Why does it hurt there, when I injured here?
We often get asked questions such as this: why does my back hurt but you are treating my knee/hip/ankle? So in this blog let’s talk about compensatory pain to delve a bit deeper into this.
You have a pain, let’s say in your foot. You limp for a while, you then get a pain in the hip. The pain then travels into your back. This would be due to the compensatory movement your body is doing. Our bodies are clever, they naturally adapt to protect themselves. In this scenario your body makes you walk with a limp, perfect, you aren’t feeling pain, what this is doing though is altering the biomechanics of the body.
A pain signal in the brain immediately creates these shifts in movement patterns, to reduce the stress on the affected area of the body. If this shift only happens for a very short period, say a few days, your body can adjust back to its normal way of moving.
However, when the compensatory movement is ongoing, the adaptations it has made will put additional pressure and strain on the areas of the body that are now working harder to allow movement to happen. Muscles will fatigue quicker, possibly creating muscle imbalances and increasing the risk of injury. These imbalances, and potential injuries, can result in further pain moving around your body until you have lost where the initial pain was coming from.
In our busy lives, it is easy to ignore that initial pain or discomfort, seeing it as a small inconvenience. If we go back to our initial scenario, at what point in the cycle would you be seeking help? Most people would search out the help of a chiropractor once the pain in the back had been ongoing for weeks, months, perhaps even years. What if they had sought help for their foot? They would never have needed the help for their back and recovery would, most likely, have been significantly quicker.
Ensuring proper rehabilitation of an injury is crucial in helping maintain natural movement patterns in our body, reducing the risk of developing compensatory pain. Stay on top of your physical health, move regularly and don’t ignore discomfort, waiting for the pain to arise. Speak to your chiropractor sooner rather than later.
