How Pain Originates In the Body

“If I'd known I was going to live so long, I'd have taken better care of myself.” Leon Eldred

Musculoskeletal pain attacks the human body at every vulnerable target - the muscles, ligaments and tendons, along with the bones. Back pain affects 80% of Americans at some time in their lives. It comes in many forms, from lower back pain, middle back pain, or upper back pain to low back pain with sciatica. Common back pain causes nerve and muscular problems, degenerative disc disease, and arthritis.

For many, the injury is triggered by a strenuous activity like weight lifting. Others simply bend down to pick up a pencil and their back gives out. People with musculoskeletal pain sometimes complain that their entire bodies ache. Their muscles may feel like they have been pulled or overworked. Sometimes the muscles twitch or burn. Symptoms vary from person to person, but the common symptoms are: Pain, Fatigue, Sleep disturbances and Numbness.

The human body maintains life and health in an amazing way. Each individual cell performs an activity that contributes to the body's overall function. Nerve impulses transmit information to maintain a balanced internal environment - called homeostasis. Every day, life situations threaten to disrupt that balance. Physical traumas, strains and emotional stress undermine homeostasis. This imbalance leads to aches and pains which left untreated may result in physiological dysfunction.

Research shows that ~ 40% of the population is suffering musculoskeletal pain. What does this tell us about the majority of management methods? Can there be a better way to see the underlying cause of pain, and therefore manage it more effectively?

Pain is a very important indicator for us to pay attention and change what we are doing to protect us from harm. Pain is actually created by the brain - for good reasons. The response may be a protective mechanism of PAIN.

We know that nerves carry impulses, or signals, from the body’s tissues that tell the brain about the state of the tissues. Information such as excessive stretch, excessive strain, over-compression, tearing, bleeding, swelling etc. is transmitted to the brain. Once the brain receives these signals, it decides on best approach to protect the body. Without this protective response we would be much more likely to do more severe damage to ourselves, and for this reason pain is a very successful protective mechanism.

Everything in the planet opposes the gravity. We designed to oppose gravity efficiently. People start to get problems when they oppose the gravity inefficiently. When people get older they start to shrink. It is because they oppose gravity more and more inefficiently.

There are 3 gravitation planes that divide our body in left and right, in front and back and horizontally. These planes make up our musculoskeletal posture. The body was created to be in these planes to keep right posture and to be efficient. Your head is supposed to be aligned with shoulders, hips, knees and feet. When it is not lined up, we get musculoskeletal problems, pain, weakness and dysfunctions.

When body moves off gravitation planes there is an imbalance in the muscular system. It is called postural distortion or musculoskeletal distortion. For instance:

• The shoulders go forward, arms internally rotated and people hold their arms on thighs instead of sides.


• The pelvis goes forward, and then what hold us up are posterior neck, shoulders and low back muscles instead of cervical, thoracic and lumbar spine. These muscles become so hard and stiff like bones because they do bones job. Muscles job is to create movement, not to hold us up.

• The knees buckle back to counterbalance the body other why’s the body would fall over.


• And what hold us up under the pelvis are anterior muscles of the front legs - Quadriceps and other front leg muscles. They do what bones supposed to do - hold us up. They become hard, stiff like bones.


• For instance: if Extensor Hallicus is tight it moves big toe in and we get bunions. When Extensor Digitis is tight it starts to destroy feet because it inserts in all four toes. As knees go back calcaneus go up and start to pull posterior leg muscles. Posterior muscles start to hurt.

So, we develop musculoskeletal distortion, when musculoskeletal system is out of balance. Have you ever heard from your doctor saying that you have headache because your feet imbalanced? Of course, not.

One day, all of sudden we feel excruciating pain. We didn’t do anything to bring pain. How did it happen? The answer is that you had tension in your body and muscles because maybe you were involved in car accident 3 years ago and didn’t address the problem properly, or maybe you don’t use your muscles right way or you are under stress all the time. Who knows? But your problem arose not today, it started long time ago.

Because you didn’t address your problem before, your muscles became tighter and tighter every day and gradually they started to pull bones out of place. The more they pulled bones the tighter they became.

You started to develop musculoskeletal distortion or imbalance in your muscular system. The body is very intelligent and patient. It does whatever it takes to get away from pain. It shifts and shifts even more to decrease the pain, but it can take so much until it shows that it is exhausted. Then, we feel pain and need to do something about it.

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