People faced with the day in day out experience of ongoing muscle and joint pain often develop mental habits to help them cope that can actually make their condition worse.1 Emotions such as anger, depression and/or making comparisons to how things used to be before the physical problem began, distracts the brain temporarily to help override current sensations of pain. While these mental habits can provide fleeting relief, they also serve to prolong chronic pain conditions by changing brain chemistry and altering the mind and body’s response to pain.6
How Mental Habits Affect the Body
The Skeleton
Destructive mental habits or reactions to pain can make symptoms of physical pain worse by altering the musculoskeletal system. Strong negative emotions trigger the body’s flight or fight response and a person instinctually adapts protective postures and positions. You will recognize these postures from any time you have seen someone else angry or depressed. They assume protective positions by rounding their spine and shoulders and bringing their arms across their body. They also stick their head forward and clench their teeth to ward off potential stressful interactions with others. Their lower body responds by anteriorly tilting the pelvis and bringing their knees together to protect the genitalia.2;4 All of these changes to the skeletal system, if repeated time and time again, can exacerbate physical symptoms of pain by causing joint inflammation, disease and degeneration.
Muscles and Fascia
Soft tissue structures of the body are also adversely affected by destructive mental reactions to pain. Habitual responses in the brain affect muscles and fascia by restricting blood supply. This causes them to become rigid leading to even more tension and pain. These soft-tissue changes create problematic movement compensations throughout the body that can cause other structures to compensate. In response to this added work, they become irritated and stressed leading to even more pain.5
The Gut
When the brain is stressed or working extremely hard, as it does when a person is in pain, it requires a constant supply of glucose to work efficiently. The most readily available supply of glucose in our diet comes in the form of refined sugar. Therefore, people in chronic pain tend to crave sugar, which in turn irritates the gut, the pancreas, liver and kidneys all exacerbating the cycle of chronic pain.3
Awareness is Key
Being aware of your destructive mental habits, and teaching your clients how to recognize their usual responses to the presence of pain, is the first step in overcoming recurring muscle and joint pain. Once you are conscious of these repeated patterns you can identify more positive mental habits (i.e., utilizing positive self-talk, reminding yourself that you are performing the necessary corrective exercises to get better, etc.) to help improve your mental state and overcome this vicious cycle.4
To learn more from Justin Price about how the body is affected by physical, mental and environmental stressors, and what you can do to help you and your clients overcome these problems with corrective exercise, check out The BioMechanics Method Corrective Exercise Specialist course available through NETA.
References
1Duhigg, Charles. 2012. The Power of Habit. New York: Random House.
2Hanna, Thomas. 1988. Somatics. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books.
3Harker, Malcolm. 2005. Health and Healing. New Zealand: Wings of Waitaha Books.
4Price, J., and M. Bratcher. 2018. The BioMechanics Method Corrective Exercise Specialist Certification Program. 2nd Ed. San Diego, CA: The BioMechanics Press.
5Rolf, Ida P., PhD. 1989. Rolfing: Reestablishing the Natural Alignment and Structural Integration of the Human Body for Vitality and Well-Being (revised edition). Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press.
6Thernstrom, Melanie. 2010. The Pain Chronicles. New York: Picador.
Contributed By:
Justin Price is one of the world’s foremost experts in musculoskeletal assessment and corrective exercise and creator of The BioMechanics Method Corrective Exercise Specialist certification (TBMM-CES) available through NETA. The BioMechanics Method is the fitness industry’s highest-rated CES credential with trained professionals in over 60 countries. Justin is also the author of several books including The BioMechanics Method for Corrective Exercise academic textbook, a former IDEA Personal Trainer of the Year, and a subject matter expert for The American Council on Exercise, Human Kinetics, PTA Global, PTontheNET, TRX, BOSU, Arthritis Today, BBC, Discovery Health, Los Angeles Times, Men’s Health, MSNBC, New York Times, Newsweek, Time, Wall Street Journal, WebMD and Tennis Magazine.
