The Secret To Pain Relief

How To Treat Pain At It’s Source So That You Don’t Just Feel Better, But Are Better!

Bear with me for just a moment while I explain why so many people continue suffering day after day.

Have you ever wondered why so many people are in pain?

Obviously what we’re commonly doing to help isn’t working or else there wouldn’t be so many with the problem.

The real problem with how we view and treat pain is that we take a pain reliever to reduce the symptoms but often do not address what is causing the pain.

It’s the idea of treating a symptom and not an underlying cause that often gets us in trouble with our health.

Pain is a great representation of this problem.

Let me explain.

Our bodies are pretty good at maintaining some function and remaining asymptomatic (without symptoms) until late in most disease processes.

Think about the worst, most disabling diseases… 

• Angina (Chest Pain) and heart attack like symptoms do not generally appear until maybe 80+% of the heart’s coronary arteries are narrowed. Our heart has been losing blood supply for some time at this point.
• Parkinson’s Disease symptoms don’t show up until there are massive losses of neurons in a certain part of the brain. The losses are generally significantly more than 50%!
• Cancer, Alzheimer’s, Auto-Immune Diseases, Diabetes,…

These are just a few examples of diseases that often take years if not decades to develop before symptoms occur.

Processes that are causing pain are generally like this also… particularly chronic ongoing pain.

Of course a sudden trauma like a Car Crash can cause very significant injuries and pain.

Even in this case though, pain isn’t really the problem.

It’s simply your body’s way of telling you you have a problem and attempting to get you to stop doing things that are potentially going to cause further injury.

Our bodies do get a little carried away at times though!

It should be noted that often even with these acute (recent) injuries, if we only take something to reduce pain then it’s likely our bodies will not heal properly and end up causing chronic problems and chronic pain.

Chronic Pain.

It takes time to develop chronic pain.

Underlying processes are occurring in both our local tissues and our nervous systems that make the problem worse and increasingly difficult to get rid of.

Low Back Pain and Disc Herniations are a good example of this.

Low back disc problems for many occur due to the breakdown of the disc slowly over a long period of time.

The discs in our spine’s act like shock absorbers and points of movement between the bones.

They don’t have a blood supply and rely upon proper movement to effectively pump the essential supplies into and out of the disc.

An injury or abnormal stresses can create a problem that prevents or limits this movement setting up a situation that can cause the disc to begin breaking down.

This is often referred to as arthritis or degenerative disc disease.

The disc becomes increasingly stiffer and more susceptible to tears and herniations with physical stresses, movements, and traumas.

Even outside of this though, as the disc continues to breakdown over years we may begin experiencing symptoms like pain and stiffness.

During this time, most often people begin taking over the counter pain relievers. Many times they help and we believe everything is ok.

It’s not.

Our bodies continue to breakdown until we take increasingly stronger pain relievers because things like ibuprofen start not working for us any longer.

Pain is not the problem, but it sure gets our attention!

The big idea is that we have to treat the underlying problem in order to prevent our problem from getting progressively worse and ultimately leaving us with more pain and difficulties performing daily activities.

Ultimately for far too many ending up having to have surgery for problems that could have likely been taken care of years before.

The problem that leads to pain exists long before you know about it.

The underlying cause is there before our bodies tell us about it with pain and other symptoms.

When our bodies begin to tell us it’s already been going on for quite a while.

But even at this point, we usually just take some pain relievers for it in essence just quieting the warning signal.

This is analogous to our car’s check engine light coming on and we decide to put some masking tape over it so we don’t see the warning.

In the case of our car this might lead to destroying the engine or some other major repair we will need to do.

In the case of our bodies, the same thing often happens… a catastrophic failure where we can not get ‘back to normal.’

The pain is the consequence of the dysfunction, just as the heart attack is the consequence of different factors over a long period of time such as poor diet and lack of exercise.

Chiropractic is based on the idea that we should correct the dysfunction at it’s root cause, so that the body functions properly.

This is to help the person now and reduce problems in the future.

This is why you should see a chiropractor even if you are not in pain and especially if you experience any symptom like pain, stiffness, muscle spasms, tightness, headaches, and other neuro-musculoskeletal problems…

We can find areas of dysfunction through a thorough physical examination… which joints move poorly, which muscles are weak, and how the nervous system is functioning in that system.

This allows us to identify the problem so we can correct it before it progresses… like a mechanic that hooks the car up to a computer to run the diagnostics and find out what is causing the problem.

You don’t wait for your car’s engine to catch fire before taking it to the shop and you are much more important than your car.

If you’ve had a recent trauma like a Texarkana Car Accident then you should see us to help you both feel and heal better.

But outside of this, if you haven’t seen a chiropractor, it’s an excellent idea to do so because as we’ve discussed here…

Pain is a symptom which is often warning us about an ongoing problem.

Pain often comes very late in the process so why wait until there is significant damage before seeking care at our Texarkana office?

We maintain our homes, our yards, our cars, and so many other things.

Shouldn’t we also work on maintaining our bodies?

Texarkana Chiropractor

Contact us, we’re here to help!