Chronic pain emanating from old injuries can often be a perplexing and frustrating issue.
You may find yourself thinking, “I injured myself two decades ago, so why am I still suffering?”
Whether it’s an old sports injury playing up during a cold snap, or a long-healed broken bone that throbs with every change in atmospheric pressure, past injuries can continue to wreak havoc on our bodies long after the original incident.
This blog post will delve into the reasons behind this persistent discomfort and provide natural strategies to manage and potentially overcome compensatory behaviors that are ruling your life!
Why Is My Past Injury Still Causing Pain?
Often, long-term discomfort from past injuries can be attributed to ‘compensations’ that your body makes. Compensation occurs when the body adjusts its normal operations in response to an injury, altering the way it moves or bears weight to protect the injured area.
For instance, if you sprained your ankle years ago, you might have subtly altered your walking style to reduce pressure on the injured area. Over time, this could lead to additional strain on your knee or hip, which weren’t initially injured.
Although the ankle has healed, the pain persists in other parts of the body due to these compensatory behaviors. In essence, the body is like a well-oiled machine — when one cog is disrupted, it can inadvertently affect the entire system.
The human body is inherently symmetrical, designed to distribute weight and stress evenly across both halves. This symmetry allows for optimal performance and minimizes strain on any one part of our body.
However, compensatory behaviors, as discussed above, can disrupt this symmetry, causing the body to function in a less-than-ideal asymmetric manner.
These alterations can persist for a very long time—even after the original injury has healed—because the body continues to use these new movement patterns that it learned when trying to cope with the injury.
This long-term asymmetry can cause undue strain on specific joints or muscles, leading to chronic pain.
Even seemingly minor alterations in our gait or posture can have substantial ripple effects throughout our body, highlighting the interconnected nature of our musculoskeletal system and the importance of maintaining our body’s natural symmetry.
What Can I Do To Overcome It?
Physical Therapy
Physical therapy is a powerful tool for restoring your body’s natural symmetry and reducing chronic pain from old injuries.
With a personalized treatment plan, physical therapists can address and correct the compensatory behaviors that your body may have learned as a result of the injury.
This approach often includes exercises designed to strengthen weak areas and retrain your body to move in more balanced and efficient ways.
Even if you’ve been struggling with pain for many years, it’s crucial to remember that it’s never too late to seek help.
Engaging in physical therapy can uncover and address underlying asymmetries and restore a more harmonious balance to your body, no matter how long-standing your compensatory behaviors may be.
This reinforces the adage that healing is not a linear process, but an ongoing journey of self-care and mindful adaptation.
Total Body Stretch
A total body stretch, when performed by a skilled physical therapist, is another effective approach to address and rectify compensatory behaviors that result from past injuries.
This treatment method involves a series of therapeutic stretches designed to improve flexibility, enhance mobility, and restore your body’s natural balance.
By focusing on the entire body, this approach ensures that no muscle group is overlooked, thereby reducing the risk of overcompensation by one part of the body due to weakness or stiffness in another.
Consequently, with regular total body stretch sessions, you can gradually retrain your body to adopt healthier movement patterns and mitigate the chronic pain arising from past injuries.
Want To End Your Chronic Persistent Pain For Good?
So many of my patients have suffered for FAR too long with chronic pain that stemmed from an injury they had 20 years ago. So I’m here to tell you, you don’t have to keep struggling on, there is a way to end it for good!
This month I am offering the first three people who reach out to us about their chronic pain a FREE total body stretch/myofascial untwisting which would normally set you back $250!
During this session, you can experience the relief of a total body stretch paired with getting to try out one of the best treatments for your chronic pain done by specialist chronic pain experts!
However, if you’re not quite ready to take this step yet, you can arrange a free, no-obligation telephone consultation to speak to a member of our chronic pain specialist team and discover the next best steps for you.
You can arrange your free telephone consultation by filling in our simple web form or giving our Bradenton clinic a call at (941) 226-2605.
Other Free Resources To Help Fibromyalgia
Why not download a copy of our free back pain report containing 7 quick and simple ways to end back pain and stiffness without taking strong medications? It’s free and you can enjoy it from the comfort of your own home with a cup of your favourite coffee!
Download Our Free Back Pain Report Here!
Read Our Blog – How To Sleep With Lower Back Pain
Read Our Blog – Take Control Of Your Chronic Pain With Total Body Stretch Therapy
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