Newsletter Autumn Winter 2023 Final (24) - Flipbook - Page 20
Self Help Tips & Guidance
Please noteā¦Pain Relief Foundation can only provide information, not give advice. The information
in this newsletter is not a substitute for a personal consultation with a qualified medical
professional. If in doubt, please talk to your doctor.
Understanding Pain - Questions & Answers
Is Persistent pain is rare
About 30-50% of people in the UK live with persistent pain. It is the leading cause of
disability in the world. If you have pain, you are not alone!
Does worse pain means worse injury
It is possible (in fact pretty common) to experience high levels of pain with little or no injury
or damage. The opposite is also true; some serious and even life-threatening conditions or
injuries cause very little pain or even no pain at all (e.g. battlefield injuries or certain types of
tumour). Pain is not a reliable indicator of the health of our body9s tissues or the extent of an
injury. For some of us this is quite different to what we might expect.
In fact, the main purpose of pain is protection. The pain we experience reflects how
concerned our body9s natural alarm system (our nervous system) is about a particular
movement or body part for example. LOTS of things influence the pain we experience,
including some things we consciously control, but also many others that we don9t such as
our past experiences, our levels of stress or worry and fatigue.
Will a scan or X-ray show the source of my pain
Pain is usually the result of a combination of different things, most of which don9t show up on
scans or X-rays.
It9s not unusual for scans such as X-rays to be normal even though people are in pain. On the
flip side, it9s also very common for abnormal findings to be seen on scans of people who don9t
have any pain. In fact, many abnormalities we hear about (e.g. disc degeneration, disc bulges
or arthritic changes in our spines) are far more normal than you might think and are often
present in pain free people as well as those with pain. Surprising and a bit confusing too, right?
You might be even more surprised to learn that scans can actually be unhelpful when it
comes to managing persistent (long-term) pain. For example, research has shown that
people who have scans and X-rays tend to be more anxious and report more pain and more
disability compared to people who didn9t have them.
What all of this means is that it9s hard to tell whether things we see on scans or X-rays are
actually related to why someone has pain or not, especially when it comes to persistent pain.
Most of the time, clinicians can assess you thoroughly by listening to your story, the answers
you give to their questions and by examining you.
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