Stress, Pain, Chronic Pain, and the Immune System

 

This video talks a little about how expectations about pain can change how we experience it… this is a complicated issue.

My hope is that you don’t take away from it that ongoing pain is ‘in your head’ or not real.

This is absolutely NOT true.

What is means is that our thoughts influence our perception just as our perception influences our thoughts.

This can result in your brain essentially learning that something is painful and creating increasing feelings of pain and associated problems.

The stress of pain or threat of pain causes certain stress responses in the brain.

These responses activate the ‘fight or flight’ nervous system that is called the sympathetic nervous system.

Certain hormones are involved in this part of the nervous system and released when the sympathetics are released.

This includes adrenaline and cortisol.

These hormones will do various things in our bodies that essentially prepare us for quick action like running away from a threat.

They will increase alertness (in the short term), increase blood sugar, and increase pain sensitivity among other things.

As the video talks about, changes in mood occur.

The hormone release and increased sympathetics also lead to slower healing because you don’t need to heal when faced with a serious threat… you need to get out of there.

The video also discusses how the brain changes immune system reactions based on what it believes is going on in and around the body.

This is critically important, not just for inflammation (a part of the immune system) but for handling threats like bacteria and viruses…

It’s also important because if too vigilant it can begin to attack things that are not really a threat which is the process of autoimmunity.

So what we see is that there is a complex relationship between pain, the brain, the sympathetic ‘fight or flight’ nervous system, hormones, and the immune system.

This complexity makes it difficult to understand, but it’s how our bodies work in a unified manner.

Reducing physical and mental stress can make a huge difference in how we feel and perform.

We can reduce these stresses with things like meditation, proper nutrition with an anti-inflammatory diet, getting enough good sleep, getting outside in the sun, socializing with friends and family, and critically important movement.

Chiropractic care is very important for helping every person move better through changing the ability of our brain to control our bodies as we’ve discussed in previous blog posts and videos.

Of course, chiropractic helps people with pain and chronic pain related to headaches, neck pain, shoulder pain, and back pain but there is much more to the story as this short video talks about – and it just barely scratches the surface of the complexity of how our bodies work.

Physical stress becomes mental stress and results in so many changes over time that contribute to so many chronic health problems.

Chiropractic is an integral part of solving these problems as are so many different lifestyle changes that we can make to improve our overall health and wellness.