I don’t feel much better. I’ve spent a lot of money. What can I do about it?”

 

We don’t blame you. It is frustrating for us as practitioners and you as patients. Here I will set out research based potential reasons for you not getting better.

 

Central Sensitisation

 

This occurs when the celIs sensitization at the level of your spinal cord.

 

When you have a painful disc or painful hip joint or whatever, impulses come into the spinal cord on their way up to your brain and also signals come down to that level from your brain. If you have repeated pain then the signals hit the same level every time. And it’s that drive into that segment that creates sensitization, like a kind of, almost like an electrical charge within that segment.

 

Too much input means that the messages that are sent to your brain from that segment become less precise and your brain starts to interpret the signals in a different way.

 

Then what happens is that reflexes coming back out synapse or link up with what is called ventral horn neurons in your spinal cord. These neurones are essentially the nerves that govern how you move or the ‘motion nerves’, and they can then initiate motor responses.

 

That means you can get postural changes as a result of pain and quite confusing pain patterns may develop.

 

Simple psychological stress can sensitize the central nervous system too.

 

This means that as well as the information coming into your spine and on to your brain from your body, in the early stages of central sensitization there are also descending influences, from the brain and in particular the limbic emotional centre down to your spine, so you can see how anxiety in particular can increase sensitization in the spinal cord, as can depression.

 

The effect that this has is they seem to create inhibition of the inhibitory neurochemicals that would normally dampen down a pain response.

 

Typically if you were to injure yourself, then you actually want to perceive pain. It is a normal function to perceive pain when there’s an injury there because of course you want to stop using that part of your body! Then in the normal process of healing, what would happen is the brain would start to inhibit pain sensation, so it would send messages, descending messages down to that segment of the spinal cord to inhibit the pain messages at the cord level.

 

What they’ve found with central sensitivity or central sensitization is that that process doesn’t happen or it doesn’t happen nearly as effectively. So what you end up with is someone who’s got anxiety that is actually perpetuating their back pain even though the original disc damage is gone.

 

Researchers into pain behaviour and pain avoidance and catastrophizing, which is how a lot of people deal with chronic pain, have used various neurophysiological techniques such as electromygraphical techniques to screen what is happening in your nervous system. Research has shown that they can start to identify that actually if they pressed over the patient’s elbow i.e. away from the wound, they also felt pain, and that was a sign that the pain locus is spreading, and it’s an indication that there’s sensitization of the spinal cord.

Sensitisation has also been linked to other health issues, one of them being irritable bowel syndrome. Researchers have found that insensitivities to temperature change are also a factor that they look out for in central sensitivity. If you have central sensitization it seems you’ll be much less tolerant of changes in temperature than if you don’t have the sensitization. What they’re seeing now too is that you don’t actually need pain at all. You don’t need any painful event. It could be that you’ve got a combination of things, so you could have a slightly irritable hip, you could have irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease, or you could have a food intolerance that’s inflaming the gut wall. You could have uterine problems or bladder problems, and some depression or some anxiety, and the combination of those four, five, six things that are all relatively subclinical can, together create central sensitisation.

 

The brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely or chronically. So essentially it’s a summation effect, which means that the brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely and persistently

The problem for you as a patient is that the pain therefore just goes on and on as the nerves in the spinal cord remain hypersensitised, which is what we call chronic pain.

 

This is why we sometimes say to patients who have chronic (long term) pain that it is in their heads. It does not mean that you are imagining it, it simply means that your brain is feeding the same cells as the painful area and those cells are giving you incorrect information that something is painful, as a result.

 

Next week I will discuss how best you and we can help to deal with chronic pain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is my back pain not going away with treatment?

 

This is a question often asked.

 

Maybe you are thinking “You seemed so positive when I came to see you. You thought you could help me in about four treatments. I don’t feel much better. I’ve spent a lot of money. What can I do about it?”

 

We don’t blame you. It is frustrating for us as practitioners and you as patients. Here I will set out research based potential reasons for you not getting better.

 

Central Sensitisation

 

This occurs when the celIs sensitization at the level of your spinal cord.

 

When you have a painful disc or painful hip joint or whatever, impulses come into the spinal cord on their way up to your brain and also signals come down to that level from your brain. If you have repeated pain then the signals hit the same level every time. And it’s that drive into that segment that creates sensitization, like a kind of, almost like an electrical charge within that segment.

 

Too much input means that the messages that are sent to your brain from that segment become less precise and your brain starts to interpret the signals in a different way.

 

Then what happens is that reflexes coming back out synapse or link up with what is called ventral horn neurons in your spinal cord. These neurones are essentially the nerves that govern how you move or the ‘motion nerves’, and they can then initiate motor responses.

 

That means you can get postural changes as a result of pain and quite confusing pain patterns may develop.

 

Simple psychological stress can sensitize the central nervous system too.

 

This means that as well as the information coming into your spine and on to your brain from your body, in the early stages of central sensitization there are also descending influences, from the brain and in particular the limbic emotional centre down to your spine, so you can see how anxiety in particular can increase sensitization in the spinal cord, as can depression.

 

The effect that this has is they seem to create inhibition of the inhibitory neurochemicals that would normally dampen down a pain response.

 

Typically if you were to injure yourself, then you actually want to perceive pain. It is a normal function to perceive pain when there’s an injury there because of course you want to stop using that part of your body! Then in the normal process of healing, what would happen is the brain would start to inhibit pain sensation, so it would send messages, descending messages down to that segment of the spinal cord to inhibit the pain messages at the cord level.

 

What they’ve found with central sensitivity or central sensitization is that that process doesn’t happen or it doesn’t happen nearly as effectively. So what you end up with is someone who’s got anxiety that is actually perpetuating their back pain even though the original disc damage is gone.

 

Researchers into pain behaviour and pain avoidance and catastrophizing, which is how a lot of people deal with chronic pain, have used various neurophysiological techniques such as electromygraphical techniques to screen what is happening in your nervous system. Research has shown that they can start to identify that actually if they pressed over the patient’s elbow i.e. away from the wound, they also felt pain, and that was a sign that the pain locus is spreading, and it’s an indication that there’s sensitization of the spinal cord.

Sensitisation has also been linked to other health issues, one of them being irritable bowel syndrome. Researchers have found that insensitivities to temperature change are also a factor that they look out for in central sensitivity. If you have central sensitization it seems you’ll be much less tolerant of changes in temperature than if you don’t have the sensitization. What they’re seeing now too is that you don’t actually need pain at all. You don’t need any painful event. It could be that you’ve got a combination of things, so you could have a slightly irritable hip, you could have irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease, or you could have a food intolerance that’s inflaming the gut wall. You could have uterine problems or bladder problems, and some depression or some anxiety, and the combination of those four, five, six things that are all relatively subclinical can, together create central sensitisation.

 

The brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely or chronically. So essentially it’s a summation effect, which means that the brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely and persistently

The problem for you as a patient is that the pain therefore just goes on and on as the nerves in the spinal cord remain hypersensitised, which is what we call chronic pain.

 

This is why we sometimes say to patients who have chronic (long term) pain that it is in their heads. It does not mean that you are imagining it, it simply means that your brain is feeding the same cells as the painful area and those cells are giving you incorrect information that something is painful, as a result.

 

Next week I will discuss how best you and we can help to deal with chronic pain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is my back pain not going away with treatment?

 

This is a question often asked.

 

Maybe you are thinking “You seemed so positive when I came to see you. You thought you could help me in about four treatments. I don’t feel much better. I’ve spent a lot of money. What can I do about it?”

 

We don’t blame you. It is frustrating for us as practitioners and you as patients. Here I will set out research based potential reasons for you not getting better.

 

Central Sensitisation

 

This occurs when the celIs sensitization at the level of your spinal cord.

 

When you have a painful disc or painful hip joint or whatever, impulses come into the spinal cord on their way up to your brain and also signals come down to that level from your brain. If you have repeated pain then the signals hit the same level every time. And it’s that drive into that segment that creates sensitization, like a kind of, almost like an electrical charge within that segment.

 

Too much input means that the messages that are sent to your brain from that segment become less precise and your brain starts to interpret the signals in a different way.

 

Then what happens is that reflexes coming back out synapse or link up with what is called ventral horn neurons in your spinal cord. These neurones are essentially the nerves that govern how you move or the ‘motion nerves’, and they can then initiate motor responses.

 

That means you can get postural changes as a result of pain and quite confusing pain patterns may develop.

 

Simple psychological stress can sensitize the central nervous system too.

 

This means that as well as the information coming into your spine and on to your brain from your body, in the early stages of central sensitization there are also descending influences, from the brain and in particular the limbic emotional centre down to your spine, so you can see how anxiety in particular can increase sensitization in the spinal cord, as can depression.

 

The effect that this has is they seem to create inhibition of the inhibitory neurochemicals that would normally dampen down a pain response.

 

Typically if you were to injure yourself, then you actually want to perceive pain. It is a normal function to perceive pain when there’s an injury there because of course you want to stop using that part of your body! Then in the normal process of healing, what would happen is the brain would start to inhibit pain sensation, so it would send messages, descending messages down to that segment of the spinal cord to inhibit the pain messages at the cord level.

 

What they’ve found with central sensitivity or central sensitization is that that process doesn’t happen or it doesn’t happen nearly as effectively. So what you end up with is someone who’s got anxiety that is actually perpetuating their back pain even though the original disc damage is gone.

 

Researchers into pain behaviour and pain avoidance and catastrophizing, which is how a lot of people deal with chronic pain, have used various neurophysiological techniques such as electromygraphical techniques to screen what is happening in your nervous system. Research has shown that they can start to identify that actually if they pressed over the patient’s elbow i.e. away from the wound, they also felt pain, and that was a sign that the pain locus is spreading, and it’s an indication that there’s sensitization of the spinal cord.

Sensitisation has also been linked to other health issues, one of them being irritable bowel syndrome. Researchers have found that insensitivities to temperature change are also a factor that they look out for in central sensitivity. If you have central sensitization it seems you’ll be much less tolerant of changes in temperature than if you don’t have the sensitization. What they’re seeing now too is that you don’t actually need pain at all. You don’t need any painful event. It could be that you’ve got a combination of things, so you could have a slightly irritable hip, you could have irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease, or you could have a food intolerance that’s inflaming the gut wall. You could have uterine problems or bladder problems, and some depression or some anxiety, and the combination of those four, five, six things that are all relatively subclinical can, together create central sensitisation.

 

The brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely or chronically. So essentially it’s a summation effect, which means that the brain can cope with certain signals coming up through the spinal cord, but actually, if it’s busy coping with all these different inputs, then it can no longer filter out the ones which it shouldn’t be dealing with, and so it feels that pain more acutely and persistently

The problem for you as a patient is that the pain therefore just goes on and on as the nerves in the spinal cord remain hypersensitised, which is what we call chronic pain.

 

This is why we sometimes say to patients who have chronic (long term) pain that it is in their heads. It does not mean that you are imagining it, it simply means that your brain is feeding the same cells as the painful area and those cells are giving you incorrect information that something is painful, as a result.

 

Next week I will discuss how best you and we can help to deal with chronic pain.