Pain Relief

Pain relief is a complex topic. For the purpose of discussing chronic pain relief and how it relates to stress, I will focus on the effects of stress on joint compression. Normally, joints have space between the bones to prevent rubbing and deterioration of the bone surfaces. In fight or flight, joints compress, decreasing or eliminating space between the bones. This can compress tissues, for example the meniscus in the knee joint, or even squeeze them out of their normal position. This in turn can create excess pressure against connective tissue in the area. Bone-to-bone contact increases, which has the advantage of creating more points of friction to create fast, powerful movement in a fight or flight situation, but also over long periods of time can cause deterioration of bone and tissues at the joint. This can cause lots of signals to the brain, which we sometimes call pain, that alert us to this issue. The signals alerting us to this issue won’t go away unless the nerve sending them is somehow blocked, or if they are processed appropriately in the sensorimotor cortex of the brain, which is then able to send out an appropriate motor response to address the issue. Likely an appropriate motor response would at some point involve increasing space in the joint to fix the problem. This is the information processing and response function described in the nervous system section. In the parasympathetic nervous system state, the body is capable of this function, and there is potential to open up the joints.