Here are some facts about body pain that may dispel things you have grown up believing.
Fact: 20 million people in the UK will have back problems during their life time.
Fact: You can only register one bodily pain at a time.
Fact: A trapped nerve isn’t trapped.
Fact: Discs don’t ‘slip’.
Fact: Frozen shoulders are rarely ‘frozen’ solid.
From childhood we are conditioned to except some of the above statements as fact. The truth of the matter though is that these terms are used by Doctors and patients alike to put a name to many varying conditions that all cause body pain.
Over 20 million of us in the UK alone will experience some sort of back problems during our lifetime. That’s isn’t so surprising really seeing as how we rely on our spine and associated muscles to do so much in our daily lives. There are also many who will suffer damage from accidents and genetic problems.
The good thing is that no matter how many problems you have, your brain receptors will only register the one that is ‘shouting’ the loudest. You can have chronic back pain but if you hit your thumb with a hummer your back will stop hurting for a while as your thumb is shouting louder.
Nerves are rarely trapped, as a nerve trapped between two bones would be so painful you would just continuously pass out. Nerve can be restricted by muscles contracting onto them or pass through restricted pathways, which can be painful and create pins and needles.
Discs don’t slip. Yours discs are like shock absorbers, they sit between each of the vertebra which make up your spine. The discs are horseshoe shaped and are bonded to the bones. The open section of the discs points backwards and from this gap the nerves exit the spinal cord and go to other areas of the body.
Discs can bulge, become wedge shaped and will loose their sponginess in time but they can not slip from between the bones. This would cause a major trauma as it would impact on your spinal cord and result in unbelievable pain and paralysis.
Frozen shoulders are rarely frozen solid, the cause generally being muscular in nature. The shoulder joints are the most complicated joints in the human body, as no other joint allows such range of movement. All this movement is controlled by groups of muscles and damage to these muscles is usually the source restricted shoulder/arm movement.