News about Well+Able and massage therapy, pregnancy, running, and health
walking has huge benefits for health. If you can manage to walk for 30 minutes a day not only will your chances of a longer and healthier life improve but you will also have less neck, shoulder and back pain.
Please watch this short video by Dr. Mike Evans explaining how simply going for a walk is one of the best things you can do your your health
Do you ever have neck or back pain after a stressful day? Maybe a headache?
Why do you get tight muscles when something stresses you out?
There
are nerve receptors that are involved in pain generation. There job is to send
a signal to the brain that they have been stimulated. The brain knows that a
signal from these receptors in the body is usually a sign of danger and will usually
then decide that the body is in pain, specifically to that area. In his talks,
David Butler often brings up adrenaline
sensitive peripheral nerves and the amazing ion channel turnover. Specifically, this
means that these nerve receptors can become extra sensitive to the chemical adrenaline, also called epinephrine. With this sensitivity, less stimulation is
needed to send a danger signal to the brain. Think of a car alarm that is set
to go off when someone breaks the window. When the alarm is hypersensitive the
alarm may go off if a loud truck drives by. No damage happened to the car but
the alarm still went off. When we are stressed out our body produces more
adrenaline. This can be a good thing because it helps us to prepare for action.
Unfortunately, if a nerve is damaged, stretched, or pressed on for too long it
will create "baskets" of adrenaline sensitive fibers. As David
says here:
"If a person has a highly adrenoreactive area of peripheral nerve and if
they are in a state of persistent elevated stress then repeated firing into the
CNS will occur. And if the person is stressed, central inhibitory controls will
probably be lifted anyway and a persistent neuropathic pain state may
ensue."
What
this means is that if someone has a nerve that is sensitive to adrenaline and
if they are always stressed out then the danger signal to the brain will be
almost constant. If that is the case then the Drug Cabinet in the brain will be lifted
away and persistent pain will likely develop. Not fun.
Fortunately, you have some control over this. The first line of defense is to reduce your stress level thus reducing your adrenaline. Also, just knowing that your pain is not from a damaged muscle but stress chemicals, your brain will then be less likely to think of the signal as pain. Third, if you get out and move your body in a way that reduces any specific nerve perturbations you will have less chance of a future sensitivity. Most good Manual Therapists (RMT, Chiro, PT, etc) will know how to help you do this.
Most forms of massage therapy have good evidence behind them on their ability to reduce stress. Two of the modalities Michael implements, DNM and Simple Contact, work on a model that directly addresses pain and adrenal sensitive nerves.
If you have any questions about this feel free to contact us at well+able and we would love to help you out if we can. It would also be of benefit to watch the previous stress video, the Drug cabinet video and the What is pain video.
Dr Mike Evens has set up a youtube channel with some great health tips. Here is his 11 minute video full of some fantastic ideas for managing stress
