Blog ยท Pain Science
Not all pain means the same thing. Before anyone treats it, it helps to know which kind you're dealing with. Here's the simple decision tree we use.
Most of the time, pain gets treated the same way no matter where it came from. Find the sore spot, calm it down, move on.
But pain is a message, and different messages need different answers. A fresh sprain, a hip that's been grinding for years, and pain that's spread everywhere for no clear reason are three very different problems.
Pain also isn't created in your tissue. It's created in your brain, after your nervous system weighs the signal against your history, your stress level, and how threatened you feel. That's why it helps to ask a few questions in order.
A recent injury, swelling, bruising, and a clear moment when it happened all point to yes. This is protective pain. It's short-term, it matches the injury, and it's doing its job. The answer is to protect the area and let it heal.
If there's no recent injury, move to question two.
Does it hurt in certain positions or with certain movements? Is one side tighter than the other? Is it slowly getting worse? Those point to a mechanical driver. A joint is off center, fascia is restricted, or something up or down the chain is overloading the spot that hurts. The answer is to find that driver and spread the load back out.
If mechanics don't explain it, move to question three.
Light touch that hurts. Pain way out of proportion to what's going on. Pain that spreads beyond where it started. Pain lasting more than three months, poor sleep, and a string of treatments that didn't work. Those point to a nervous system that has turned the volume up. The tissue may be fine, but the alarm is stuck on. The answer is to calm the nervous system, not just treat the tissue.
If none of the three fit cleanly, the pain should respond well to the right hands-on work once the true source is found.
Real people rarely fall neatly into one box. An old injury can leave a mechanical problem behind, and years of that mechanical problem can sensitize the nervous system. That's why treating only the sore spot, or assuming your imaging explains your pain, so often falls short.
The tree isn't about picking one answer. It's about not skipping a question.
Some pain needs a medical workup before anything else. Get checked if you have:
If you can't tell which kind of pain you're dealing with, that's exactly what an assessment is for. We work through every question, not just the one that's easiest to treat.
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