Sometimes Life’s A Pain

I was recently a guest speaker at a corporation. The topic was how to use joint mobility to prevent injury, while improving key quality of life factors such energy levels, productivity, and the rehabilitation of various painful conditions. This can be achieved through moving the joints to re-train one’s system to move better, a.k.a. “Z Health.”

The key is in understanding that the Central Nervous System is the governing system of the entire body and all of its subsystems. It is truly all about the brain!

Bear with me for a moment while I take you through the basic jargon you’ll need to follow along:

1. Your proprioceptive system sends signals to the brain to let the brain know where the body is in space, time and movement. There are various signal types that are sent, but for now we will just discuss two of them: mechano-receptive, and nociceptive.
2. Mechano-receptive sensors are primarily focused in the joints and send joint speed, angle, etc. to the brain. The brain uses this info to create 3-D maps which it uses to coordinate movement in the body. If mechano-recptive input is not received by the brain for any reason, the map loses clarity, and movements are not coordinated as well, resulting in loss of strength among other things.
3. Nociceptive input is interpreted by the brain as a threat (and as pain). This changes the brain’s body map and creates very ineffective movement in the body as well as increased muscle tension, loss of joint mobility, strength, flexibility, and not to mention increased pain!

The above information is relayed from the joints to a nerve, up to the spinal cord where the signal is translated and sent to the brain via the spinal cord’s “dorsal horn” (the relay point of the spinal cord which translates and communicates pain to the brain).

Pain is simply the body’s message that something somewhere else is wrong (except for trauma of course, car wrecks, etc.). It is simply the messenger. From the vantage point of the Central Nervous System, ultimately, every single painful condition can be reduced to ONLY one of two causes:

1.) The type of signal being sent to the brain by the sensors of the body (primarily focused in the joints, and organs).
2.) The interpretation of the signal by the spinal cord, and the decisions that the brain ultimately makes upon the information it receives.

In other words, either the signal used to communicate pain (nociception) is being sent to the brain by the body’s control centers (joints), or the spinal cord’s “dorsal horn” is hypersensitive to communicating pain signals or is interpreting normal, healthy signals incorrectly as pain signals. Or the brain itself is determining that something is painful based on a number of factors such as expectation, psychological and emotional state, past experience with pain, and much much more.

What is great about understanding this concept is that it makes it very easy to get out of pain, get stronger, more flexibility, and greater range of motion. You simply have to change the type of signals being sent to the brain by stimulating more mechano-receptive input (through good joint movement) and change the way the brain views the signals so the signal is not viewed as a threat.

Nociception anywhere in the body stimulates what is called the arthro-kinetic reflex which, simply put, inhibits muscular contraction anywhere in the body. Because mechano-reception and nociception occur primarily in the joints, this reflex is designed to protect the joints from injury by shutting down contraction.

How does this apply to weight-lifting? When a heavy lift is attempted and is missed, what is happening is that not enough ‘good’ mechano-receptive input is received by the brain. Subsequently, the heavy lift is viewed by the nervous system as a threat which causes the arthro-kinetic reflex to kick into action which is simply there to help protect the body from injuring its own joints. By limiting muscular contraction throughout the body the risk of tearing of connective tissues is minimized.