The greatest evil is physical pain – Saint Augustine
Patients seek medical treatment because they are in pain. Although it’s a simple concept, pain is a very complex topic. Pain begins a cycle that can become debilitating if the cycle is allowed to progress.
Normally, following an injury, your brain and body would
- 1.
Recognize the injury
- 2.
Initiate a healing response, including compensatory measures to protect the area.
- 3.
Continue addressing the area until it is fully healed
If an injury does not heal within a reasonable timeframe (which can happen for many reasons), the body can be forced to continue to compensate. After some time, the brain and body begins to ignore the “red alert” signal that the area is still in need of attention. When this happens, chronic pain can occur. The pain signal being sent is continuously ignored by the brain and compensations continue to occur and progress, which can lead to more injury and dysfunction. This is why what often starts as a pain or injury in one area (like the right shoulder for example), can progress to multiple other areas (like the neck, left shoulder, down the arm or to the upper back area).
When this happens, there has to be work done to re-educate the body. Neuromuscular re-education is the medical term for what is required to stop that cycle of pain. Our clinic staff is not only trained in neuromuscular re-education, but it’s our specialty! IMPACT has been serving the chronic pain population in the Twin City area for over 27 years. We frequently see patients who have failed multiple other medical avenues (surgeries, procedures, therapies, chiropractic, etc.) and we have excellent outcomes with chronic pain treatment. In fact in the past 2 years, of all patients who completed at least 30% or more of their therapy plan of care at IMPACT, 90% of them reported improvement!
Are you caught in the pain cycle? Don’t let chronic pain limit your future self – contact us schedule!