Did you know that 90% of nerves do not have pain fibers? Nerves are responsible for the transmission of electrical impulses throughout the body, which allow for bodily function as well as the relaying of information. This is quite all encompassing as it includes everything from movement to hormone regulation, senses and sensations, proprioception (your body’s awareness of itself in space), organ function, heart rate, vasoconstriction, vasodilation, and so on. If that paints the picture of nerves controlling everything, then you’ve got it! Let’s get back to pain.
Pain arises when there is damage to an area of the body. How severe that pain is depends on how detrimental that damage is as well as the quantity of pain fibers around the damage. An example would be a paper cut on your hand vs one on your calf muscle. There is much less sensation and fewer pain fibers in the calf area, thus a cut of the same size, depth, magnitude, be less painful. This is one of the problems with diabetes as the prolonged elevation of blood sugar damages nerve endings, causing a lack of sensation, first in the extremities. This is why someone with diabetic neuropathy could end up stepping on a tac and getting a subsequent infection without even knowing it until they develop systemic issues.
When pain arises in areas of no pain fibers, then what? Let’s take arteries. We have the symptoms of the injury but without pain. In this case, we would see increased blood cholesterol because cholesterol is circulated due to the presence of clots, which are present for the purpose of repairing damage. This is how we develop arteriosclerosis. Good maintenance care in this case would be to eat a diet less damaging to the blood vessels, thus less clots are needed, less cholesterol, and less buildup of the subsequent plaques.
Now let’s talk musculoskeletal care. Every joint has an ideal range of motion. That which allows for function and strength and yet also has motions outside of that realm that still allows for the joint to be intact as weakness of the surrounding tissue ensues. Additionally, within that ideal range of motion, the body has designated muscles that are to be used to bear the biggest workload. Did I lose you? For many of my new patients we do this demonstration: Make a fist. Now bend your wrist as far forward as you can. You now have weakness. Right? This same weakness is happening all over your body, all of the time at joints that are not within their ideal ranges of motion for the functional demand placed upon them.
The brilliance of your body’s design is that you don’t have to think about what you need to do to continue to be able to develop strength, stability, and function. Your body’s nervous system (wired complex of nerves throughout your body) is constantly giving feedback regarding everything. It is sending and receiving signals out to and back from end organs (such as skin, muscles, joints, arteries, etc.) to adapt to exactly what is happening in real time.
So, if my body is “all knowing” for lack of a better word, then why do I get injured? The problem is that those compensations are not intended to be performed forever. When in pain, you may experience muscle spasms. Those are good as they are preventing further injury. Certainly, they hurt but the body is trying to preserve and protect itself.
Due to our body’s alignment, asymmetry in how we sit, sleep, and move, our joints are often in less-than-ideal positions. They may not be painful yet, but that is because damage is not occurring, yet. All we need at that point is put enough demand on that region, and the compensation will lead to injury and pain. Demands capable of this isn’t necessarily heavy weighted exercise. It can be something as basic and part of our everyday routine, such as, prolonged sitting. This can be the case with a long commute to work. One can develop lower back pain because ligaments have been held on a stretch in the lower back at which point the brain tries to tell you to get up, get out of the car before something more catastrophic gets damaged.
Therefore, if 90% of nerves do not have pain fibers, and the body is always compensating for positional changes with tissues not designed to take the full load, we at Lander Chiropractic see wellness and maintenance care as something that should be implemented every 3-4 weeks at most, before pain arises. This way, we are avoiding more catastrophic damage and allowing our body to function more optimally, more of the time.
