Neuroplastic / Nociplastic Pain
Most people assume, understandably, that pain is always an indicator of pathology in the body’s tissues (i.e., injury) but emerging research suggests that many of the chronic, day to day aches and pains we feel may actually be the brain misinterpreting safe signals from the body as pain, tightness, burning, tingling, etc. This is known as neuroplastic/nociplastic pain. Because pain is such an important survival mechanism, the brain can be a little overzealous as it interprets these signals, especially in response to stress and especially in areas with a history of pain. If you’ve run your symptoms past your primary healthcare provider (which I always encourage) and haven’t received a clear diagnosis, you may be suffering from neuroplastic/nociplastic pain.
While it’s not for me to diagnose the cause of your symptoms, there are some helpful guidelines to help you determine if what you’re feeling might be neuroplastic pain:
Your symptoms first appeared during, or are frequently triggered by, a high stress period in your life.
Your symptoms originated without injury or have persisted/recurred well past when the original injury should have healed.
Your symptoms are inconsistent. You might sit for several hours at work and have a flare-up of pain but the same length of sitting for an activity you enjoy causes no symptoms. Pain from an injury is generally reproducible with specific movements/activities.
Your symptoms are felt in a large number of areas. In the absence of a systemic disorder it is more likely that symptoms felt in multiple areas have a single underlying cause: neuroplastic/nociplastic pain.
Your symptoms migrate. For example, your pain began in the right low back, moved to your left, moved up into your neck, and is now a headache. Structurally caused pain usually stays localized to the site of dysfunction.
I believe that massage is especially helpful for this type of pain. By providing pleasant stimulus concentrated in areas of historic pain while the brain is in a deeply relaxed state, we help it learn that signals from these areas are safe, decreasing the likelihood they will be perceived as pain in the future. For the best chance at long term relief, I would strongly recommend anyone struggling with chronic pain read the book The Way Out: A Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven Approach to Healing Chronic Pain* by Alan Gordon with Alon Ziv. The education and techniques from this book have made a profound difference in my own pain perception and I believe they could be a great help to many people.
Please know that this is not an affiliate link and I receive no money if you buy this book.
