To understand the nature of back pain we first need to look at what pain is and how it affects us as human beings on a physiological, physical, emotional and even mental level.
What is Pain?
When most people experience pain of any kind they only ever look at the level of discomfort it causes without really thinking about why the human body produces a pain response in the first place. Put simply pain is the body's early warning system which warns us that we're causing damage to ourselves and that we need to stop straight away and it becomes a learned response for each of us.
For example if you accidentally put your hand on a hot surface your nervous system instantly creates a pain response which ensures that you instantly remove your hand from the hot surface to prevent any further damage. Your brain then stores a pain response associated with that incident so in future you'll be far more careful about where you put your hands. Pain is only ever the symptom of something else happening to you and pain there to stop you from hurting yourself. It has been a hugely important part of how we've evolved as people.
(CNS) and (PNS)
The nervous system which we briefly mentioned above is basically in charge of all the pain events that your body experiences. Your nervous system is basically split into two parts. There is the Central Nervous System (CNS) which is your brain and which controls all the higher functions of the body. Then there is the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) which are all the pain "pathways" from your fingers, toes, back, neck and shoulders directly back to your brain. So when you burn your fingers on a hot surface the message is sent via the PNS to the CNS which quickly alerts your body to move away from the pain in a typical pain response situation.
The Keyword is Posture
But when it comes to dealing with neck, shoulder and back pain the CNS and PNS still play a part but the situation is slightly different and in a way we actually allow and even encourage this type of pain to happen. Encourage? Why would anyone in their right mind encourage a pain response?
Well folks it's all to do with how modern life has changed the most basic part of human nature - our posture. If you look at a young child that has just about learned how to walk or sit up you'll notice their posture is straight in that their back is straight and their shoulders aren't slumped. They have a naturally correct posture because they know to sit or stand any other way will be uncomfortable and eventually cause them some level of discomfort.
Now look at how you're sitting right now reading this article. Are you sitting upright with your feet firmly on the floor or are you slumped forward, head resting in one hand and maybe a cup of coffee in the other? How long have you been sitting there like that? 20 minutes? An hour? Or can you even remember?
Now your reaction after reading this is to sit back and probably stretch out your back and to wriggle your neck from side-to-side to loosen it up. How many times during each day do you do that? Relax, we're not trying to interrogate you here but the idea is to make you think, even briefly, about how often each day you have absolutely awful posture. And you're doing it without realizing that you're doing it. It's become almost a subconscious part of your daily routine - it's not like you're deliberately going to harm yourself now are you?
The positions we sit in at work, in the car, on the train, on a plane or even at home surfing the web and the types of work we do all play a huge role in how our bodies try to overcompensate for lack of correct posture. This puts an immense amount of strain on our back, neck and shoulders which are all interconnected by the same nerves, muscles, tendons and ligaments. Think of your back as a railway bridge - if you remove one element of the bridge then there's extra pressure put on other supporting structures and, with enough extra pressure, the bridge simply gives way. This is exactly how neck, shoulder and back pain and even chronic pain develop.
Let me highlight for you how a simple change to our physiology can make a massive difference to how our physical human support system. The average adult human head weighs over 10 pounds and if not properly supported (because you're slouching, stooped over or leaning forward staring at a screen...see you're doing it again aren't you?) can put a lot of extra strain on the body. To highlight this it's the equivalent of holding a small dog suspended in the air with one arm for more than several minutes - your muscles will start to ache very quickly.
This is exactly what happens when one part of your upper body is in a totally unnatural posture. The rest of your musculoskeletal system then needs to adjust itself to provide the support your body needs to stay balanced and upright. You won't need to think about this because our wonderful human bodies take care of this for us in fractions of a second to make sure we don't fall over. Initially you probably won't even notice any side-effects in terms of the pain from sitting, walking or standing with bad posture.
But given time the pain will develop and grow and grow until you're forced to take anti-inflammatory medication or painkillers. And although these types of medications can be very effective in dealing with the pain, they're only a treatment for the symptoms of the pain response itself. They simply do not deal with the root cause of your pain. Without addressing the root cause of your neck, shoulder or back pain, you're simply going to be managing the pain forever instead of curing it permanently.
Our aim is to move you away from pain management through medication and help you enjoy a pain-free life. Posture is so important. We want you to learn techniques to help you attain a better posture. There are solutions; you just have to look for them. We'll help you achieve a pain free life in a shorter time frame than you probably thought was possible, outside the realm of magic.
End debilitating back pain. Understand the nature of back pain and how posture plays a part in the recovery. Join the free PathAcross Email list, or for more immediate information, go to http://www.pathacross.com/pain-neck-shoulder-back/. Jim Ingham, a successful businessman, created PathAcross.com to explore how we create our own realities.
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