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Lower back pain is the single most common chronic pain, experienced by 60-80% of the population at some time in their lives. Even though many people can achieve healing through good physiotherapy or other treatment programs, roughly 20% of lower back pain sufferers never get relief. These are the people who will almost certainly be helped by this article. YOUR LOWER BACK PAIN - CHRONIC OR ACUTE? Chronic pain is pain that is experienced over a long time (even years) without any improvement even though you've carefully followed your doctor's treatment advice. Although there may have originally been an injury, or they may even be existing spinal damage or wear, the pain is independent of that. For example, if you were to look at a bundle of x-rays of people's spines, you couldn't tell from the damage or deterioration just who had pain and who didn't. The fact is that people who have little or no damage can feel a lot of pain, and people with significant damage or deterioration might be completely pain free. You may be quite shocked to hear that chronic pain is exactly the same as emotional pain, but in fact fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) shows that this is the case. Acute pain uses different nerve paths, but a map of chronic pain looks just like a map of anger, or a map of sadness. So this is why, if you've had your back pain for a long time, despite trying many treatments, you are most likely to have chronic pain, and this article is most likely to help you. 7 STEPS TO ELIMINATE CHRONIC PAIN Step 1: Take out the stress. Have you ever seen a car alarm that would go off for no good reason? Maybe a slight breeze would blow and off it would go! Your nervous system can be just like that, all tightwired and ready to produce pain at the slightest provocation. By taking out the stress, you help your system to calm down and behave normally. Step 2: Emotional Reactions. Do you have strong emotional reactions to things? This doesn't help chronic pain because it heightens the reactivity of your nervous system. You might be surprised to learn that there are actually ways to switch off unwanted emotional reactions so that you feel calm and can think more clearly, even in a crisis. Check out www.bmsa-int.com, which is a site for medical practitioners who are using this method very successfully with their clients. Step 3: It's called social engagement. Yes, you definitely need to mix with people in a way that gives you pleasure. There's a whole field of science devoted to the health advantages (mental and physical) that comes from being involved with people socially, so when you have pain, you especially need to pay attention to this. Step 4: Be more physically active. When people experience pain it's only natural that they want to stop moving and withdraw, and with acute pain that's actually sensible. But with chronic pain it's the last thing you should do because activity is essential to your recovery. In fact it's essential to even the most basic physical and mental health. Step 5: Get an external focus. By having an absorbing interest or hobby, you give your brain an opportunity to take a holiday from total focus on the pain, and the nervous system is helped to switch off those painful signals. It's not that you merely THINK the pain is lessened, it actually IS lessoned when your focus moves off it. This is just another amazing thing about the incredible human brain. Step 6: Take a look at your relationships. Who are you dependent on? What would happen to that relationship (good and not so good) if your pain suddenly disappeared? Who leans on you or would like to lean on you? What would happen in that relationship if your pain suddenly disappeared? Pain can serve a very useful purpose in maintaining co-dependency, so it's worth checking out they dynamics of your relationships. Step 7: Actually treat the pain signalling directly. BMSA (Brief, Multi-Sensory Activation) is a relatively new set of techniques that quickly and easily switch off pain signalling. In clinical trials it's proven to be highly effective for up to 100% of people with chronic pain. You'll get an opportunity to experiment with BMSA for pain shortly! AN EXPERIMENT WITH BMSA Before you try any treatment, it's a good idea to "dip your toes in the water" and have some experience of what it's like. Not everyone responds straight away, but many people do, and so it's worth while going through the following steps to see what happens for you. Take time to really think about your pain, concentrating on what words most accurately describe the location and nature of your pain. It's really important that they're your own words, words that seem very natural to you. For instance it might be something like: I have this burning pain in the middle of my lower back but a bit to the left I have this stabbing pain just above my tailbone I have this deep ache near my left hip Etc, etc, etc. Notice that you're describing the type of pain, and where it's located. Now rate that pain out of 10, with 10 out of 10 being the most awful pain you could possibly imagine, and 0 out of 10 being no pain whatsoever. Once you've got your statement, you're going to be repeating that around 12 times, and each time you say the statement you'll add a sentence ending that is quite different to the statement itself. As you're talking, start tapping all over your body: head, face, shoulders, chest, arms, legs, etc, so that you're talking and tapping at the same time. It's a really great idea, if you can, to walk around as you do this - try to walk in a pattern, like forming the first letter of your name, for example. The aim is to focus on the pain at the same time as you provide yourself with complex multi-sensory stimulation. In the example given above "I have this deep ache near my left hip", for instance, you could be tapping along saying: "I have this deep ache near my left hip, but butterflies are crunchy." You need to repeat your sentence (the pain bit at the beginning and whatever sentence ending you decided you use) at least 12 times. Immediately you've done that, still focussed on the pain, start tapping away on your chest, take a very full breath through your nose, and then blow it all out very hard through your mouth. Take a couple of easy breaths and then think about your pain again. Is it still the same rating? Has the pain moved? Do you notice other pain now, instead of the one you started with? What has happened with that pain? This is just a little taste of what BMSA can do, but of course it's not the whole picture. The book "The Pain Train - Time to Get Off" spells out much more detail and steps you through a personalised program designed to eliminate your pain permanently.
Article Source: http://www.philvault.com
Author Christine Sutherland is a researching clinician and specialist in treating back pain. You can view other great articles on back pain on her web site.
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