Is Pain ‘All in the Head’?

When you’ve been in pain for so long you often start to wonder if it is all in your head. Or maybe you’ve even seen another health care provider and that is what they have suggested?

Quite often, the pain is not in your head, it is simply a case that the cause has yet to be found. This is something chiropractic is great at, finding the cause.

However, in this week’s blog I thought I would share the interesting fact that all pain is in the brain. No matter if you stub your toe, have back pain or touched a hot stove, all the pain that you feel is in the brain. So factually pain is in the head due to it being where your brain is located, but it doesn’t mean that the pain doesn’t exist.

How so?

Well as I am sure you know it is your nerves that feel pain. If you hurt one part of the body, it is the nerve endings in that area that register pain, but for your body to process and understand, the nerve ending sends that ‘pain’ message to the brain to a place called the prefrontal cortex and the homunculus. This is the part of the brain where all pain in registered.

There is a fancy part of the brain referred to as the homunculus, often depicted as an upside-down man with large facial features, hands, and toes. The reason for these particularly large body parts is because these are the areas where we have most of those nerve endings.

If you have ever stabbed your finger with a fine needle, you know exactly where it is. But often when you have pain in your back, it is hard to describe the location. This is because different parts of the body have different amounts of nerve endings and therefore the amount of signals to the brain changes.

But suffice to say, all pain no matter what it feels like and where it is, is registered in the brain.

Here is an interesting fact for you.

Pain and temperature are the same nerve signals. Your brain will struggle to distinguish between pain and temperature. Remember the example of the hot stove? Touch it and what did you feel? Was it pain or heat?

And with this comes a nifty way of reducing and remedying pain. The trusty hot water bottle. If you apply heat to a painful area, it doesn’t fix it, but it does play a little trick in the brain, making it think it is hot and not painful, which can give you a well needed break from the pain.

If myself or the team can be of any further help if you are struggling with pain, please reach out.

With love,
Tom