Pain is a difficult experience. It’s difficult to go through but it also offers challenges in both diagnosis and treatment. Pain is the body’s normal response to injury or illness. It’s the body communicating to you that there is a potential problem.
Pain should resolve when the injury or illness resolves. Sometimes the injury or stress leaves an imbalance that continues to cause pain. When the pain lasts for 3 to 6 months or longer it is categorized as chronic pain. As you might know this takes an enormous toll on your physical and emotional health. And, that toll actually serves to perpetuate the pain. It becomes a vicious self-perpetuating cycle.
Chronic Pain Syndrome affects about 25% of those with chronic pain. There’s a belief that it has to do with the nervous system and glands that respond to stress.
I’d agree except that in my experience you can rewire how those nerves and the adrenal glands respond to stress. The body’s stress response is reinforced every time it is triggered. Over time it gets stronger and stronger and results in the chronic pain patient living in the stress response.
The more common Chronic Pain Syndrome secondary symptoms arise secondary to having chronic pain. These will help explain what’s going on:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Poor Sleep and insomnia
- Feeling very tired
- Mood swings
Here are the top 7 Chronic Pain Syndrome Symptoms:
- Aching
- Burning
- Shooting
- Squeezing
- Stiffness
- Stinging
- Throbbing
Chronic pain as well as all pain is experienced through the nervous system. Pain is interesting in that there is no test that can measure pain. We can take an x-ray to look for a fracture or use an MRI to assess a disc herniation. But, there’s no test that can accurately measure pain.
Since chronic pain is experienced through the nervous system, that offers the biggest opportunity to solve the puzzle of chronic pain.
The Top Key to Understanding Chronic Pain
The above list of the secondary symptoms offers us a doorway into understanding what is happening with chronic pain syndrome. The anxiety, depression, sleep issues, fatigue, and mood swings are common symptoms of a very specific nervous system imbalance.
First, the top 7 Chronic Pain Syndrome symptoms are a sign of irritation to the nervous system. We could describe it as tension, interference, pressure, or in a number of other ways. All of the symptoms of chronic pain can be traced back to the nervous system. But, that isn’t the key I’m talking about.
The nervous system has many different components. The aspect of the nervous system that is out of balance not only offers insight into those top 7 symptoms but also gives us understanding into the other symptoms such as anxiety or sleep issues or even the mood swings.
Let’s take a look at the Autonomic Nervous System. The Autonomic Nervous System is the portion of your nervous system that forms the connection between your brain and all of your organs. It is composed of two divisions with very different functions.
- Sympathetic Nervous System: responds especially to stress and danger and is tasked with protection or survival. This is often referred to as the “fight-or-flight” system. Its job is to mobilize all the body’s resources to overcome a potential threat or emergency.
Not that long ago in human history the Sympathetic System was activated on a fairly regular basis in response to a real threat to our survival. After the threat passed the Sympathetic System calmed down.
Our modern life is full of stimuli that the Sympathetic System perceives as a threat even though there is rarely a significant threat. This repeated activation of the Sympathetic System causes significant problems over time as we will explore shortly.
- Parasympathetic Nervous System / Vagus Nerve: The Vagus Nerve is largely the opposite of the Sympathetic System. It is often called the “rest and digest” system. The Vagus Nerve helps keep your heart rate and blood pressure low, promotes healthy digestion, helps support recovery and healing, proper breathing rate. When the Vagus Nerve is active there is lowered inflammation and pain and better sleep and recovery.
So, the Top Key is the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) but let’s explore what happens to create an imbalance in the ANS. This is not only involved in Chronic Pain Syndrome but is the process that is active to some degree in all health challenges.
Here’s a post of mine Chronic Stress Leads to Sympathetic Dominance. Let’s explore that principle in more detail.
In the description of the Sympathetic Nervous System I mentioned that the SNS is activated by real and perceived threats and that our modern world is filled with what our nervous system perceives as a threat, resulting in SNS activation.
Some of us are much more vulnerable to this Sympathetic Activation. Some of it relates to our personality. Our childhood also plays a role as many people grow up in an unstable family setting that the nervous system perceives as unsafe. There might have been a lack of love or nurturing, physical abuse, or emotionally distant or abusive caregivers. Others of us have experienced significant physical trauma.
We learn through our nervous system. Whether it is studying in school, riding a bike, or learning to type it is the nervous system that remembers what we need to do. The same thing happens with repeated Sympathetic activation.
The more the SNS is activated the easier it becomes to get activated. Over time the Sympathetic System stays in a turned on state. This causes a number of reactions that change over time.
- Activation of the Sympathetic Nervous System is energizing in the beginning. Think of how much energy you would have if you had to run for your life from a predator.
- The overactivation of the SNS causes a state of increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, inflammation, poor digestion, impaired immune system, and disturbed sleep among other effects.
- Just as important as what the SNS does itself is its effect of turning down the activity of the Vagus Nerve. Remember the Vagus Nerve is responsible for all the body functions that promote rest, digestion, recovery, healing, immune function, and sleep.
- Over time to varying degrees the majority of us begin to live more and more from a state of Sympathetic overactivity.
- Every symptom from pain to anxiety to fatigue to poor sleep to digestion issues to high blood pressure is related to a chronic, longstanding imbalance in the Sympathetic Nervous System.
- While the Sympathetic Nervous System can be turned down by removing sources of tension and irritation to it, the real restoration of Autonomic Nervous System balance comes with activating and essentially exercising the Vagus Nerve.
- With repeated activation of the Vagus Nerve you can bring greater balance to the ANS and with that more ease and safety, better sleep, improved immune function and a dramatic reduction in muscle tension, inflammation, and pain.
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