No B.S Friday: Science goes full circle on back pain.
There was an interesting article in The AFR a few weeks ago around a new approach to treating back pain.
Basically, a lot of people seem to experience pain that is out of proportion with the things that are actually wrong with their backs. Their backs become over sensitive, and you can recalibrate your back pain through a process called sensorimotor retraining:
Australian researchers who are attempting to introduce a new paradigm for managing chronic low-back pain have achieved some early success.
Rather than using traditional treatments such as surgery, injections, drugs, stimulators or manipulation, they have devised a way to reset the communication between the brain and the back.
They believe much chronic back pain results from this communication going awry. While the pain may have begun with problematic discs, bones or muscles, it often outlives the problem that caused it.
… “The longer people have back pain, the more oversensitive they become to threats,” says McAuley. “Even when there’s no longer anything wrong with their back, their brain continues to try and protect it. Our approach builds on this understanding.
…“Over time, their back becomes less fit, and communication between the back and brain is disrupted, in ways that seem to reinforce the notion that the back still needs protecting. The treatment we devised aims to break this self-sustaining cycle.”
For years, people can cling to an image of a scan of their back to explain their pain, never realising that millions of others have the same scan result but no pain. Similarly, they may hold onto a picture of a herniated disc, not realising it can self-correct.
The new approach, called sensorimotor retraining, alters how they think about their body in pain, how they process sensory information from their back and how they move.
It’s early days in the field so who knows how it turns out.
But when I read it I thought, “how can this not be true?”
Because I’ve seen it play out in every facet of our lives.
When learn defensive postures in response to pain, often at an early age.
We get emotionally hurt, we become guarded around who we let in. We grow up without money, we carry a scarcity mentality into jobs with six-figure salaries.
We were embarrassed by something we did in Kindergarten, and so as adults we keep our true selves – and talents – hidden.
Most of us are locked into defensive postures of one sort or the other, long after they have passed their used-by date.
I know this to be true mentally. So it only makes sense that there’s a parallel in the physical body as well.
And if that is the case, then it is simply of matter or retraining our habits. This is easier said than done, but the science of habits has come a very long way in the past twenty years.
I’ve been watching.
And so look, if you suffer from back pain, I know it’s complex and there’s no magic bullet.
But for me it’s just a reminder that we need to be constantly checking that our beliefs and postures haven’t past their used-by date.
And if they have?
Then change is always possible.
JG.