Still have Pain?
Do you know why you still have pain?
Client Reviews
The usual suspects……
Physical factors like weak muscles, torn tendons, disc degeneration and arthritis are often identified as the main source of your pain. With pain that persists or pain that comes and goes these physical factors are not to blame. Remember people can have disc bulges, joint degeneration and muscle tears and have no pain at all. You can become pain-free again without these things changing. It seems logical to think that if your back is arched or your hips aren’t level then that’s what’s causing your pain. This simply isn’t true. Being open to another understanding of why you have pain is often all it takes to begin returning to all the activities you enjoy health professionals. If you’ve been told your spine is fragile, that message will influence how you move causing a stiffness and protectiveness that’s sometimes subconscious. If you have been told your shoulder pain is due to your rotator cuff tearing you will naturally catastrophize when you feel that pain and visualise fibres splitting like cloth tearing. This will cause you to protect it, move it less and stiffen up around it. Unfortunately, it’s the education and your understanding about what’s happening that causes this hypervigilance and fearful protective existence.
What do you think is going on?
What you believe is happening can influence what you feel. If you think you are weak and fragile and you believe you are causing more damage by moving, you will have pain as a protective response. Your beliefs are often influenced by things you have been told by well-meaning but mis-informed health professionals. If you’ve been told your spine is fragile, that message will influence how you move causing a stiffness and protectiveness that’s sometimes subconscious. If you have been told your shoulder pain is due to your rotator cuff tearing you will naturally catastrophize when you feel that pain and visualise fibres splitting like cloth tearing. This will cause you to protect it, move it less and stiffen up a round it. Unfortunately, it’s the education and your understanding about what’s happening that causes this hypervigilance and fearful protective existence.
Learned Helplessness
Your experience of pain- the sensation of it, how it has affected you, things you have been told about it and how it has been dealt with to this point can contribute to ‘Learned Helplessness’. It’s where an uncontrollable bad event like an episode of pain, leads to a perceived lack of control and general helpless behaviour around it.
Learned helplessness is a control problem not a competence problem. You can be a very competent, capable person, but if you feel you have no control over the pain your experiencing you’ll often become very passive. This may result in you giving up in a lot of areas in your life hoping to find some specialist or injection that might ‘fix’ you.
Loss of your sense of self
Pain can absolutely control your life. It can take the important things away from you, the things that define you. These were often the things you took for granted, but now not being able to do them leaves an empty space in your life. Not being able to exercise or stay in the shape you want, taking away your pastimes and the things you do for enjoyment. The things you value. It can become difficult to spend time with family and friends and enjoying anything can be a struggle. This can influence your sensitivity and influence the amount of pain you experience.
General Health
Where can you be a bit healthier? Lots of people can have disc issues and meniscus tears but they don’t affect them. Being less healthy can sensitise you. Can you increase your daily physical activity? Is there general exercise you can do that doesn’t cause a flair up? Are you getting enough sleep each night?(approx. 8 hours) Could you eat a little healthier? How is your self -talk- are you too hard on yourself or do you can you see the positives? Are you learned to cope with stress? Anxiety and depression can also sensitise you but the good news here is that you don’t have to eliminate it to get out of pain, you just need to learn some strategies to help you cope better.
Ankle injuries are one of the highest recurring injuries. This is often because of inadequate rehabilitation, underdosing of exercises and not enough treatment sessions.
The ligaments of the ankle can be sprained and or torn such as when landing on the inside or outside of your foot. If there is a complete tear of the ligaments, the ankle joint may become unstable. Over time, this instability can result in weakness to the bones and cartilage of the ankle joint.
Most sprained ankles occur in the lateral ligaments on the outside of the ankle. Your foot can twist unexpectedly during many different activities, such as:
Walking on an uneven surface
Falling
Participating in sports that require cutting actions or rolling and twisting of the foot such as tennis, football, and soccer
With a sprained ankle you may experience:
Bruising
Swelling
An area that is painful to touch
A feeling of instability of the ankle
Pain associated with walking
Without proper treatment and rehabilitation, a more severe sprain can weaken your ankle, making it more likely that you will injure it again. Repeated ankle sprains can lead to long-term problems, including chronic ankle pain, arthritis, and ongoing instability.
If the muscle is affected this is called a strain and can happen when the fibres of the muscle stretch or tear. With a muscle strain you may notice:
pain in the affected muscle
swelling
bruising
muscle tightness or spasm
loss of some, or all, of the function in the affected muscle
blood collecting under the skin at the site of the strain – this is known as a haematoma and it looks like a large, dark-red bruise
Repeated ankle injuries can be debilitating, lead to chronic pain and prevent you from participating in the activities that you love. Here at the P&P Clinic we ensure that you get a comprehensive assessment, an accurate diagnosis and a thorough plan from day one to ensure you get long term results. We pride ourselves on giving the most accurate diagnoses, and this is why our patients have experienced such success in their treatments.
We will provide specific hands-on techniques to help you get to your goals faster and we will provide you with sport specific or tailored exercises that are designed in such a way to help you return to what you love doing. Generalised exercises that are not functional in nature tend to be least successful when it comes to rehabilitation, if your goal is to return to running then your exercises will be designed in such a way to mimic some of those movements and get you running longer, stronger and pain-free. Our treatment techniques will ensure a speedy recovery from ankle and foot pain whilst reducing the risk of recurring injury.
