Get Yourself Back in Motion. Jason T Smith
occurs when the brain gets sensory input from other parts of the body that are damaged or compromised in some way. From wherever the problem originated, an SOS call is made to the brain, triggering the emotive pain response to catch your attention and change what you are doing. Unless you have been involved in acute trauma, pain is generally not a sudden reaction but the result of an enduring problem that gradually builds over time. This phenomenon demonstrates the danger with using pain alone as a reliable indicator of injury or sickness, as more often than not it’s a delayed signal and therefore already too late.
Consider also, that in some severe strains and sprains, it’s not uncommon for the person to feel little or no pain because the nerve endings are completely torn, disconnecting sensory input to the brain. Ironically, the damage may be so bad that it actually requires surgical repair, despite the client feeling very little discomfort.
Pain can also be unreliable when therapists have provided early treatment or medication that has helped to relieve its intensity. Clients can be deceived into thinking that their reduction in pain correlates with recovery of their injury. Whilst therapists all over the world are experts in helping manage or resolve symptoms such as pain, this should never be mistaken for ‘healing’. As a physiotherapist I can influence many things, but the body still has a natural healing process with which I must synchronise and cooperate with.
Different people also have different pain tolerances. From the very stoic to the more sensitive amongst us, we can’t always rely on our feelings of pain to be an accurate interpretation of the extent of trauma or damage. The feeling of pain is also often modulated by unrelated emotions. For instance, pain can feel disproportionately worse when you are tired, disappointed or depressed. Alternatively, those who are highly focused on an activity or excited by some other event can experience a temporary reduction in pain.
I often remind my clients at the end of every consultation that the absence of pain does not equate to an absence of injury. Like a paper-cut to your fingertips, the pain eases long before the skin heals. In the same way, often clients with internal injuries are still recovering long after their pain disappears, and so need to be very careful with their movements to avoid exacerbating their injury. An experienced physiotherapist will factor pain into the overall treatment regime, but not overstate it as the only sign of recovery. They will form a sound diagnosis on the integration of numerous assessments and observations to formulate a comprehensive recovery strategy for optimum results.
“The absence of pain does not equate to an absence of injury”
My clear message is not to wait for pain before you pay attention to your health. Otherwise, you give the insidious nature of declining health and progressive micro-tissue damage an unfair head start that results in far greater deterioration than should ever be tolerated.
Get Behind the Wheel I have a good friend who is fanatical about his car. He uses filtered water to clean it every week and follows every manufacturer guideline for regular maintenance. He is fully invested into getting the most from his beloved vehicle. But when I talk to him about his health, he shrugs me off and tells me he feels fine.
“Fine?”
That’s just another way of him telling me he’s not sick or is living in the passive neutral zone just waiting to hit the health skids.
My friend pays meticulous attention to every sound his car makes, the quality of the tread on each tyre and knows by heart when he last changed the oil. But can he recall when he had his last physical? He knows the correct air pressure for his tyres, but doesn’t know his own blood pressure.
Why is it that so many of us are like this? We invest time and money into maintaining our vehicles — pumping in the right fuel, changing the oil and filters, rotating the tyres, replacing worn wiper blades — but don’t invest the same resources into our health. A car should last you 10 years or so. After this it’s predictable you will need to start funneling money into it to fix the ageing parts. How long do you want your body to run at peak performance? Are you willing to treat your body as well as my friend treats his car? Don’t void your warranty by neglecting proactive lifestyle choices and neglecting the little niggles that arise from time to time. Consider your body a vehicle that is engineered for a long life but needs regular maintenance scheduled to avoid a breakdown.
Measured Steps You’ve possibly heard the cliché, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” It’s true. You don’t need to make massive shifts in your life in order to pursue wellness. Incremental changes in strategic areas can make an exponential difference as the years pass by. I invite you to journey with wellness, as opposed to trying to make it happen in one enormous lifestyle change. Read this book, identify some relevant areas for change, and let me map out for you a more healthy future. Don’t think of your health as something on your ‘to do’ list that gets crossed off and concluded. You don’t action it today and never address it again. It doesn’t ever finish. There is no finite end point. If you ever believe you’ve arrived at the ‘end’ of wellness, you’re giving up on the rest of the adventure that awaits you. Good health at least has to be maintained. This journey is a lifelong pursuit, but has massive daily benefits – starting today if you want it to. After 14 years of travelling the world together and living hand-in-hand, my wife has often observed that I am too focused on the destination rather than the journey. Figuratively and literally. My wife is patient enough in our travels to often see things I miss. I tend to want to go full throttle and arrive early, while she experiences a whole other dimension as she counts each moment an important part of the whole trip. Frankly, there are times when I’m flat out disappointed by the destination and all I can salvage from the experience is my wife’s memories of the sights, sounds, people and places we’d passed along the way. These reflections remind me to enjoy the journey, because it’s every bit as important as the place I am going. I’ve got to love every step of the way and embrace it as part of my life experience.
“This journey is a lifelong pursuit, but has massive daily benefits – starting today if you want it to.”
The road to health is no different. Take my wife’s advice. Accept that wellness is a journey to be enjoyed at every milestone and is as simple as just taking the very next step.
Health Secrets
1 Good health is not just the absence of injury, pain or sickness, but rather your ability to move and perform in an optimised physical state.
2 Wellness isn’t a ‘nice idea’. It’s a ‘life and death’ choice that you must confront.
3 Your fast-paced lifestyle threatens good health on a daily basis.
4 Pain in isolation is an unreliable indicator of your injury or sickness.
5 You need to drive and maintain your body like you would a high performance vehicle.
6 Enduring health is a lifelong pursuit, but it responds immediately to your positive daily decisions.
Actions for Optimal Health
Review the health secrets of this chapter.
Write down in 30 words or less how you would now define good health or wellness. Rate your measure of personal health on a scale of 1 to 10, where the higher the number the closer you are to your peak performance. Consider the obvious things like current injuries, restrictions, medical conditions and pain. Also include in your assessment your state of fitness, energy levels, body weight, nutrition habits, exercise patterns and general sense of well-being. If you are disappointed with your score (firstly, congratulate yourself for being honest) then set new targets to aim for in 3, 6 and 12 months from now. We will identify strategies throughout the remainder of this book that will help you score much better on future assessments.
Make one small change to your busy lifestyle that promotes better health! It could be to sleep longer, eat less sugar, walk 2 km on the weekend, or actually stop and sit down for lunch at work regardless of