Inflammation: Causes of Pain

Causes of pain or inflammation can seem like a real mystery to lots of patients. And even to their doctors for that matter!

At least if you have a trauma, it's easy to understand why you get pain. For instance, you understand how you get ankle pain after twisting it and spraining it. Or it's pretty obvious how you get a headache if a baseball hits you in the head.

But how do you just wake up one day and all of the sudden your back is hurting, or your foot hurts after you get out of bed or your hand starts tingling while you are typing??

Chances are you have slept in the same bed that you've had for weeks, months or years.

And sitting at a computer is something you've been doing for many months or probably years. So why do you all of the sudden have the signs of carpal tunnel but years and years prior to that day you had nothing?

We will handle both of those scenarios. But let's handle the easier one first.

Trauma: Cause of Pain

Trauma causes the ripping or tearing of some kind of tissue in your body. It could be a ligament, a tendon, a muscle or even worse a bone or nerve. Each of those body parts are made up of lots and lots of cells. When cells get torn apart, the fats they are made of are "set loose" and enter a 4-step pathway that leads to the pain chemical called prostaglandin.

This diagram shows a cross section of the cell membrane. It's a double layer of fats and phosphorus.

When the cells get torn during trauma, the fats are set free and are available to enter the inflammation pathway.

Product #1 in this 4-step pathway that ends in the pain chemical called prostaglandin is why you get inflammation from trauma.

It is this final step that demands the use of "anti-inflammatories." Those are medications for fighting inflammation. However, like you probably saw on the home page, repeated, regular use of anti-inflammatories has long-term consequences on your overall health. It also has possible short-term consequences in the way of death from bleeding ulcers (100 people/day) or acute liver failure.

When you refer to the inflammation pathway diagram again, you can see that the ingredient called EPA from fish oil actually prevents Product #2 from converting into Product #3.

However, there are many mistakes people make when taking omega 3 supplements.

This is why I recommend you explore my free e-book, "9 Common Mistakes People Make When Seeking Pain Relief". There is an exhaustive chapter on how to use nature's anti-inflammatories effectively.

Chiropractic adjustments naturally have an anti-inflammatory effect by allowing arteries to relax from their abnormal constricted state. Vasoconstriction, that is, constricted arteries, stimulates prostaglandin production, too. But when patients of mine have added sufficient doses of omega 3 fish oils into their protocol, their pain relief improves more than when they were only getting adjusted.

As you can see from the inflammation pathway, there are many points of entry for increasing prostaglandin! Decreasing the bad ones and increasing the good ones is the best recipe for pain relief. Find out more about decreasing the bad ones. This page explains how Simple Carbohydrates keep the pain pathway flowing.

Then check out how the "good" ones--fish oil--knock out prostaglandin.

Non-Traumatic Causes of Pain