Pain

Where does the pain come from?

The majority of people that walk into the MetaTouch clinic come because they have some type of pain. The most common are sciatica, shoulder pain, low back pain and neck pain. At the beginning of each treatment, I like to get a history and find out what brings them to me along with what there goals are for the treatment. The most common comment I get from clients is, “I didn’t do anything, and then the pain just came out of no where.” This perception that pain, “comes from no where,” I believe to be a very common misunderstanding within the medical profession and everyday people.

The body is an amazing machine filled with thousands of interconnected units that function together in perfect harmony. When we injure ourselves, either by spraining our ankle, being tossed around in a car accident, or sitting funny on the couch for too long, we disrupt that harmony. This disruption can lead to immediate pain, for instance, from an impact where a bone is broken, let’s say one’s ankle. In this case the pain is clear in its cause and location. The treatment is clear as well: immobilize the area until the bone has re-fused and then strengthen the ankle back to its original state. Now here is where pain can become a little more confusing. For six weeks or so you either walked in a boot with crutches or limped around. All this time your body was trying to adjust to its harmony being disrupted. Remember, not only have you hurt your ankle but now all your weight has to be shifted to the opposite foot to keep your pain down and prevent you from re-injuring the damaged ankle. Your hips shift to compensate for the new load, your shoulders roll forward to accommodate the crutches you’ve been walking with, and your head pushes forward to keep balance because your butt is sticking out everytime you walk, so that you won’t tip over. All this happens without you being aware of any change.

The body has an amazing ability to compensate for different changes in its machine. The problem is that the body can only compensate for a finite number of things until it goes into complete failure. When that happens, we feel pain. Think of it like one of those new all-wheel drive cars. They advertise that when one wheel loses traction, power is transferred to the other wheels that aren’t slipping to help stabilize the car. Now imagine that all the wheels fell off the car. No amount of traction control will help you keep that car on the road. The all-wheel drive can only compensate for a certain number of factors. When it hits that point, it ceases to work. The body operates the same way.

Think of the broken ankle: Six weeks have gone by; the crutches are gone. You are walking normally again. Three weeks after that, you turn your neck to hear something your friend said, and bam! Like a lighting bolt, pain shoots through your shoulder and neck. “It just happened!” No, it didn’t. Over the last nine weeks, your body has been trying to compensate for all the changes it had to accommodate due to the ankle break. When you turned your head, it was as if the wheels fell off the car. You hit that finite number; your neck had been weakened so greatly over the last nine weeks of balancing using small muscles to do the job of big ones, contracting some and fatiguing others. Your neck gave up; it was tired!

Now here comes the difference between MetaTouch treatments and the rest of the medical community. Most doctors will treat the neck: injections, physical therapy on the neck, spinal adjustments of the neck, and last resort, surgery on the neck, because that’s where the problem is……isn’t it? Remember how all this started…. the ankle? That break changed your gait (the way you walk) which changed the way your muscles sit in your legs and hips and then changed how your head sits on your shoulders. If all you treat is the neck, then you are only treating one part of the problem: the symptom. Without addressing the problem, the symptom will return every time. At MetaTouch, we will treat the neck, but we will also address and strengthen the foot, muscles in the legs and hips, different torsions in the torso. All of these treatments help to correct the abnormal gait and align the body so that the neck can heal in its proper position.
Our society is very reactionary and narrow in how it sees things; we only add security when attacked; we only fix the hole in the bridge if someone dies falling though it; we only go to the doctor if something hurts or breaks. All I’m saying is let’s look at why things happen; what’s the bigger picture? Let’s work on prevention. If we check on things before everything goes wrong (prevention), imagine how much pain and suffering we could avoid. Preventing problems and remembering where injuries began can be the key to managing and eliminating pain.
If you think you have something going on with your body, no matter how small. Let us take a look; our therapists might be able to help prevent you from having it turn into a much greater issue.

Thank you for your time, I look forward to seeing you soon.
Holden Zalma