Self Care

PainGuide

Two separate problems lead to the experience of pain (although they seem to go together).

1. Problem 1: Caused by damage of a body part – usually requires professional help (e.g., medications, surgery, etc.). (see the PainGuide section on professional care).
2. Problem 2: Caused by the brain sending a warning signal in response to damage to a part of the body.
   1. Sometimes pain lasts longer than the injury or pain can be felt if there is not an obvious injury.
   2. This is an example of chronic pain.

The key to successful pain control is self – management.

• Self – management can be used with or without other treatments.
• Since pain starts in the brain, how we feel it can be influenced by whatever else is happening in the brain
• Because you have the most influence over what is happening in your brain, you can have a great deal of influence over your pain.

Please watch this video that talks about how self – care can be helpful in managing chronic pain.

Managing Pain: A Wholistic Approach (Run time: 4:07 minutes)

Pain Education

What is Pain?

Please watch this video to learn about pain. (Run time: 5:56 minutes)

You might feel pain in different parts of your body, but did you know that pain always comes from the brain rather than from the part of the body that hurts?

• Body parts can only send messages to the brain that something is wrong.
• The brain interprets those messages and creates the experience of pain.
• There are different types of pain:
• Healthy pain (called nociceptive pain)
• Pain from damaged nerves (called neuropathic pain)
• Pain that mostly comes from the brain and spinal cord (called nociplastic pain)
• Treatment looks different depending on which type of pain you have.
• People can have more than one type at the same time.

Please click on the video below to learn more about pain. (Run time: 6:27 minutes)

The Mechanisms of Pain (Run time: 8:15 minutes)

Pain types (Mechanisms)

There are 3 ways that lead to the experience of pain. Please read the information below that describes each type of pain.

Nociceptive pain

• Example of the body responding to a physical event the way it should.
• Warns of a threat and danger to the body.
• Most nociceptive pain does not last long
• Helps protect people from acting in ways that may cause injury, like touching a hot stove burner.
• Examples: Pain felt when touching a hot stove burner, pain from surgery, pain from tumors.
• Short-term inflammation (swelling)- the immune system responds to something by causing inflammation, which the brain interprets as painful.

Neuropathic pain

• Pain that comes from damage to the brain or spinal cord.
• The nervous system delivers the nociceptive message from where the injury is located on the body to the brain.
• Sharp or burning pain occurs if the nerves that carry messages to the brain get hurt or damaged, and fire too much or in ways that aren’t normal.
• Neuropathic pain comes from nerves losing their ability to fire in ways that remind us to be safe.
• Examples: diabetic neuropathy, severed nerves, injury to the brain or spinal cord.

Nociplastic pain

• Nociplastic pain happens when there is a problem with how the brain reads the signals sent from the nerves in different parts of the body and misinterprets it as an injury or damage.
• The pain from nociplastic pain feels the same as pain from nociceptive pain- both are “real” pain.
• Risk factors for nociplastic pain: genetics, infections, hormones, physical or emotional trauma, repetitive injuries.
• Examples: fibromyalgia, some forms of low back pain, some forms of headache.

Please click on the video below: Treating the Mechanisms (Run time: 3:41 minutes)

Approaches to Pain Management

• Doctors and other healthcare providers can use different approaches to help change how the brain processes pain.
• Examples: procedures and medicine.
• The person with the best access to your brain is you.
• The best way to manage chronic pain that lasts for months or years is to have a partnership between what your doctor can do (i.e., professional care) and what you can do (i.e., self-care).
• There is a step-by-step way to personalize treatment based on the type of pain you feel at any given time
• Diagnosis: Step 1 is to think about what type of pain you feel.
• Education and Self-care: PainGuide teaches different ways that have been shown to influence how the brain forms the experience of pain.
• Professional Care: Your doctor may want to include professional care (i.e., medications, procedures, etc.). Professional care can also work to influence how we experience pain. By using Pain Guide, you can have informed conversations with your healthcare provider to create a treatment plan that is right for you.